Logicalis Offers IT Professionals Five Tips for a Successful
Unified Communications Rollout in their Organizations
Farmington Hills, MI, November 29,
2011 – In the late ‘90s, Bill Gates wrote a book called
“Business @ the Speed of Thought” about using a digital backbone to
integrate business and technology. That’s what unified
communications does today. “We may not be doing business at
the speed of thought yet,” says Jim Dossias, Cisco practice
director at Logicalis, an international provider of integrated
information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and
services (http://www.us.logicalis.com/).
“But we’re doing it faster, with less waiting, and saving more time
than ever before thanks to collaboration technologies.”
The problem is, anyone who has worked in an
office knows that people come to rely on certain technology tools
to get their jobs done. And once they’re comfortable with
what they’re using, they don’t want to be forced to change.
In fact, according to Logicalis, the best way to cause a technology
rollout to backfire is to tell workers they don’t have a
choice…that they have to use a new system with no
explanation about why or what it can do for them.
“Nobody told people, ‘You have to use a smart
device,’ and yet, look what happened,” Dossias says. “For
people to embrace a new technology, they first have to
want to use it and they have to be able to see what it can
do for them.”
Dossias says a phased rollout is the way to go
with unified communications. An all-or-nothing approach, he
suggests, will overwhelm users and cause them to reject it, even
though unified communications has so much to offer in terms of
productivity gains that will, in the end, make their lives
easier.
For IT pros wondering how they’ll know when
their organization is ready for unified communications, Dossias
says the answer is simple: When people start asking for it. The
tougher question, he says, is how to make them ask for it. To
help, Logicalis has these five demand-generating tips…
Five Tips for Creating Demand Among
UC Users
1. Get
Engaged: Start by enlisting a few in-office champions from
different business units throughout the organization. Engage
them; get them to wholeheartedly embrace and use the new technology
and to promote it by example, but don’t roll it out to the masses
at first. People always want what they think they cannot
have.
2. Pump It
Up: Advertise the new system’s coolest features; don’t
hold back here – if you have to run an actual commercial on
everyone’s desktop, do just that! Seeing is believing, and
commercials create demand.
3. Spill Your
Secrets: Tell people why the company is moving to
unified communications and what these kinds of advanced
collaboration tools can do for them. Then, demo the tools to a
select few, showing them how unified communications can unchain
them from their desks and give them more time in their
day. Give them enough information to understand how the
technology works, but leave enough room for them to imagine all the
possibilities – all the ways they can use it – for themselves.
4.
Educate & Inform: Find innovative ways to
train users in multiple formats so you can reach everyone from the
techie who loves to read manuals to the salesperson who prefers a
YouTube how-to video.
5.
Leave them Hungry: Don’t roll out all the features
and functions on a single day. Hook people with a few
tantalizing bites like moving voicemails into Exchange or providing
instant messaging. Once they get comfortable with the basics,
they’ll be hungry for more.
Want to learn
more?
- Want to connect and
communicate with employees, partners, prospects and customers in
real time? Start here, on
Logicalis’ dedicated unified communications Web site.
- Of all the technologies that can drive positive
change in an organization, none touches as many people as unified
communications. Read a Logicalis unified communications
feature story
here.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of
integrated information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge
and expertise in communications & collaboration, data center,
and cloud computing and managed services.
Logicalis Group employs nearly 2,500 people
worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design,
specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the
needs of over 6,000 corporate and public sector customers. To
achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with
technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of
over $1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South
America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of
the leading IT and Communications solution integrators,
specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and
services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec
Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges,
with revenues of approximately $5 billion.
For more information, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/