The State of UC: Future Adopters Poised to Reap Benefits via Cloud

Time, talent, and customers. They’re three essentials for every business. They also represent three challenges many organizations successfully

address with unified communications (UC).

UC adoption, however, remains less than universal. UBM Tech therefore undertook a study of business and IT decision-makers at 426 enterprise and SMB organizations to better understand the experiences of UC adopters—

and to discover what might be holding latecomers back.

Key findings of the study included:

• Only one-third of organizations surveyed have fully embraced UC.

• 87% of adopters say UC met or exceeded their expectations.

• Perceived ROI and cost issues are primary obstacles to UC adoption.

• Successful adopters have stronger C-level support than latecomers (74% vs. 58%).

• Future adopters are much less likely to opt for

on-premises UC than current users (13% vs. 47%).

These findings and others suggest that the market is primed for a wave of cloud-based UC adoption that overcomes concerns about capital costs and near-term ROI. They also suggest that UC advocates at latecomer organizations need to better educate line-of-business (LOB) and C-level managers about UC’s considerable

business benefits.

August 2015

Future Adopters Poised to Reap Benefits via Cloud

THE STATE OF UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

https://www.linkedin.com/company/dell

UC Adopters: Getting ResultsThirty-three percent of respondents to the survey have already implemented

UC—and 25% have been using it for more than a year (Figure 1). Their motiva-

tions for adoption varied. At the top of the list were improved team collaboration

and improved individual productivity. These were followed by improved cus-

tomer experience and reduced costs (Figure 2).

Farther down the list, respondents

cited a wide range of anticipated ben-

efits. Many saw UC as integral to their

company’s mobile “work anywhere”

strategy. Others simply faced a short-

age of physical conference rooms

and turned to UC to facilitate more

virtual meetings. Still others needed

to digitally archive team meetings to

facilitate content sharing and/or to

satisfy compliance requirements.

These diverse motivations highlight

UC’s ability to meet organizations’

varying needs. UC, after all, is not

a single monolithic technology. It

is instead a loosely defined set of

integrated capabilities—including

presence detection, voice mail, email,

audio and video conferencing, and

the like. So organizations can read-

ily mix and match these capabilities

to address a wide range of business

painpoints.

Eighty-two percent reported that their

UC deployment met or exceeded

their expectations for improved team

collaboration, and 20% went as far as to claim that it greatly exceeded those

expectations (Figure 3).

The second piece of good news is that UC adopters have also reaped many

UBM TECH || THE STATE OF UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||

■ We have had UC in production for more than 1 year

■ We have had UC in production for 1 year or less

■ We are in the process of implementing UC

■ We are still evaluating alternative UC solutions

■ We are actively considering UC, but not committed yet

■ UC is a topic of discussion, but nothing more than that

■ We have no UC plans, or at least none that I know of

DATA: UBM Tech survey of 426 business technology professionals, June 2015

FIGURE 1. UC ADOPTION STILL LAGSWhat is the current state of unified communications (UC) adoption at your organization?

25%

8%

8%11%

11%

12%

25%

benefits that they did not originally anticipate. These benefits include acceler-

ated decision-making, the ability to more easily relocate employees to different

physical offices as required by the business, and the freeing up of IT staff for

more strategic tasks—since UC can significantly simplify telephony-related

moves, adds, and changes. In other words, UC clearly enables companies to

make the most of their time and their talent.

These unanticipated benefits reflect

a pattern common to many technolo-

gies that have found their way into the

enterprise. The Web, for example,

started as a means of accessing static

documents—and only later evolved to

provide access to dynamic data and

transaction processing. Mobile phones,

too, were first adopted specifically so

on-the-go executives and salespeople

could make and receive voice calls

while out of the office. Smartphones are

now a necessity for knowledge workers

who need voice, text, and application

access anywhere, any time.

Based on this historical pattern, the

benefits current UC adopters report

most likely represent a snapshot in time

rather than a definitive list. As the tech-

nology evolves—and as mobility, video,

and the like become more intrinsic to

workplace culture—UC is likely to pay

off in new and unexpected ways.

