Unified Communications for the SME
An interview with Mark Shane of ICON
Is the concept of unified communications difficult to understand? Why is that and what can we do about it?
Unified
Communication is industry speak and probably not understood by the average
SME. But, asks Mark do they need to
understand it. Do you need to know the
terminology used in an industry before you can make an informed judgement about
the solution to buy. All the customer
needs to understand is that the box in front of them solves their problem and
will deliver the productivity, resources or business outcome they want.
The problem says Mark is that in many cases the customer is unaware that there are solutions that can do this. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the industry has not been good at educating the market about these benefits. Secondly, often the customer is not sold anything but a plain old telephone system either because the solution offered is not UC capable or because the sales person is more comfortable selling a traditional telephone solution rather than a business solution.
ICON has supported many of its channel partners in competitive bids where this has been the case and in most cases has successfully upsold the customer. It helps to have a versatile UC solution such as the Wave IP to offer but in all cases, the sale has been won by putting together an offer that understands the needs of the business and proposes a solution that focusses on the business and not on the management of telephone calls. In all cases, the concept of Unified Communications per se has added no value to the negotiations.
Should vendors produce an SME Edition of unified communications applications?
Mark is emphatic when he says that there is no need
for the industry to produce an SME UC solution.
These already exist. Solutions are
available which are affordable by the SME and which deliver all that an SME needs
and more. The Vertical Wave IP business solution
is one such solution. It scales from an SME
to an enterprise solution and has been deployed by an SME with as few as two handsets. It was chosen because the business needed the
capability to record calls and a Wave IP UC solution offered the best value solution.
Are end users better served by single vendor solutions or by a best of breed mix of third party applications?
Third party applications have a place in the market
but says Mark these are usually deployed when the customer needs highly advance
features.
Single vendor solutions are able to deliver all that
the typical SME or enterprise customer requires
and can do this at significantly better value than multiple vendor solutions. That is, of course, provided the single vendor
solution like the Vertical Communications UC solution includes as standard all the
applications needed. If the applications
are available only at additional cost then the situation changes completely.
Single box, single vendor solutions such as the
Wave IP that include as standard the core business applications needed by the
SME or the enterprise have significant advantage for the customer. The initial investment is low, there is no
solution integration as there is with multiple vendor solutions, no need to
take out multiple maintenance agreements and they come with the reassurance that
when an application is upgraded it will continue to work with the others.
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