Unified Communications brings together multiple business communication applications – including telephony, email, voicemail, instant messaging, and video – into a single, seamless experience to enhance employee collaboration and customer responsiveness. As a key element of the Avaya Intelligent Communications solutions portfolio, Unified Communications help businesses easily and effectively connect their people, customers and processes.
To ensure an end-to-end approach that makes the most sense to businesses, Avaya Unified Communications Services provides a Unified Communications Readiness Model.
This model is comprised of three phases:
- Planning phase: Avaya consultants work with your organization to identify "worker profiles" – which define how people communicate and work within a business. Avaya then assesses what types of applications make the most sense for the various profiles (soft phones, one number access, etc.) and compose a business case that identifies the benefits and costs that can be expected with deployment.
- Design phase: The Avaya advanced solution architects determine the specific technical requirements of a Unified Communications implementation; including the equipment, carrier plans and applications choices that make a Unified Communications business plan work. This phase can include analysis of phone expenses and negotiations with telecom carriers, or determining the best infrastructure choice and packaged and custom applications.
- Integration and Implementation: Avaya Unified Communications Services pre-tests the technology in Avaya solutions labs and begins the multi-vendor platform installations and deployments. Using worker profiles, Avaya can set up training programs, worker policies and specific workflow needs, such as the integrating presence into worker applications.
Once these phases are complete, businesses can expect ongoing support and maintenance for their Unified Communications solutions.
Unified Communications by its very nature will change behavior and the way people communicate. A Unified Communications solution does not have to be implemented as a single project. Rather, implementation occurs as a series of initiatives all coming together under a single vision. Typical starting points include:
Mobility
Enabling your mobile workers to be effective from anywhere provides the largest return on your investment. Workers can be equipped with one contact number for voice, fax, caller requested notifications, TTY, and video. A single voice mailbox also ensures messages don't get stranded in a mobile mailbox where they can't be forwarded to someone for action and context.
The desktop clients enable users to use the PC for call control, and direct the voice path either to the PC using VoIP or to a designated telephone.
Softphones (Telephony on the PC)
Softphones are a powerful tool, but organizations did not deploy them on a wide basis because they thought of it as a replacement for the deskphone. In reality, softphone technology complements the deskphone and enables expanded communications. It provides access to directories, call logs, and even applications such as voice mail and conferencing, all behind a simple point-and-click interface.
For IT departments that don't want to manage additional desktop software, you can deploy it in a web-based model to make it securely available to employees connected to the intra- or internet.
Computer applications on the telephone
Whether the phone is on a desk or connected via VPN software from the home office, the business telephone is an "always-on" device. A user can access a corporate wide LDAP directory; gain visual access to voice messages; obtain information from the intra- or internet; access their email, calendar, and contacts. Specialized industry applications can also be connected (room service menu in a hospitality scenario, class attendance for K-12 education, contacting the surgeon on call - in healthcare, or receiving live stock feeds, currency rates, and financial news in financial services or general business).
Unified Messaging
Unified Messaging can be accomplished by leveraging Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Domino as the message store, or utilizing Outlook or Notes to access email and voice mail stored in separate servers.
Enterprise Instant Messaging Integration
Deploying Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) with presence provides point-to-point voice and video capabilities. It is easy to integrate telephony and managed video to enable "click-to-call" and presence integration.
Unified Conferencing
There is a huge ROI to be obtained by bringing service provider based audio and web conferencing services in house. Not only do you save the service fees, but since most traffic is generated by internal use, you also save the access costs by running them across your own network.
Managing an audio conference call with a PC interface makes meetings more effective by enabling people to focus on the purpose of the meeting and not managing the call. Web Conferencing on its own is a great collaboration tool, but the ability to control the audio participation from the web conference interface provides even better meeting management. Streaming video adds important context and maintains people's attention.
Video
More than 50% of communications is non-verbal. Video was too complex to be used as an everyday tool. Today video is as easy to use as a telephone. Audio and Video can be unified so that hold, transfer, call coverage, etc. work together. When making an audio call, a unified communications system can automatically establish the video connection if both ends are video enabled. You can mix different protocols and different endpoints (desktop, group, multi-site, right up to High Definition and telepresence applications).
After implementation, Avaya offers a full range of services capabilities to further incorporate Unified Communications into your existing business processes:
Support
We will provide remote technical support for assistance with configuration and remote diagnostics for troubleshooting and isolating problems. To ensure that your Avaya applications remain current, we provide Software Support Plus Upgrades. This allows your business to receive all software upgrades, keeping your business current, gaining new features and functionality along with enabling you to protect your investment.
Manage & Optimize
As your business objectives evolve with your company's growth, our continuum of Expert Resource Services can address a range of business requirements/needs for consulting and technical expertise. Your needs can vary based upon communication emergencies, emerging business trends or skilled resource deficiency challenges. The depth and breadth of resources that we can bring to bear include various levels of expertise:
- Application Specialists: These are Specialists across IPT, UC or Contact Center for configuration, integration or deployment needs.
- Solution Consultants: Multi-application experts with expertise in the architecture, deployment and integration of very complex or large systems.
- Advanced Solution Architects: Senior consultants with experience across multiple applications, business process, operations, enterprise strategy, and architecture for complex network configurations.
As you research and plan Unified Communications, rely on Avaya to help make the most-informed decision and smoothly launch your new applications.
With Avaya:
- You have the advantage of having one vendor anticipating and providing for your Unified Communications needs.
- You can adopt and deploy new technology more quickly with the availability of experienced resources.
- You can control your business costs with a hosted service offering while using new technology to gain a competitive advantage.
