Unified Communications (UC) has caused a lot of industry buzz and heightened interest through recent announcements from enterprise software and communications vendors - but adoption has been slow.

But with ongoing business issues such as:

• ‑Customer expectations

• ‑Globalization

• ‑Fragmentation of the value chains

• ‑Revenue growth

And CIOs being challenged with:

• ‑Increased customer expectations

• ‑Short time to market deadlines

• ‑Cost management constraints

Gaining operational excellence is where UC plays a crucial role.

There is a rising demand within financial services for better performance in an environment of increasing client demands, fast changing market conditions and more regulatory scrutiny. To remain competitive, financial service organizations must also provide relevant personalized offers quicker to their clients. To meet these expectations, efficient communication and collaboration throughout the enterprise is vital.

“People have become more accustomed to responsiveness. There is going to be a continuous need to communicate faster, which email and voice can not entirely fulfill. Therefore, we will need a wider range of communication tools. I think there are cases, where you want to look someone in the eye when you talk to them to achieve that personal touch, which will lead to video conferencing.”
CIO, bank, United States

What is Unified Communications?

UC solutions are built on a strong voice foundation and focus on embedding communication and collaboration into business processes. This increases workplace productivity and effectiveness. UC solutions should be software-based, open, extensible and support the customer’s choice of services such as:

• ‑Presence-awareness across multiple media

• ‑Instant messaging

• ‑Person-to-person, group audio, video and web- and voice conferencing

• ‑Customer interaction centers

• ‑Unified messaging

• ‑Mobility solutions

• ‑CEBP (Communications-Enabled Business Processes)

These elements are deployable as software services and embedded within the customer’s existing business application software.

Communication Technologies as Strategic Assets

To achieve major corporate objectives for growth and operational efficiencies, financial services organizations need appropriate infrastructure and communication tools. Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, believes an open, future-proof infrastructure supports these organizational requirements most efficiently.

• ‑Responsive communication via a variety of different information communication technology (ICT) tools from any vendor, which customers and other stakeholders can use at their convenience.

• ‑More efficient processes through new collaboration tools, which enhance team-work for geographically, dispersed teams and mobile workers.

• ‑Centralization of ICT infrastructure allows the centralization of highly skilled and expensive technical resources, maximizing their efficiency and lowering operating costs.

• ‑Reduce the burden of compliance through the ability to capture and track communication and transactions.

• ‑Interoperability between different ICT tools from different vendors leading to the development of universal profiles.

In addition to Frost & Sullivan’s requirements we also believe any solution needs to be:

• ‑Based on open standards / platforms, e.g., SIP, XML, Linux

• ‑Support SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) strategies and architecture

• ‑Scalable in terms of size and flexibility to remove/add subscribers without adding hardware

• ‑Include services such as voice, video, messaging, conferencing, presence and mobility

In terms of cost management there is a huge potential for cost saving associated with UC. Nemertes Research asked the early adopters of presence-based unified communications technologies why they chose to adopt unified communications solutions. Here are the top four reasons they gave and the percentage of respondents:

At Siemens Enterprise Communications, we believe that the recognition of business benefits such as lower maintenance, lower operational costs and enhanced efficiency will be paramount. In summary, UC enables a range of benefits:

• ‑Better performance from companies’ most valuable asset: Employees Higher efficiency and faster decision-making through better collaboration

• ‑Optimized ROI Being agnostic of underlying infrastructure, no wasteful “rip and replace”

• ‑UC being delivered as a service in different flavors through a premise or hosted data center All advantages of an IT delivery model apply

• ‑Provide better customer service

• ‑Remove today’s fragmented communications infrastructure which makes users human middleware

What is the “secret sauce” to achieve these benefits and leverage its value for financial service companies?

Obviously it is not just the technology itself. Efficiently integrating UC applications into existing business applications and connecting it with workflow engines is what matters most.

Let’s clarify this with a customer example.

One of our financial customers in Germany wanted to redesign its loan process for corporate customers to differentiate themselves by supplying superior customer service and a highly competitive cost basis.

First, a new application and product platform were defined to support all of their credit products with their specific features. Next, a rating platform listed the various conditions and prerequisites involved in the contractual commitments. Finally, an additional platform was set up to include optional conditions and prerequisites which might be relevant during the processing of a credit application.

It goes without saying that the seamless cooperation of all participants was necessary due to the separation of market and market results which were accompanied by the factory-like administration of the credit process. During the optimization of the workflow, the top priority was the integration of real-time communications in the process. To ensure success, intensive cooperation of process participants was required.

As a first step the customer selected the functionalities of presence management, instant messaging and voice communication to be integrated into the application.

The project resulted in considerable economic advantages for the bank including:

• Significant reduction of lead time

• Improved collaboration during the decision-making process

• Standardization

• Increased customer satisfaction

• Cost reduction

Embarking on a new path is never easy. The path to enterprise-wide unified communications starts with building a strategy based on open standards and SOA principals thereby ensuring that you are not locked into a single vendor’s dream of unified communications. You must separate the underlying infrastructure from the tools and services required. And remember, there is no such thing as a single vendor UC solution. Providing SOA-compliant UC enables you to deliver different flavors of UC within your business applications where it provides the real value for your enterprise.

Tobias Frevel is Director Business Development Global & International Accounts Finance at Siemens Communications, Inc. (http://enterprise.siemens.com/open/us/). He may be reached at 212-450-7781 or via email at tobias.frevel@siemens.com.