October 06, 2005
Justifications for investing in IP communications – part 2
IP communications provide solutions such as IP telephony, unified messaging, and IP contact center. These solutions are ideal for an increasingly mobile workforce, which includes salespersons, consultants, troubleshooters, that needs to stay connected while on the move.
Traditional voice networking tools can cost more than $1500 for every remote worker. IP telephony uses a VPN that enables a company to provide secure voice capabilities to the remote worker. A remote worker, with broadband connectivity, can access the office network via a handset or a softphone on the PC. Hot-desking employees can run up significant charges in hotel bills and leased-lines for their offices that are not sufficiently used. The convergence provided by IP telephony allows mobile employees to operate from home and stay connected with the head office.
According to a study conducted by The Radicati Group, Inc., unified messaging can add up to 40 minutes of productive time per worker per day. Unified messaging enables a person to access any type of communication using a single device. Unified messaging on a converged network can also help to reduce IT support costs by up to 70%. Unified messaging presents some difficulties in implementation in a setup that has multiple networks but is relatively easy to implement in a converged network.
IP-enabled video conferencing places this tool within the reach of every employee. With traditional network models, cost was the major constraint in using videoconferencing as communication tool. The emergence of converged networking has allowed companies to extend this facility to every desktop. Uses of video-on-demand and videoconferencing include real-time and face to face communication between colleagues and periodic long-distance training for skill upgrading. IP-based phones have a range of features including XML-based applications that allow a user to look up calendars, emails, and voice mails. Companies will soon arrive at the kind of information that can be made accessible to employees to help them with their work. IP soft phones allow employees to use their computers for making calls and conferencing.
A convergent network provides applications that facilitate remote collaboration. This enhances the level of knowledge management, for example simultaneous reading of a document to agree upon the content, online editing of video content, etc. Convergent networks help in the proliferation of important data that has significance for CRM as well. Multi-channel contact centers can now satisfy customer requirements by reducing the handle-times as they are able to access sensitive data quickly.
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