Unified Communications Featured Article

UC Finds Friends Among End Users Despite IT's Worst Efforts

By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer

Some new technologies seem almost vital in terms of getting the job done, and it doesn't make things easy when these vital technologies don't seem to get the support they're due from the information technology (IT) departments. That's a situation that's shaping up for unified communications (UC), based on a new study from Unify (News - Alert) Square.

A growing number of users are happy with UC, but not so much with the support it's getting. Twenty-five percent of respondents considered themselves “very satisfied” with UC systems currently in place, but when IT respondents were asked, only 1 percent expressed satisfaction levels that were that high. Further, 70 percent of end users note that IT has never actually done a similar survey to find out just how satisfied the end users were with UC systems.

Worse, IT seems to think it's doing a great job, despite what the end users think. Thirty-five percent of IT believes that organizations offer instructor-led training in UC use, but only 15 percent of end users reported knowing about this option. Better than half of end users, 52 percent, either have never heard of such training available or outright believe their organization offers no training at all.

IT also believes it's delivering value in fixing UC problems, with 85 percent believing end users will promptly contact the help desk when trouble strikes and 44 percent believing problems are fixed within four hours. The end users beg to differ; only 24 percent of end users reported quick resolution, while almost one in three have no idea how long it would take to fix a problem. Not even half of the end users report involving IT in the first place; 32 percent will try to fix problems unaided, 24 percent use a different app, and 21 percent just ignore the problem.

There's a lot of separation between what IT believes and what the end user is actually doing, and that's a problem. That's the kind of problem, in fact, that leads to much bigger problems like shadow IT, where end users are finding their own solutions to problems in the job, and that can mean disaster for a company in terms of software licenses. IT needs desperately to reconnect with the end user for the sake of the company itself; if IT doesn't know what issues are being faced in the field, how can it bring in the necessary tools to address these issues and bring about successful outcomes for the end user?

IT must get back into the end users' lives, and deliver value. It can't rest on misconceptions and believe it's doing a much better job than it is; it has to actually do the job. For the sake of its own job, this is a problem IT needs to fix immediately.