> solUTIoNs <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
is complete. On the contrary, research shows that users
require five impressions over 30 days to successfully
change their habits. Engaging the users frequently via
newsletters, contests and other promotional activities will
help ensure the new solution is adopted successfully.
Measure, monitor and adjust. Once the enterprise has rolled the service out, it must monitor
usage to understand what is being used, by
whom and how frequently, and, as or more importantly,
what is not being used. Adding a quantified view of the
user behavior will allow the IT team to make critical
adjustments to the service. Perhaps a site has a problem
with their local LAN and is unhappy with the new video
experience; without taking a macro and quantified view of
the new traffic pattern, it will be difficult, if not impossible,
to ensure the user's expectations are being met.
5
Establish a collaboration steering committee.
The age of user-driven IT has taken on two
distinct flavors:
f organizations that are seeing IT budgets subsumed by
the marketing, HR or other functional teams who are
purchasing their own IT-related solutions
6
f organizations that are successfully engaging the business
to formally turn feedback into solutions that hit squarely
on the end-users' requirements.
Fostering a cross-functional, user-oriented steering
committee is an excellent approach to engage the end users
and ensuring that collaboration solutions evolves with their
needs in mind. A collaboration steering committee should
include key representatives from the business and IT teams
and will be responsible for gathering feedback and requirements from the business. It also should include a forwardthinking element acting as a technical advisory board
responsible for staying in touch with emerging trends and
advancing solutions in the collaboration industry.
BIll a.HaskINs
is a senior analyst at Wainhouse
Research with a strategic focus on unified
communications products and services.
@whaskins, @wr_tweets
linkedin.com/pub/william-haskins/3/6a2/350/
MaRk F. BEattIE
is a senior analyst at Wainhouse Research
where his area of expertise is hosted
and managed collaboration services.
@wr_tweets
linkedin.com/pub/marc-beattie/0/54/237
MORE INFO
Download a copy of the full Wainhouse Research report, "Channel
Road Map for Success in Collaboration Services," sponsored by ACT
Conferencing from the White Papers section of the Channel
Partners Resource Center at
channelpartnersonline.com/channel-road-map.
