That lasting relationship starts with a good rollout, which is why we give you some tools for rolling out Unified Communications.

Rolling out UC: this is what you really need to know

UC has huge benefits, we don’t need to tell you that as a partner.

But rolling out and implementing it properly at a customer’s site can have quite a few challenges, and when it doesn’t go well, it costs money, adoption is a lot less and the experience is negative.

You shouldn’t have that and so we give you some tips for successful UC deployment.

1. Make sure you have everyone on board

Before you even think about starting your rollout, make sure you have all the stakeholders in the loop. You may not use everyone, but when you have everyone involved you reduce the chances of not noticing problems until they occur.

2. Be the Omniscient Oracle

As with any large project, organizations can use all the help they can get.

Help your client perform thorough analysis and planning to reduce implementation issues and increase delivery speed. That, too, is part of UC rollout

When presenting the project, it is important to show that you can meet the specific requirements of the organization. Again, that improves your strategy.

The actual implementation is different with every client, so it is important to highlight your previous experience with implementations of your solution.

For this, choose a scenario similar to your client’s, as this helps confirm assumptions.

When you understand how many actual users there are in the organization and whether they will work on-premises or in the cloud, you can challenge and validate the assumptions. Understand the motivations behind this choice.

Want to reduce customer costs or increase flexibility?

Whatever the reason, make sure your plan aligns with key objectives.

With customization, the level of management and support will also vary. Your service and support before, during and after implementation is critical to the continued success of the implementation.

Your customer’s needs are vital to the best customer experience, so make sure you’re always on top of them.

3. Taking stock makes one covet

The next crucial step to a deployment and in UC rollout, whether it’s on-premise, cloud or hybrid cloud, is to ensure that the IT infrastructure is optimized to meet the demands of real-time communications: in other words, evaluate your network.

Many organizations often fail to properly inventory their network and UC environment beforehand and later find out during implementation that the network is not capable of meeting all the requirements.

Resulting in a poor user experience.

The complexity of a UC infrastructure, with its many elements, can make it difficult to anticipate the cause of a problem.

With a good inventory, you evaluate the infrastructure and detect potential performance issues of voice, video, and desktop sharing applications even before they occur.

4. Also give attention to the adoption of your UC solution

To maximize your customer’s benefit from your UC solution, you must also emphasize its adoption. Open and executive communication with end users is critical; after all, the goal of UC is also to make people’s lives easier and more productive.

Ask end users for their opinions to better understand needs and pain points.

Because even though UC technology is meant to entertain workflow: you can’t assume that everyone just knows how it works right away.

Consider creating a comprehensive onboarding and training program (your marketing department can help with this) that outlines the basics and explores functionalities.

Tailor your training to the needs of each department because not everyone will use or need the same features.

Also communicate to your client that it is a good idea to involve the entire company closely in the implementation, such as through newsletters or an intranet.

5. Maintain your presence even after UC is rolled out

IT infrastructure assessment and management is not only important before implementation. Especially after the rollout, it is important to continue to maintain the infrastructure and manage the customer experience from the outside in.

The UC application and network must be monitored throughout the solution lifecycle, as the network and environment are always evolving, which can affect application performance.

Be proactive when it comes to the UC environment and leverage solutions that identify problems such as hardware failures, misconfigurations or connection issues.

To effectively manage infrastructure health, it makes sense to implement communications experience management solutions to support UC solutions.

Then, when users experience audio or video quality problems, the management solution detects the problem and helps resolve it.

Through ongoing testing and comprehensive reporting, you get a holistic view of the environment and gain insight into what problems need to be addressed and how to fix them.

6. Prepare for the worst

Rolling out UC at an average SME never goes as planned. Keep that in mind, and keep your eyes open on things like porting and documentation.

Be flexible so that you are always ready for what is to come. Get regular feedback on the process and make sure you have time to make changes.

Don’t get your feedback from just one or two sources; ideally, you want insight from the entire user base. When you do this, you get involvement and a positive image.

Are you ready for UC rollout?

Don’t let your next opportunity roll by. Prepare and remember what we wrote above.

Oh and above all just contact us, because we’ll make sure your rollout of our UCaaS solution goes absolutely smoothly.