Communicating and Collaborating in the Workplace

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Communicating and Collaborating
in the Workplace: Q&A with UCC
Expert Lou Chiorazzi
To stay competitive, businesses
need seamless technology that
allows unified communications and
collaboration (UCC) from any device,
in any manner (voice, video, chat, etc.),
and from any place. In this Q&A, AVI-
SPL UCC expert, Lou Chiorazzi, Vice
President, UC&C Solutions Engineering, discusses important
aspects of designing, building, and integrating a UCC solution.
Q: Can you give an overview of what the term unified
communications and collaboration means?
LC: The term has grown over the years, evolving from voice
communications to encompassing everything needed to
communicate and collaborate in a business environment. The
term comes from unifying all these collaborative technologies
to an IP network. The move to the network allows for a lot of
innovation and capability around voice, video, presence, and
messaging that wasn’t previously possible.
Q: What benefits are there for companies that adopt a UCC
solution?
LC: The biggest benefit of UCC adoption is historically cost
savings. Unified communications lets organizations use
assets or investments they already have in interconnected IT
network technology or infrastructure for voice communications
such as intercompany toll calling.
Benefits have evolved to enable speed and efficiency in
communications such as visual collaboration tools. There’s
the existing story around video collaboration saving money on
travel, but what video-cultured companies have realized is the
competitive advantage gained by enabling more modalities
and more accessibility to video that allows for faster, better,
and deeper remote collaboration.
Q: There are a lot of UCC options on the market. How
does a company go about selecting the right one for their
business needs?
LC: What is best for each company is usually very
individualized and specific to what investments they have,
what cost challenges they have, what opportunities they
see in better communications, and what will fit their user
constituency best.
The best way to find the right solution is to use a consultative
approach with an experienced UCC expert and trusted
advisor – one that understands both the AV and the IT world.
You want someone who has AV integration plus IT service
expertise in designing, building, operating, and maintaining
the successful operation lifecycle of both AV and UCC services
for an organization.
Q: What types of questions do you ask customers to ensure
the right UCC solution for their current and future needs?
LC: You first need to understand the business objectives of
the company. What are they trying to achieve? How do they
communicate between employees? Is there an opportunity to
improve that communication? What technology can they apply
to those communication channels? It really comes down to
understanding what their communication paths are between
each other today, where there is room for improving, where
EXPERT Q&A
“ Early engagement with a keen focus on
IT understanding the business objectives
is crucial. IT needs to understand what
the full scope and effect of the project is
to the company.”

2. (+01).866.559.8197 www.avispl.com
technology can be applied, and what opportunity there is
for cost savings or to increase their competitive position.
Then, you can build user cases that talk more about the
user’s needs.
Q: What are the steps you go through with a client to design,
build, and integrate the best UCC solution for a company and
its needs?
LC: The first step is consultative with a focus on current,
desired, and recommended use cases and summarizing
all those use cases into how that will impact the business.
It’s also important to make sure, at the start, that whatever
is built or designed incorporates a plan for training and
adoption of the technology so new users get the maximum
value out of the solution. A design also considers the solution
sustainability and maintenance with total cost of ownership
in mind.
After a successful design phase that incorporates sustainable
technology applied to user cases, the next step is to create a
mock-up or demonstration of the technology. Typically called
“piloting,” this is an important step, particularly for a larger
UCC integration. Next, you have the implementation phase.
Finding the right sponsorship within the company is important
during this phase. The adoption of the technology starts
during implementation, and a strong sponsorship is key to
increasing adoption. Finally, there’s ongoing maintenance and
training that must continue after the primary implementation,
including ongoing training of the user base as updates occur.
Q: How does an AV integrator coordinate with the IT
department throughout the process?
LC: Early engagement with a keen focus on IT understanding
the business objectives is crucial. IT needs to understand
what the full scope and effect of the project is to the company.
Then, IT needs to take a key stakeholder position in the
success of the project. I think it’s vital that it becomes one
logical, critical project for a company, not just the AV integrator
or the facilities in this case, if there is separate ownership
from IT and AV within an organization. Common key items
for IT’s stake in the process include physical and logical
network readiness from a LAN/WAN perspective, as well as
a thorough understanding and proper implementation of the
security requirements of the solution.
Q: What are some future trends for UCC in the workplace?
LC: Companies will be driving more adoption of their current
UCC investments, and investing where they can deliver more
options for collaboration. Those options are required to
address more collaborative spaces in the open workplace
of the future. At the same time, those companies are driving
the adoption of video technology in as many modalities
as possible, increasing accessibility with, for example,
WebRTC and Skype, and also enabling UCC as a service to
provide more options for consumption. Ninety-six percent of
conference rooms worldwide do not have video technology.
Only four percent do. Driving UCC adoption outside of the
conference room can increase the need for more closed-
door meeting spaces with UCC technology. Where it wasn’t
possible before, there are now more options in the market to
address these new spaces.
About AVI-SPL
AVI-SPL is the world’s leading AV and video communications
partner, one that designs, builds, integrates and supports
the systems and environments that enable unified
communications and collaboration for all types of
organizations. AVI-SPL’s Microsoft Silver Communications
competency and Cisco Premier certification in advanced
unified communications represent our commitment to giving
customers the finest in UCC solutions.
EXPERT Q&A