How They Got ThereUBM Tech also asked UC adopters about their experiences with the UC

implementation process. On the upside, very few respondents encountered

obstacles that came close to derailing their UC implementation projects

entirely. That said, UC does involve a number of “moving parts”—so, not unex-

pectedly, a little less than half (44%) reported technical issues that presented

moderate difficulty.


1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||

BASE: 140 respondents at organizations with UC in productionDATA: UBM Tech survey of 426 business technology professionals, June 2015

FIGURE 2. COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY TOP EXPECTED BENEFITS LISTHow important were expectations of the following benefits to your organization’s decision to adopt UC?

Improved team collaboration

Improved user productivity

Enhance our company’s customer experience

Reduced travel costs

Lower technology ownership costs

5% 9% 50% 36%

4% 1% 10% 52% 33%

8% 7% 16% 41% 28%

5% 10% 17% 41% 27%

9% 7% 18% 43% 23%

■ Don’t know ■ Not an expected benefit

■ Minor expected benefit

■ Important expected benefit

■ Critical expected benefit

These issues included:

• Insufficient bandwidth in certain network segments

• Human error by insufficiently skilled or experienced technical staff

• Unexpected changes in network endpoints (OS updates, BYOD mobility, etc.)

• Incompatibilities in vendors’ implementations of Session Initiation Protocol

(SIP)

• Ensuring product compatibilities across multiple geographies

About half of the successful UC

adopters who responded to the

survey said that end-user adop-

tion also presented a moderate or

significant challenge. A common

story is that technical users are

eager to embrace UC, but that

nontechnical users tend to resist

a new and unfamiliar way of doing

things. That’s why these respon-

dents suggest that future adopters

invest in dedicated resources for

user evangelization and training as

part of their implementation plan in

order to maximize ROI (Figure 4).

While choosing a technology

provider that can help with train-

ing and support is critical, it is also

worth noting that UC adopters were

able to push through their technical

and adoption challenges because

of strong leadership. Eighty-one

percent say their company’s top IT

executive supported their UC initiative—and 26% identify that individual as the

project champion. Seventy-four percent also had buy-in from a C-level execu-

tive. Many also enlisted power users, external consultants, and other allies to

build strong advocacy for the move to UC.


1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||

FIGURE 3. UC RESULTS CONSISTENTLY MEET OR EXCEED EXPECTATIONSHow well did your UC implementation deliver the following benefits once it was in production?

Improved team collaboration

Improved user productivity

Lower technology ownership costs

Enhance our company’s customer experience

Reduced travel costs

7% 2% 9% 44% 18% 20%

7% 3% 10% 46% 20% 14%

14% 3% 9% 47% 14% 13%

17% 2% 4% 45% 20% 12%

13% 2% 12% 41% 20% 12%


■ Don’t know or too soon to tell

■ Fell very short of expectations

■ Fell somewhat short of expectations

■ Met expectations

■ Somewhat exceeded expectations

■ Greatly exceeded expectations

of adopters say that UC has met or exceeded pre-deployment expectations.

87%

What’s Holding Others Back?Given the positive experiences of UC adopters, why aren’t more organizations

moving forward with their own implementations?

For one thing, those who have not yet adopted UC tend to underestimate its poten-

tial benefits. Thirty-six percent of UC adopters, for example, anticipated improved

collaboration as a critical potential benefit of UC even before their implementation

began. Only about half as many nonadopters have the same perception.

This disparity harmonizes with

nonadopters’ answers about what

stands between their organization

and UC adoption. The top answers

were cost (76%) and executive

management’s uncertainty regard-

ing ROI (74%). Obviously, neither

cost nor ROI would be such

an obstacle if decision-makers

were certain about UC’s ability to

contribute to bottom-line business

performance (Figure 5).

Survey respondents cited several

other obstacles as well. Sixty nine

percent of nonadopters perceived

UC implementation as posing a

risk of disruption to the business.

A similar percentage said they

found confusing vendor claims to

be a moderate, significant, or even

deal-breaking obstacle.

Interestingly, only 5% of non-

adopters reported a previous

negative experience with UC as

a game-stopper for UC adoption.

