A corporate world once dominated by enterprise applications on dedicated servers and people talking on deskphones via landlines, is now firmly entrenched in a cloud-based, wireless, mobility-centric reality.  And when it comes to unified communications, the options for businesses have exploded.  One thing that hasn’t changed however, is the need for interpersonal communication and collaboration.  Whether it is via voice or video calls, business people need and expect to connect and communicate wherever and whenever they want, on whatever device they have handy and in the manner they prefer.  And, oh yeah, they expect it to sound perfect, every time.

Challenges to Call Quality Facing Businesses and End Users

Since we were little, we’ve all learned to expect flawless sounding phone calls – and more and more we expect seamless video calls as well.  However, the trends towards cloud and mobility can cause challenges for businesses looking delivering this experience for colleagues, customers and partners.   

We’ve talked about the network challenges here in the past, but add on the fact that it seems as if we are constantly interacting across multiple voice and UC applications and with colleagues scattered around the country or the globe (see some of the stats about how quickly teleworking is growing, for example).  But one thing that hasn’t changed is that voice is still the dominant communications method.  Whether it’s a one-on-one phone call, conference call, UC collaboration session or video conference, when we need to get stuff done, we talk.

All of these changes are driving the need for reliable, high quality voice and audio endpoints, both headsets and speakerphones.  To get into more detail on why voice endpoints have taken on even more significance, we caught up with Urban Gillis, the VP of Channel Sales, North America at Jabra.

Voice and Audio Performance in a UC World

“With the challenges of being on the road, connecting from an airport parking lot, or even as a home-based contact center rep connecting through your computer, the need for a high quality audio endpoint has never been greater,” says Gillis.  “We’ve all experienced call jitter as the move towards IP phones and video calls has accelerated and these seem to be increasing as we’ve all been connecting through different types of networks.  Eliminating the possibility of poor quality originating from your headset or mobile speakerphone just makes sense.”

Devices that incorporate technology that support a professional experience can make all the difference.  For example, noise cancelling microphones to minimize the impact of that dog barking in the yard next door, or wind noise protection for that sales person on the road.  “Having software-centric products that allow devices to react as environments change provides real benefits to a mobile workforce.  The endpoints businesses and their employees choose deliver tangible results in terms of productivity and employee and customer satisfaction.  There are few pieces of technology that you use as often as your voice endpoint and it needs to deliver and perform for you.”

We couldn’t agree more.  I am never surprised anymore when there are call quality issues (connection / app issues, jitter, dropped participants, etc.) when interacting with customers and colleagues.  My standing line is, “Remember the good old days when phone calls always sounded perfect?  Isn’t progress great?”  With all of the variables that can cause call quality issues in our hyper-connected communications environment, making sure that your endpoints aren’t one of them is a no brainer.

The post Call Quality in a Cloud-based and Mobile-empowered World appeared first on The UC Buyer.

And it’s not just my buddy.  The fact is these headsets are being used more and more for unified communications applications and on-the-go by mobile workers, salespeople and executives. So it seemed worthwhile to get to the bottom of how these things actually work. To do so I talked with Henning Toft Schwarz, a product marketing manager at Jabra, which knows a thing or two about tiny wireless headsets.

It is even more relevant in light of recent events in that are leading to working and communicating from home in sometimes less than ideal environments.

Using Triangulation for Good Voice Quality

Different companies have varied approaches to how they pick up voice. Some rely at least in part on vibrations in the user’s jawbone as they talk. Jabra has a different approach that varies somewhat depending on the headset in question.

As a starting point in the discussion, Schwarz made it clear that voice quality is always better if the microphone is closer to the mouth; there’s no getting around that.  That’s why headsets for office workers and contact center agents  have boom arms of varying lengths.  But what about those in-ear devices?

To filter out noise other than the speaker’s voice in the small, in-ear headsets, the key is to have more than one microphone. The trick lies in software algorithms that essentially measure sounds coming from the mouth of the user, which take a specific time to travel to the microphones that are placed a known distance away in the headset. Background sound (noise) can be filtered out since it “looks” different than voice sound. On top of this microphones can be adaptive, allowing for measurement in different directions depending on the surrounding noise.  In this way you can obtain significant noise suppression and filter out everything but the speaker’s voice, Schwarz says.   

