Although Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) is growing worldwide, and despite the push by the tech industry and investments by companies on new technologies, adoption is still relatively low amongst businesses in Singapore.
For a number of years, UCC has promised to deliver a vision of a single enterprise-wide system handling all communications and a consistent user experience across all platforms, operating systems and devices.
You would think Singapore would have been an excellent location for collaboration to take off, with the country’s 100 percent broadband penetration, fast Internet speeds and widespread adoption of mobile.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case. There is a lack of UCC awareness amongst businesses here. Investment is still cautious. Many are yet to be convinced of the benefits and this is not helped by the lack of use cases to show why UCC can be advantageous.
Many users are also confused by the numerous platforms, devices and enterprise apps that are available today. Some cloud-connected software tools, for example, have components that do not work when used on different platforms, making them difficult to use. Users also do not like to have UC apps constantly switched on.
Why UCC is not taking off here
In a report last year, headset maker Jabra found that UCC adoption in the region has been slow, only reaching a mere 10 per cent amongst businesses.
This is hardly a surprise, having spoken to many users and customers. The largest concern has been the disconnect between companies and their staff. Management has often failed to communicate objectives on why it wants its staff to move to UCC – employees are unclear of benefits, skeptical or lack motivation. They see UCC as a high-level strategy and are unable to translate the benefits to their daily productivity and efficiency.
Many in the workforce are resistant to giving up existing tools and ways of working. New empowering technologies, unfortunately, go unused, as they prefer to use their own personal devices for company business instead of UCC tools.
Video, a key collaboration tool, is also not taking off. Today, video is primarily used by staff in large corporations. Although users here want to be connected, they prefer that it be done in a non-intrusive way. For many, web and audio conferencing work well enough to meet their needs. Most also prefer not to switch on the video capability when participating in late-night conference meetings from home.
Unlike companies in West, many businesses here struggle to build a convincing case to justify why UCC can bring about more user benefits than the current enterprise communication services which they are already using.
When selling the benefits, the high costs for enterprise UCC solutions and the unpredictability of returns are two key barriers. This is further exacerbated by limited capital expenditure for a premise-based or even hybrid solution, large sunk costs in existing telephony infrastructure amongst many businesses, or a lack of in-house expertise to properly support full enterprise collaboration.
If you have only 100 users in your organisation, you may not have the economies of scale and a full-fledged UCC implementation will probably not make financial sense. Even for those who have adopted some form of UCC, few are seeing any actual or immediate returns on their investments.
But perhaps the largest factor for the resistance is the perception among companies here is that UCC must always enable costs savings.
We see collaboration very differently in Singapore from our counterparts in Europe and US. In the West, for example, companies are familiar with the benefits of the cloud and convinced that it is the way to go. They are less concerned with the cost savings, but more the peace-of-mind that a cloud infrastructure provides. Users there value 24x7 uptime, convenience and reliability.
In Singapore, we still need to prove that the cloud will save you money. With UCC this task is made even harder as the ROI benefits are difficult to quantify or guarantee. As a result, the only assurance we can give to our customers is the convenience.
What can we do to make UCC more relevant?
Given the current situation, will the prospects for UCC continue to remain tough?
What can the industry, or companies in Singapore do to benefit from collaboration?
I believe that the outlook for UCC adoption is far from bleak. With businesses transforming, the need for collaboration will become even more relevant. There are industries and applications that can thrive from better collaboration, such as e-healthcare, remote healthcare, education, virtual learning and contact centres where the justification for UCC is a lot stronger and the user benefits, much clearer.
Cloud UCC, new apps and collaboration tools for instance are making it faster, easier and cheaper to communicate.
Companies now have low-cost alternatives - we are seeing the emergence of cloud-based UCC, made available on demand and as-a-service. These are easily available to companies, given the ease of sign-up and affordable price points. There are no hardware (capex investment), just pure software costs. For example, solutions from cloud UCC software providers, some in the form of downloadable apps, are easy to install and inexpensive to use, so upfront costs are lower.
However, while barriers to entry are going down, the corporate mindset remains key to driving UCC adoption and success.
Before embarking on a UCC project, companies need to ask themselves: –
- What are our business goals?
- What communication problems are we trying to solve?
- How can we get employees to embrace UCC?
- What do we need to do to make it easy for staff to use collaboration tools?
Secondly, they need to explain why the company is making the change, the expectations and the benefits of using UCC. UCC is not a one-size fits all. UCC needs to be seen not as an IT tool, but a productivity enhancement means for employees and an example of how technology can support work processes.
To overcome resistance, more needs to be done by management to change user communication preferences. This can come in the form of better education and incentives for employees. Rolling out UCC across an organisation is not enough. They need to back up their UCC investment with adequate training.
Finally, it is also critical that companies take a top-down approach and business function managers play more active roles in encouraging adoption. The ease of use and user friendliness are still not there.
For UCC to gain meaningful traction across the enterprise, the user experience, at the end of the day, must be seamless and consistent.
Eugene Goh is Head, Collaboration Solutions, Asia, Logicalis.