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Communications News, July, 2007 by Denise Persson

In an effort to achieve greater business effectiveness, companies have long focused on internal issues such as productivity gains and better processes. As a result, early collaboration services such as audio and videoconferencing were judged almost exclusively on the economic benefits they could bring in terms of operational improvement.

Technological advances have continued to make a significant difference in the way a company operates--on a number of levels. The use of collaboration technologies enables the organization, for example, to replace much of the travel needed to meet with colleagues, clients or partners.

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The latest multimedia communication tools offer broader value, by providing organization-wide access to its knowledge resources. This has become more important as today's global businesses operate inside an increasingly intricate and fast-changing web of relationships, spanning multiple countries, time zones and cultures.

Today's enterprise comprises people, knowledge, experience, technical expertise and a wide variety of best practices, which are typically dispersed, often globally, across the business. The real key to success, therefore, depends on bringing these talents together and exploiting them effectively, overcoming traditional geographical, cultural and technological barriers.

A fully integrated business conferencing service can provide a single interface to a multimedia communications and collaboration environment that supports voice over IP (VoIP), and audio, video and Web conferencing. By being easy to deploy and use, and offering ubiquitous access, such a service can open up the benefits of virtual meetings to participants within the company and with third parties.

Such services are not, however, designed to replace face-to-face meetings, as the social aspect of knowing the people with whom you are communicating continues to be critical. Yet, by enabling the exchange of information, showing presentations and collaboration on any document or application, these services complement face-to-face meetings by enabling staff to work more efficiently and productively between physical meetings.

At the same time, to be fully effective, such tools should be easy to deploy and easy to use. The availability of software-as-a-service delivery, for example, avoids the up-front cost of on-premise solutions and, in a fast-changing technology environment, provides access to the latest technologies and skill sets.

Today's solutions offer click-to-join, no-dial functionality, making them equally easy for participants to use-both inside and beyond the firewall and via any combination of desktop VoIP, PSTN or audio streaming, with no additional software or plug-ins required.

There is a common denominator here, yet one that is not always overtly recognized at the point of decision-making. End-user businesses are still primarily driven by the need to cut costs. As with any other IT-based investment, therefore, multimedia solutions are typically judged by their ability to improve operational efficiencies and productivity, and increase profitability.

At the same time, companies now recognize the importance of adopting strategies that improve their environmental performance by reducing the need to travel to meetings. Further, in meeting the imperative to improve responsiveness, they are more aware of how sharing knowledge within the business improves the understanding of the customers' needs, improving the quality and speed of decision-making.

All of these, however, are key aspects of improving a company's overall competitiveness. As products or services become more commoditized, other aspects of service and support will move to center stage in creating real vendor differentiation in the marketplace.

The ability of multimedia collaboration to help drive a cost-effective and customer-focused response becomes especially important. Underpinning all this, however, is the ability of such solutions to provide ready access to knowledge.

Denise Persson is executive vice president, global marketing, for Genesys Conferencing, Vienna, Va.

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Technology Industry

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Communications News, July, 2007 by Denise Persson

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