Four Dimensions to Transformational UCC Projects (Part 2 of 2)

11 Apr 2012

As a channel partner you need to understand how you should transform your message and offering to help CIO's succeed in their work.

To achieve the type of transformational projects you want, you need to keep four dimensions in focus, Technology, People, Workspace and Process. As CIO your organization becomes the coordinating, or project leading organization, and responsible for delivering the technology that shall support the change.

In each of these dimensions you can help the customer to identify drivers for change and by doing so identify the strategic direction the company wants to take.

Workspace Dimension

For decades, there have been two kinds of offices: a private office or workstation for one person, and conference rooms and team spaces for groups. Research show that 70% of innovations occur while working together with someone else and there is significant evidence confirming that working in pairs improves learning, negotiations, problem solving, and innovation.

That is the reason why it is important that the office supports not only teamwork and collaboration, but also specifically this so called dyadic working, where teams of two meet in real life or digitally using collaboration tools.

An HR manager approached me after a seminar on benefits on UC and said she absolutely agreed with my description of the challenges for companies today. She said the company she worked for was facing challenges that were too complicated to be solved in what would fit between one person's ears. She needed solutions that would allow several "heads" to meet and collaborate to find the solutions. Her main concern was what "heads" to facilitate meeting.

This is a cultural challenge more than a technological. Any successful UCC project must take culture into aspects of implementing new ways of working and using new tools, otherwise employees will simply keep doing their work as they usually do it.

In the future, work will be more than the office, there will be a explosion of places of work. And the space provided by the company will be much more intelligent and flexible. Architecture will become much more energy efficient and the demands for sustainable office places will increase. These requirements will also fall upon technology where mobile and wireless technology along with digital storage and cost efficiency will be key opportunities for channel partners who understand this view of collaborative work spaces.

Process Dimensions

"Work is not a place, it is what we do." A nice slogan, but work processes need to support this way of working as well. There are no longer "windows" where the communication system can be down for an upgrade or other maintenance, due to the growth of the mobile driven "always on" employee. Staff who will go home early to take care of the family or play sports, and then connect wirelessly at a later time to finish their work for the day.

Work processes that support employees to constantly learn and increase their competence. This competence growth is mostly done via interactions in the persons network supporting innovation.

The resistance to change is always there when dealing with people, therefore the company must find ways that incorporate the changing dimension in how work is performed.

Consumerization has been dealt with in the technology dimension, but ways of working will invite external influences on processes as well. New tools will be a way to introduce process improvements from the ground up, not only top down as it is usually.

Most channel partners do not engage in the process dimension of UCC projects, but understanding the impact UCC can have on business process is a way into more opportunities.