A new survey declares that the rate of Unified Communications implementations doubled in the past year, with 16 percent of organizations – one in six – considering themselves fully implemented.
This survey, conducted by a well-known technology reseller, was conducted in February among 900 IT professionals in business, government, healthcare, and education.
Doubling in anything from year-to-year is always impressive. And think about it: if this doubling continues, that would mean just about every business in the U.S. other than barber shops and little kids’ lemonade stands will be unified by mid-2014. That may be a little optimistic, but clearly we’re on a pretty good pace here.
The survey also found that 76 percent of the organizations that consider themselves fully implemented say that their return on investment has met or exceeded their expectations. That’s higher than the year-earlier survey, when the ROI satisfaction rate came in at 71 percent.
More numbers to impress you:
• 53 percent of survey respondents cited increased employee productivity as a key benefit
• 48 percent of respondents pointed to reduced operating costs thanks to UC
• 20 percent of medium and large businesses say their UC solution is fully implemented; only two percent said that a year ago
It should come as no surprise to Seamless Enterprise readers that the survey also found mobility needs may be driving UC adoption. We’ve said many times here that without mobility – especially in today’s work environment – a UC solution isn’t really unified. The survey validated our point by noting that respondents particularly value such UC features as access to work e-mail and voicemail via smartphones and the ability to receive voicemail messages via e-mail when away from the office.
On the downside, about a third of survey respondents said they had difficulty in deploying UC on mobile platforms (but remember, two-thirds did NOT consider it difficult). That simply reflects the fact that integration of mobility with the enterprise network requires some degree of effort by smart people. That’s why it pays to invest in expert assistance, with UC as with any major migration.
A few other highlights, as far as which types of organizations like which UC features the most:
• Healthcare – more reliable and quicker communication
• Higher education – distance learning
• Federal agencies – video conferencing and continuity of operations
• State and local governments – better use of mobile and remote workers
Read the survey report.
