The Business Transformation Value of IP Telephony

Increased productivity and customer satisfaction are the top priorities for any business today. To accomplish this, people need the ability to work seamlessly with one another, both within organizations and across networks of partners, suppliers and customers. Organizations attempting business transformation are finding that a key to improving productivity, business responsiveness and innovation is to deliver a variety of collaboration tools while accommodating work style preferences.

Setting the Stage

Every healthy organization has started the conversation around business transformation. Chances are, not many of them view or include their communication infrastructure as one of the “applications” that will help transform their business. But whether your organization is planning for convergence, or has already made the leap, IP telephony and its feature-rich applications can play an important role in business transformation. Newer capabilities like presence, personalization, instant messaging, video, and multimedia collaboration can be combined with more traditional tools such as voice mail, fax, and email to give any business the competitive advantage it’s looking for. The right IPT strategy can play a vital role in business transformation.

The five steps to a successful IPT strategy plan:

1. Talk to your customers. Interview the business unit leaders within your organization. Help them understand all of the features available to them. Discuss a technology roadmap that is aligned with their plan. Ask them about their day-to-day processes. You may be able to map a specific application or function to help streamline a business process.

2. Build an IPT Strategy Roadmap. Understand and communicate current capabilities. Align upgrades, adding features to your organization’s overall business transformation plan. This will go a long way during budget discussions.

3. Set Expectations. Over-communicate your current and future capabilities. Ensure your customers understand when they can expect that new feature.

4. Budget Accordingly. If you are successful with steps 1, 2, and 3, your chances of support are very high. Executive buy-in is a must-have.

5. Deliver What You Promise. The primary goal of business transformation is to increase flexibility and adaptability. Your commitment to the success of business transformation is important since it is an important piece of the big picture.

Many IT organizations have reaped the benefits of lower maintenance costs, reduced telecom expenses, better disaster recovery and asset consolidation— which add up to lower TCO (total cost of ownership) by migrating to an IP telephony infrastructure. However, the true benefit of deploying IP telephony can go far beyond reducing expenses, to achieving the agility, productivity, and flexibility gains needed to out-perform the competition. IT

Anthony Iadisernia is Director of Network Solutions (News - Alert) for Forsythe Solutions Group.

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