66 / 76
Indeed, satisfaction levels are solid
among both users and IT departments.
Even so, a survey by Unify Square suggests
that IT departments lack accurate insights
into the UC end user experience. IT depart-
ments, it turns out, have some misconcep-
tions about the type of tools being used,
the degree to which UC tools are employed
and the struggles users face.
“This discrepancy shows early signs
of a lack of understanding on the part
of IT regarding how end users are us-
ing UC and common challenges they
face in fully integrating the system into
their day-to-day,” surmised the study.
Perhaps it’s not surprising. UC is a
complex area, with lots of fast-moving
and quickly changing parts, plus the add-
ed complexities of BYOD and distributed
workforces. At the same time, IT depart-
ments are largely going at it alone. Near-
ly two-thirds of enterprises default to
what Unify Square calls the “brute force”
method of assigning dedicated IT staff to
manage the UC system. Only one in 10
of those surveyed leverages a third-party
partner, while 6 percent leverage a man-
aged service and just 4 percent have
access to any type of operation software
to help with the overall management,
monitoring and analytics of UC systems.
Considering the disconnect uncovered
by Unify Square’s survey, IT departments
may not only see the need for increased
attention and investment in UC enable-
ment but also may admit they need more
help from partners and providers.
For starters, user productivity due to
UC systems and satisfaction levels may
be higher than IT departments think. While
nearly three quarters of IT departments
surveyed believe their users are more
productive due to UC systems, a full 80
percent of actual users credit their UC
systems for improved productivity. All
the while, IT believes that only slightly
more than 1 percent of users are “very
satisfied” with the UC system. Among
those that have been surveyed for sat-
isfaction, however, a full quarter of end
users report to being “very satisfied,”
while only about half as many users are
dissatisfied as IT believes.
Incidentally, 70 percent of users
have never been surveyed, or don’t
recall being surveyed, about their UC
system satisfaction, so here’s one
area where solution partners can
quickly help.
“If IT isn’t taking the pulse of both
system and end users on a regular
basis, how are they supposed to effec-
tively train end users or spot issues?”
asked Scott Gode, vice president of
By
Martin
Vilaboy
I
t’s fairly well-established, including in
numerous surveys and studies, that unified
communications capabilities improve
worker productivity, and workers like using them.
Unifying IT assumptions with
user experiences
Source: Unify Square
Resolution Time for UC Issues
Source: Samsung; Channelnomics
nies
Source: Samsung; Channelnomics
e
Other
9%
Guest
Wi-fi
8%
ver
nies
6.3%
Software offerings
Hardware offerings
Services
Vendor relationships
Knowledge
More training
Improved vendor-partner relationships
More certifications
Different/better product
Better marketing
Other
20.0%
Source: IHS Markit
Global hosted hosted VoIP and UC seats
will pass the 70 million mark in 2020
$2,000
$4,000
$6,000
$8,000
$10,000
$12,000
$14,000
$0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Revenue
Seats
Global Revenue (US$ Millions)
Global Seats (Millions)
2015
2020
$0
$5
$10
$15
$20
$25
$30
$35
$40
$45
$50
Four Hours One Day Two Days Over a Week Never
Don’t Know
End User
IT
44%
32%
35%
24%
8%
0%
3%
2%
32%
6%
3%
13%
CUser
C
Core Communications
66
Channel
Vision
|
January - February, 2017