This reinforces the observation

that obstacles to UC have more to

do with misperception than reality.

UBM TECH || THE STATE OF

1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||

FIGURE 4. UC IMPLEMENTATIONS DON’T PRESENT SIGNIFICANT DIFFICULTIESHow much difficulty did each of the following present during your organization’s UC implementation?

Choosing on-premises or cloud

Choosing UC vendor(s)

Solutions did not work as promised

Cost or time overruns

End-user adoption

Functional problems during pilot

Technical complexity


■ Don’t know ■ Little or no difficulty

■ Moderate difficulty

■ Significant difficulty ■ Almost derailed the project

19% 45% 27% 7% 2%

17% 45% 23% 13% 2%

18% 40% 26% 14% 2%

20% 36% 29% 11% 4%

14% 32% 37% 14% 3%

16% 29% 44% 9% 2%

13% 23% 44% 16% 4%

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

UC in the CloudThe cloud may well provide one possible answer. A majority (54%) of those

who don’t yet have UC in production believe cloud can help them with their top

obstacle to implementation: cost. About the same percentage (53%) see the

cloud as offering more flexible scalability—a key concern for incremental UC

rollouts (Figure 6).

These advantages, combined with ongoing advancement in cloud technol-

ogy and market acceptance of the cloud model, are making it more likely

that future adopters will opt for some type of UC-as-a-service offering. Of

respondents who made their decision to implement UC a year or more ago,

only 35% even considered the cloud—and just 19% wound up going with a

cloud-based solution. Of respondents who are still contemplating their UC

implementations, on the other hand, more than half are now likely to consider

cloud. In fact, 15% have already made up their minds that if and when they

implement UC, it will definitely be cloud-based.


1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||

A majority of those who don’t yet have UC in production say the cloud can help them with their top obstacle to implementation: cost.

54%

UC and the Customer ExperienceWhile UC is often associated with improved internal

collaboration and communication, successful adopt-ers also see it as part of their customer engagement strategy. Eighty-five percent of adopters respond-ing to our survey cited enhancement of customer engagement as an expected benefit of UC. And almost one-third (32%) said it exceeded their expec-tations in this area. Customer engagement was also the benefit where the lowest percentage of respon-dents (6%) expressed disappointment in the results they’d achieved.

It’s fairly easy to see how UC can play such an important role in customer engagement:

• UC is an enabling technology for multichannel contact centers that allow contact center staff to communicate with customers in a common manner via voice, email, chat, shared browsing sessions, etc.

• UC can make it easier for contact center staff to escalate customer interactions to subject-matter experts in the business.

• “Follow me” capabilities allow account managers

to more promptly respond to customers whether they’re in the office or on the road.

• UC facilitates provisioning of remote agent desk-tops that allow companies to bring in independent/home-based contractors as needed to cope with spikes in demand.

• UC “screen pops,” interactive voice response (IVR), and similar integrations can increase agent efficiency and facilitate customer self-service.

These are vital advantages in today’s hyper-competitive markets, where customers’ expectations regarding responsive service and low-effort problem resolution are escalating relentlessly—and where they can so easily take their business to a competi-tor if those expectations aren’t met. In fact, one study conducted by Watermark Consulting showed that customer experience leaders outperform the S&P 500 by almost 50%—while customer experience laggards underperform that same benchmark by 62%. The impact of UC on customer experience is thus some-thing that every UC advocate should be sure to bring to the attention of decision-making executives.


That said, yet-to-be-adopters still have some concerns about cloud. Those con-

cerns include security, managing monthly subscription costs, and integration

with on-premises UC components.

But as the cloud-based UC market continues to mature, it is likely that the next

wave of adopters will leverage the “as-a-service” model to avoid capital outlays,

bypass technical implementation issues, and start delivering results to the busi-

ness sooner.


1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||

FIGURE 5. MISPERCEPTIONS ABOUT UC COST/BENEFIT RATIOS INHIBIT ADOPTIONHow much of an obstacle is each of the following to your organization’s adoption of UC?