For example, white noise, background conversation and street noise are all clearly understood by the software, and the algorithm is designed to recognize those and cancel them out.

Another big issue is wind, and this can be harder to address.  Some models of wireless headsets have a small extendable boom arm and shield around the microphone that protects it from wind.   “Mitigating wind noise is intimately connected to design,” he says.  “Where the microphones are placed and having a shield around them that directs wind away from the microphones can make a big difference.”  When it comes to even smaller wireless headsets with shorter booms (or even devices that are in-ear only with no boom arm at all, like some developed for the military) the positioning of the microphones and the sophistication of the software makes all the difference.  

Best Use Cases for In Ear Wireless Headsets

The technology keeps getting smaller and better – and acceptance is growing, too. Nobody bats an eye when they see someone walking down the street wearing Apple ear buds. Schwarz says it’s just a matter of time before wireless headsets will become common.

I suspect he’s right because the uses cases are many. Mobile knowledge workers top the list. These are folks who use a UC solution in the office, increasingly with a soft phone. They can now use the same headset to connect to that soft phone as well as to their mobile phone – and transfer between the two without dropping the call. Consultants, salespeople, financial services professionals and anyone else who is frequently out of the office make great candidates for such technology, Schwarz says.

Somewhat surprisingly, he says craftspeople are likewise using the wireless headsets.  “They need to have their hands free because they can’t work when they’re holding a mobile phone,” he notes. “If they’re spending an hour on the phone each day, they’re losing an hour of work.”

Let’s just hope they decline the calls that come in while they’re in line at the coffee shop. Or at least they keep their voices down and trust that the technology built into their headset will allow them to speak in their inside voice.

The post How Those Tiny, In-ear Wireless Headsets Work appeared first on The UC Buyer.

In fact, according to Global Workforce Analytics, over 3.7 million people currently telecommute to work in the U.S., at least half of the time. Before your business takes the step of allowing workers to function remotely, a few myths may need to be exposed.

Myth: Remote Work is the Same as On-site Work

While about 50% of professions and disciplines can function autonomously, there are some that cannot. To eliminate the obvious, workers that provide a face-to-face service (such as cafeteria staff) or job site specific duties (construction) are out. Others may benefit from being on site, due to capital concerns. You wouldn’t want your cash room clerk to work from home, carting money to and fro every night, for instance.

The ones who can be looked at for remote work are the types that communicate almost exclusively via email and telephone anyway; your analysts, coordinators and agents who may have customer contact but not face-to-face contact.

Others are obviously remote capable, such as outside sales reps and those who work at multiple job locations. They are probably already working remotely, even if they do not have the tools to be accessible when they are away. And since an appropriately disciplined remote worker can save a company between $2000 and $7000 a year, it’s an opportunity that certainly deserves attention.

Myth: Employees Adapt Easily to Working from Home

It is a wondrous feeling to have a 2-minute commute walking down your stairs in slippers to go to the office, but the fact that work is always right around the corner is tough to put aside. The undisciplined worker can actually spend much more time “at the office” when the office is a few feet away, particularly during after-hours times.

Myth: Every Knowledge Worker Should Be Able to Work Remotely

No environment is a perfect fit for anyone, and the self-discipline required to work remotely is not always present. It may manifest in poor productivity or in emails sent out from the remote worker at unimaginable hours in the morning, either way reflecting work that is not being done during working hours.

Those who are great at setting and sticking to a routine, and those who have predefined times for conference calls and other checkpoints, tend to do better at working remote.

Myth: Enabling Remote Work via UCaaS

In the modern age, email has become a critical tool for business, but that doesn’t mean the telephone has gone away completely. A good Unified Communications as a Service product can enable a remote worker to have their business phone at their home office, or on their smartphone, with access as easy as dialing their extension.

Clearly, there are benefits and pitfalls with remote work, but the implementation of a solid UCaaS product enables your small or medium business to take every advantage when you can.

The post 3 Myths Managers and Companies Need to Know About Remote Working appeared first on The UC Buyer.

At KAZOOcon 2019, Darren Knapp of Poly gave a presentation to show off some of their new products, as well as define a philosophy for Poly going forward.

The x50 series of desktop devices is coming in with the intention of being the endpoint of choice for UCaaS telephony. They are feature-rich devices with a modern look and are prices to be accessible for all markets.

