UCC is Growing, But Not Being Properly Adopted

Spending on unified communications and collaboration is up, and yet user adoption isn’t. This is both baffling and bad news, but indicates a disconnect between employees and the tools at their disposal, as well as the need for more UCC user adoption if the market wants to keep growing.

According to research from Dimension Data (News - Alert), which surveyed companies across America, Australia, Asia, Europe and South Africa, there are plans for most IT decision-makers to implement unified communication and collaboration. Over 78 percent of those polled have plans to budget and implement at least some components of it, with 42-43 percent with a budget for most or all components or aspects of UC.

However, employees are not adopting UCC at the same rate as the organizations are. Organizations aren’t paying attention to employee requirements, and very few are bothering to profile their employees to determine what their needs and requirements are.

It is here that we see a major source of disconnection between employees and executives. The organizations aren’t bothering to learn what their employees want or need, and the employees aren’t aware of what’s being provided to them.

This has to change if companies want to put their UCC investments to good use.

“For organizations looking to formulate or refresh a UCC, employee feedback is critical,” said Craig Levieux, Group General Manager for Converged Communications at Dimension Data. “In a world where more employees bring their own devices to work, a gap in understanding between decision-makers and employees could come at a very real cost. User uptake is a critical success metric for UCC investments, especially as more UCC applications will be delivered to employees, who expect multiple device support and applications that match their requirements.”

“If not,” he said, “uptake will continue to lag behind aspirations, as has been the case with many standard UCC applications to date.”

There’s no doubt that UCC provides great benefits and improvements for employees and organizations, helping everyone more connected and more productive. But it’s not enough to simply have the solutions; they have to be put to good use, and be provided to the employees who have specific needs to meet.

Only then can a company and its employees truly gain all the advantages of unified communications and collaboration.