Cost

Lack of in-house technical expertise

Management not sure about benefits or ROI

Perceived risk of disruption

Confusing choices or conflicting vendor claims

IT not sure about benefits or ROI

Previous bad experiences

BASE: 286 respondents at organizations who do not have UC in productionDATA: UBM Tech survey of 426 business technology professionals, June 2015

■ Don’t know ■ Not an obstacle ■ Moderate obstacle

■ Significant obstacle ■ Deal-breaking obstacle

19% 5% 26% 37% 13%

18% 20% 29% 23% 10%

18% 8% 27% 37% 10%

20% 11% 30% 30% 9%

20% 11% 34% 27% 8%

20% 15% 30% 29% 6%

25% 41% 16% 13% 5%



1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 ||

Moving Ahead The survey results suggest three takeaways for anyone who’d like to see their

company take advantage of the benefits UC is already providing to leading

adopters:

1) Think cloud. As noted above, cloud-based deployment can help address

objections about upfront capital investment and internal IT skills shortages.

Cloud-based deployment can also facilitate the kind of smaller-scale pilot

that can provide the proof-of-value executives need to green-light broader

enterprise adoption.

Leveraging cloud does not inher-

ently mean going all-cloud either.

Twenty-three percent of UC adopt-

ers participating in the survey

have opted for a hybrid model that

leverages cloud selectively—

with positive reported results.

2) Educate the business.

Because of its technical nature,

UC often remains very much of

an “inside IT” discussion. But UC

isn’t just about how a company

manages voice and video from

a technical perspective. It’s also

about how people work and

share information.

UC advocates may therefore want

to expand their rhetorical ammu-

nition beyond UC particulars like

VoIP and presence detection to

business-level issues such as the impact of collaboration on productivity and

the customer experience (see story, p. 6). CEOs may not care about tele-

phony moves, adds, and changes—but they definitely do care about keeping

“dropped balls” from derailing critical business processes and mitigating the

risk of business interruption.

3) Don’t blow UC out of proportion. Much of the fear surrounding UC

FIGURE 6. CLOUD LIKELY TO FACILITATE NEXT WAVE OF UCWhich of the following do you perceive as advantages of cloud-enabled UC?

NOTE: Multiple responses allowedBASE: 286 respondents at organizations who do not have UC in productionDATA: UBM Tech survey of 426 business technology professionals, June 2015

Reduction of major capital costs

More flexible scalability

Avoidance of ongoing operational management burdens

Faster time-to-benefit

54%

53%

47%

44%

35%

Greater reliability or resiliency



1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 || © 2015 UBM LLC. All rights reserved.

XO Communications provides the technology that helps business and wholesale

customers compete in a hyper-connected economy. In the U.S., XO owns and

operates one of the largest IP and Ethernet networks that customers rely on for

private data networking, cloud connectivity, and unified communications. For more

information, visit www.xo.com/uc.

implementation seems to be based on a notion that it requires a major disrup-

tion to both IT and the workplace. Yet those who have successfully adopted UC

don’t actually report significant disruption.

Just as significantly, many respondents who self-identify as not having yet

adopted UC already have elements of UC (VoIP, instant messaging/chat, etc.)

in place. This suggests that many IT pros recursively define UC as whatever

complex collaboration mega-project they don’t want to take on. The reality,

however, is that many of these companies are already well on their way to

adopting UC without even realizing it.

Regardless of how UC is defined, ease of collaboration and communication

is only becoming more critical within and beyond the enterprise. So every IT

organization will have to respond with a solution eventually. The only question

is whether they do so strategically and soon—or after their competition has

gotten the upper hand.


MethodologyIn June 2015 UBM Tech conducted an online survey on behalf of XO Communications

exploring the current state of unified communications adoption.

The data set comprises 426 business technology professionals at a mix of company sizes

and industries. Just under half of respondents held a management job function such as

CIO, CEO, VP, IT director or manager, and line-of-business manager. Forty-four percent of

respondents work at organizations with 1,000 or more employees.

The greatest possible margin of error for the total respondent base (N=426) is +/- 4.7 per-

centage points. UBM Tech was responsible for all programming and data analysis. These

procedures were carried out in strict accordance with standard market research practices.

Technology

The State of UC: Future Adopters Poised to Reap Benefits via Cloud