“The Swiss army knife of unified communications” – Darren Knapp

Some exciting features revealed include the ability to attach some desktop models to a 5g WiFi network (with a WiFi adapter), the inclusion of more lines on comparable phones to the venerable VVX series, and connectivity to the Poly Device Management Services platform for customization and control.

Also very exciting is the ability to integrate with multiple UCaaS providers! Multiple lines can function with different carriers simultaneously.

Related blog: Desk Phones vs Soft Phones for the SMB

Poly has the proper pedigree to offer world-class headsets, too, and they have a variety to choose from. They have also committed to providing Tier 1 support for headset provisioning, pairing, and technical issues for your customer.

Darren lays it all out here:

The post Freshly Rebranded Poly is Coming For Your Business appeared first on The UC Buyer.

The way we use voice communications in business has changed more in the last 10 years than it has in the last 40. In this information packed conversation with Urban Gillis, Vice President of Distribution and Channel Sales at headset maker Jabra, we discuss the different ways that business people use phone calls and how businesses can categorize them into user types.  In particular, we dig into the specifics around the “Call-Centric” user type and the various types of professionals whose jobs revolve around taking, making and managing high volumes of calls.

We also dig into how unified communications, mobility and increased collaboration opportunities have turned headsets into a billion dollar market and how businesses are working to deploy and maintain the right types of audio endpoints for the right types of workers. If your business is looking to deploy a UC solution, improve your collaboration capabilities or ensure your employees are as productive as possible, this podcast is for you. 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcasts at iTunes or via RSS (they’re great for the drive to or from work!)  and stick with The UC Buyer for insights into how the way business people communicate is evolving. 

The post Voice in the Modern Enterprise, Call-Centric Workers and the Rise of Headsets appeared first on The UC Buyer.

Skype for Business, Cisco Jabber, Avaya Aura or take your pick of dozens of UCaaS platforms.  These solutions are being rolled out at breakneck speed and they are changing the way businesses and business people communicate, collaborate and work.  For most companies, deploying these platforms means taking a look at the something they may not have considered previously – how to deploy headsets for various employees throughout their enterprise.

Not many businesses have had experience planning for, deploying and managing headsets for a large group of employees.  The exception are businesses with employees that are ‘call-centric’ in their work style.  The professionals that work in these companies listen to and talk with customers for a living (think stockbrokers or insurance agents or contact center agents).  Their work priorities include having a lot of conversations on the phone and being able to get some focused concentration work done when they need to.  These workers would never even consider trying to do their jobs without a headset and their employers understand this and are likely to treat headsets as a critical business tool and an important part of their IT infrastructure.   Now, however, a whole new generation of businesses are beginning to deploy headsets for UC and productivity reasons, and to entirely different types of employees.

Task-based Workers Need Headsets to Maximize Collaboration, Concentration, Productivity

Several months back we published an infographic highlighting the growth in the headset marketplace, most of which was coming from the unified communications space.  As of 2014, UC was already making up 26.5% of the headset market and that segment is expected to grow to over $1 Billion annually worldwide by 2020.  

A large portion of that growth is going to come from employees that Bjoern Ekner, Senior Director of Global Product Marketing at Jabra, refers to as task workers.  “Task workers are knowledge workers in a myriad of roles that essentially internalize information and collaborate with customers and colleagues for a living in order to create value.  They can range from low-mobility employees that work mainly at their workstation, to remote collaborators that interact often with remote colleagues and may work from home, to employees that need to be highly mobile in and around the corporate campus.  The majority of these folks have never used a headset before, but once they start using one, the concentration and productivity benefits quickly become apparent and they become converts.”   

According to Ecker, these task workers shift throughout the day between needing to collaborate and being able to concentrate and get heads down work completed.  (hmmmm, sounds like I’m a UC task worker…although in my case I became a convert about 4 years ago).

Collaboration

When it comes to collaboration, headsets deliver value to task workers in two main areas: sound quality and productivity.  “With UC&C, an increasing portion of a knowledge worker’s meetings will take place over their computer or via their mobile phones,” says Ekner.  “The right business headset will not only deliver superior sound quality for the user, but also delivers a professional experience for the people they’re speaking with.”  We’ve all had calls where the person we’re talking to is using their Apple ear buds on their iPhone to call into the meeting and their voice quality is terrible.  Having crystal clear quality on both (or all) ends of the line means a better and more professional user experience.

