Culture blocks comms breakthrough

By Staff Writer for Interactive Intelligence
Johannesburg, 07 May 2009

Unified communications (UC) is one of the most important trends in business right now, but its huge potential is being blocked by old-fashioned organisational culture, says Dave Paulding, Interactive Intelligence's regional sales director for UK, Middle East and Africa.

By using cross-platform software to “unify” different communication channels and devices, UC can make business communication much faster and more efficient, resulting in streamlined operations and better decision-making.

According to Paulding, before the advent of UC, the way for people to access a range of features was through their telephone handset. The fancier the phone, the more you could do.

UC replaces this hardware-bound system with a software-based solution which resides on a PC and is far more flexible. Unfortunately, says Paulding, organisation culture is having a hard time catching up.

Because functionality has up to now been associated with the handset, he points out, many people - especially senior managers - are attached to their phones. A big fancy phone on the desk is a status symbol that many are not happy to give up, he notes.

And in SA, where the use of personal assistants is still prevalent, this old-fashioned culture is particularly stubborn, Paulding argues. “Unlike in the US, Europe and the UK, where the traditional PA is virtually extinct, in SA, many senior managers still have PAs fielding their calls and want to keep it that way.

“But UC is most powerful when everyone in the organisation has access to it and uses it actively,” says Paulding. The value comes from functionalities such as presence management and instant messaging, he explains. Presence management enables employees to change their status depending on what they are doing, enabling everyone to work more flexibly and reducing bottlenecks when someone is unavailable or busy.

He gives an example of employees working from home who can transfer their office telephone numbers to their cellphones so that customers trying to reach them can do so without even knowing that the employee is not in the office that day.

Instant messaging enables people to be constantly in contact with each other, able to respond to developments in real-time and make adjustments to processes to avoid problems and maximise efficiency, Paulding adds.

He notes that the results of UC enhancements are greater efficiency, enhanced customer service and more streamlined operations for the company and individuals.

According to Pauling it is members of the older generation that are slow to adapt their work habits to UC, even if the changes mean enhanced efficiency and time-saving. But the growth of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as the entry of the so-called Y-generation into the working world, is starting to have an impact on the uptake of UC.

“Social networkers and the techno-savvy 20-somethings are used to changing their status on these sites. They are constantly in contact with each other via messaging systems, be it instant messaging or SMS. For them, UC is not a significant mindshift - it is already part of how they operate every day,” says Paulding.

And if we consider trends in recent history, Paulding points out, older workers in an organisation will also embrace UC soon. “Ten years ago, large portions of the population were mobile-free; today cellphones are almost ubiquitous from the ages of eight to 80.”