Understanding the User Experience

Those of you who have read my articles on UCStrategies and nojitter know the value I place on understanding and enhancing the end user experience when it comes to unified communications and collaboration. The success of UCC solutions and deployments comes from usage, which is based on user acceptance of the tools and technologies, which in turn is based on the user experience.

As I noted in a recent article, while vendors are acknowledging the role of the user experience, businesses and IT professionals must do more to understand their users' needs. For example, mobile users want and require a different user experience than desk workers; an insurance claims agent will need a different experience than an ER nurse or an engineer working on an oil rig. The old adage of Ford Motors giving car buyers a choice of color, as long as it's black, does not apply in the UCC world. Developing user profiles that identify the different types of users and the tools they need to get their work done is essential to UCC success.

While working with large enterprises, Dimension Data, a global services and solutions provider, noticed a lack of understanding of user needs and that the way in which end users want to use technologies are not taken into account in the planning for UCC. This results in a lack of UCC adoption, as well as a lack of ROI for users. To help companies grow and get the most out of their UCC deployments, Dimension Data conducted extensive research aimed at helping enterprises on their UCC journeys. They surveyed both IT decision makers and end users in order to measure their UCC priorities, contrasting how decision makers and end users view things, and shedding light on how enterprises can help grow UCC adoption in their organizations. Some of their findings are a bit scary! For example, the research found that only 38 percent of the enterprises surveyed profile their users, while 21 percent believe their users all have the same requirements.

The survey showed that almost 60 percent of organizations with a UCC investment budget consult their end users, but don't allow them to influence their UCC plans. In fact, only 20 percent of the respondents believed that users contributed to the UCC strategy in a significant way, and only seven percent of decision-makers say users have a high degree of influence. As Dimension Data rightly points out, it's risky not to consider users, as the lack of understanding user needs poses a risk to the success of UCC deployments.

In the age of "consumerization of IT" and BYOD, consumers have more tools and technologies available to them, and are using these in the workplace without the blessing of the IT staff. In many cases, workers are creating "shadow IT departments" and are divorcing themselves from IT. In light of this trend, you would expect IT to work harder to take end users' needs into account when making collaboration and communication decisions, but that's not the case. Dimension Data was surprised when they found that many IT managers are asking and surveying users about what tools and technologies they want, but are merely paying lip service and not using this information in their decision making.

The key take-away is that organizations need to bring adoption into their planning cycle and not think about it as an afterthought. As I mentioned earlier, users have different requirements, and organizations need to profile their users and understand their needs and requirements, especially when it comes to mobility and BYOD. An understanding of what technologies your users are aware of and will adopt is key to driving usage.

Focusing on the user is also important when it comes to business transformation. The UCStrategies team has long advocated that UCC can help organizations not only optimize business processes, but also help them transform their businesses. In a conversation with Neill Hart, Dimension Data's European Director of Converged Communications Line of Business, he noted that effective communications and collaboration is the stepping stone to business transformation, which provides the "why" or "why bother" when it comes to UCC deployments. Understanding how communications and collaboration takes place in an organization is an essential next step to business transformation.

Based on its research findings, Dimension Data is focusing on helping clients transform their businesses by helping them understand where they are and where they want to be, their adoption goals, how meetings and collaboration currently take place, etc. This information is then used to create a plan and "Development Model" for companies, providing a picture of where they are today, and a roadmap of how to get to where they want to be.

This also includes changing the conversation to put the user at the center. As Neill pointed out, "We need to be having conversations around work style and business transformation, and these conversations need to take place before the technology conversations. Change the conversation to the organization's broader business objectives for what they're trying to achieve, and then use the right UCC technologies to achieve these objectives."

This is exactly what I tell clients when developing a UCC strategy. When you start down the path of deploying a UC solution, you need to ask yourselves some questions:

• Who are the users that can benefit from it the most?
  
  
• What are your goals, what are you trying to accomplish?
  
  
• Think about some of the things that UC lets you do. Would better collaboration among your workers help you increase sales and revenues?
  
  
• What are some problems that you're facing: Are customer service questions not being answered quickly? Does it take too long to process a loan or an insurance claim?

These questions and issues will vary based on your business, but are the types of questions you should be asking in order to determine where and how to deploy a UCC solution. The technology decision comes only after these questions have been answered and must be based on the answers.

I was pleased to see a company like Dimension Data evolve from focusing on technology to "putting the user at the center." This is something I've been preaching for a while, and I hope to see more vendors and enterprises move in this direction as well.

This paper is sponsored by Dimension Data.