Multi-Dimensional Presence – Unlocking the True Potential of Unified Communications
This article explores how organisations can radically improve productivity and effectiveness through deployment of ‘Multi-dimensional Presence’ as part of their Unified Communications strategy.
Many organisations are deploying Instant Messaging to improve communications within and beyond the enterprise. Instant Messaging is one of the first tangible benefits of deploying a Unified Communications solution. It allows users to check the availability of colleagues and partners, chat and collaborate electronically. In many cases they can share files, share screens and call other users. Underpinning all Instant Messaging systems is what is known as ‘Presence’ – technology that tracks individuals’ availability. An individual may be ‘Available’, ‘Away’ or ‘Busy’ – this is their Presence State. If someone is ‘Away’ then you know they aren’t available, if someone is ‘Available’ then a tentative ‘Can you talk?’ message will determine if they are happy to be disturbed.
Instant Messaging is a great personal productivity tool. But ‘Presence’ can have a much more significant impact on an organisation’s business. Presence also opens up huge opportunities for improving the way an Enterprise operates. New technologies are emerging which will allow Presence to be integrated into business processes and drive enterprise productivity. To enable this to take place Presence needs to become Multi-Dimensional.
The Instant Messaging scenario is an example of one-dimensional presence. Someone is ‘Available’, ‘Away’ or ‘Busy’, and this will determine their availability to communicate. This is fine for one-to-one communication – when you already know who you want to talk to, and simply wish to contact them as quickly as possible. However, for an organisation to build processes around presence we need to add some additional dimensions.
One such dimension would be skill-set. A customer has called an organisation’s call centre, and the call centre agent needs to find a second-line expert in a particular product. They need someone who is both ‘Available’ and has a particular skill. A multi-dimensional presence solution would help identify someone based on these two criteria, so the call can be transferred. This if far better than asking the caller to call another number, or logging a call, with a promise of a call back at some point in the future. The customer will be better served, and the organisation’s processes more streamlined and efficient. Take this a step further, and assume some level of ‘self-service’ when the caller makes contact with the organisation, and the call could be routed to an available expert without a call centre agent’s involvement.
Another, potentially more useful dimension would be geographic location. An organisation needs to despatch a member of staff to a particular location – urgently. This is a requirement in many organisations with mobile workforces – both private and public sector. Often new assignments will be identified during the day and priorities will change. Imagine that the organisation has implemented a Presence solution that would enable them to perform a real-time check on availability, skill-set and location, in order to best allocate assignments. This could radically improve task management processes, improve reactivity and increase productivity in an organisation.
There are many other dimensions that can be added in addition to skill-set and geographic location. Predicted availability, based on a user’s calendar or presence history may be important. Or their seniority within an organisation, if escalation is required. Or previous experience of working on a particular assignment or with a particular customer. The more dimensions that can be built into a Presence solution, the more radical can be its impact on the organisation’s operation.
Call Centres were mentioned in an earlier example. Call Centres have received incredible focus in terms of their productivity and processes over the years. They rely on sophisticated software (including Automatic Call Distribution, Outbound Diallers and Workforce Management) to optimise their productivity. Call centres rely on knowing the availability (Presence) of their agents, and their skill-sets. Agents are allocated to skill-groups and their tasks (receiving and making calls) are automatically assigned and rigorously monitored. But the finely tuned processes developed in call centres are largely restricted to a specific group of workers dedicated to front-line interface with customers. Correctly deployed, a multi-dimensional Presence solution can allow an organisation to extend the call centre concepts across the whole organisation. With multi-dimensional Presence, the entire organisation becomes a part of that customer-facing team.
This doesn’t mean that the entire workforce is now tied to a desk and phone. Quite the opposite, it means that the organisation can reorganise so there is not such a strict delineation between front-line customer-facing personnel and the rest of the organisation. When ‘available’ individuals can be assigned tasks based on the many factors mentioned earlier: role, skill, location etc. And extending workforce management techniques to the wider enterprise can allow people to switch between ‘off-line’ proactive work to ‘on-line’ reactive activity as workloads dictate.
As previously mentioned, Presence is usually introduced as part of a Unified Communications deployment. This opens up the opportunity to link the entire organisation together into a single, multi-media communications environment, allowing calls, emails, faxes and messages to be transmitted seamlessly from one person or one department to another. Presence has a crucial part to play in the workflow of any organisation.
As organisations seek to reduce their environmental impact they are increasingly open to full-time or part-time home-working by their employees. This is facilitated by implementing a Unified Communications platform, allowing more flexible work arrangements whereby a worker can be on-line, and available to the organisation, whether at the office, at home, or on the road.
The utilisation of multi-dimensional presence doesn’t just apply to calls; it applies to all time-critical tasks. A health worker may be assigned the task of visiting a sick patient, a maintenance worker may be assigned to undertake a repair, a sales representative may be assigned to visit a customer. Whether office-based or mobile, knowing a worker’s Presence (in this wider sense) allows them to be better utilised.
Of course, all organisations are different. They have different requirements, and different systems and processes in place. So the way that they implement a multi-dimensional Presence solution will vary. But there are some common components that will be utilised:
- A Presence engine. This may be an existing Unified Communications platform that includes Presence states, such as Microsoft’s OCS, Cisco’s Unified Presence Server or Avaya’s OneX.
- An aggregation service, to gather information from multiple sources to create a complete, multi-dimensional view of presence.
- A task or call management solution – for allocating tasks and calls based on presence information. This may be an existing call distribution of workflow management solution, or a bespoke business application.
- A front-end, or more likely multiple front-ends, to allow presence information to be presented. This may include IM clients and bespoke web and client applications.
- Where mobile workers are involved, a mobile device equipped to collect and transmit geographic location – based on either mobile cell or GPS technology. This device can also be used to facilitate two-way communications with mobile workers – advising them of allocated tasks, and allowing them to update the status of such tasks.
- System interfaces and integration – ensuring real-time, multi-dimensional presence information is available to the users and systems requiring it. A multi-dimensional Presence solution does not usually replace existing business systems – it enables them to operate more effectively through access to improved real-time information.
Whilst the potential of multi-dimensional Presence, embedded into organisations’ business processes is enormous, most organisations will take an incremental approach to deploying it. The steps will vary from one organisation to another – but are likely to start with the implementation of a Unified Communications platform and Instant messaging solution. The next step is to start adding additional dimensions that are relevant to the organisation, and opening the aggregated information up to users and systems. Business processes can then be re-engineered to realise true productivity and reactivity benefits across the entire organisation.
This article started by extolling the virtues of Instant Messaging, under-pinned by a one-dimensional view of users’ presence. But the true potential of Presence technology lies with its integration deep into organisations’ business processes.
No Comments