The other aspect of headsets that task workers will quickly refuse to do without is hands-free conversations.  Recent studies have shown that headset use by knowledge workers can increase productivity by up to 40%.  Being able to hear and be heard perfectly while having your hands free to type, take notes, present, pull up documents and share important information changes the game for phone calls, web conferences and video calls.  The ability to be mobile with a wireless headset increases productivity even more for some users, especially road and corridor warriors.  

Concentration

The ability to quickly transition from collaboration to concentration has never been more important, especially with the rapid rise of open offices.  A recent study found that nearly 7 in 10 knowledge workers indicated their productivity was negatively impacted by noise in the office.  Headsets can play a key role in creating a ‘personal concentration zone’ for knowledge workers so they can get heads-down work done in the midst of a busy environment.  As we covered before:

Unified Communications headsets provide a lot of tech in order to deliver on that promise, including:

• Noise cancelling speakers, so you don’t hear the craziness going on around you
• Noise cancelling  microphones, so the people you are speaking with don’t hear the craziness going on around you
• The ability to connect to computers, mobile devices, deskphones or smartphones and switch easily between them
• Notification lights – I love this one.  If you are on a call, a light automatically appears on the earpieces of your headset so co-workers know not to interrupt you. A simple click makes these lights come on manually so you can get that ‘head down’ deep thinking work done.  A personal ‘do not disturb’ sign.
• Killer acoustics and a universal audio jack so you can listen to your favorite productivity tunes while you work.

These capabilities are seen as increasingly important to businesspeople, according to Ekner.  “With so many companies reliant on task based workers, our Evolve series headsets, which are specifically designed to address both the collaboration and concentration aspects of a task worker’s daily routine, is one of our best selling product lines to date.”

Businesses and Vendors Need to Deliver on the Headset Front

The wide scale deployment of UC and the clear business benefits associated with headsets is putting pressure on IT teams to make good decisions when it comes to delivering the right types of headsets to the right employees.   Dig Deeper:  The Right Audio Endpoints for UC: A Balance of Business Requirements and Personal Preferences

It also means they will need to be ready to manage the headsets once they are deployed.  Dig Deeper: What businesses need to know about managing headsets.

Businesses are now frequently looking to their headset resellers to act as trusted advisors and steer them through these challenges effectively.  According to Ekner, more resellers are being asked to perform corporate assessments, segment users by role and work spaces, determine the number of wireless headsets necessary, perform wireless density studies and ensure all headsets are optimized to corporate standards.  “There is more to a successful roll-out than most people realize and resellers and VARs are stepping up to streamline the process.”

Where does headset deployment stand in your business? Have questions or hard earned lessons to share?  Let us know in comment section below.

The post UC Driving Headset Adoption for Task Based Workers and Companies Look to Deliver appeared first on The UC Buyer.

At The UC Buyer, we’ve heard scores of stories about what makes for a successful, or unsuccessful, UC or UCaaS deployment.  Assuming tha the company does the necessary legwork to be sure their network is ready to handle voice and video communications (nothing is going to turn people off to UC quicker than consistent jitter), the one word that comes up over and over again is ‘adoption’.  If the business embraces the new technology and makes it part of their work culture and their daily processes, it is usually considered a major success.

But what does it take to get companies to the point where leveraging UC consistently is just the way things are done?  According to Zena Zuniga, the Manager of Customer Support at ANPI, it is important to realize that UC may not be for every business. “For very small, single location companies with limited remote workers, Unified Communications can be seen as overkill depending on the industry.  Companies that can really benefit from UC often have a mobile workforce, perhaps multiple locations, salespeople on the road and employees that work remotely at least part of the time.  For companies that have stakeholders in multiple locations, UC can really shine.”

Planning, Messaging and Training all Vital to Creating UC Culture

“A common mistake I’ve seen companies make is not spending the time upfront to understand what the employees need to accomplish their daily objectives as well as what solutions will help them be more productive,” says Zuniga.  Getting the team involved in the project early on and focusing on benefits can ease the transition to a new solution.  “Remember, this can be a big adjustment for employees…the phones are different, the software is a big change.  By getting the team on-board with ways that UC can create greater flexibility for them and allow for better collaboration, employees will approach UC with a more open mind.”

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Dig Deeper:  Download – Hosted Unified Communications Key Features and Benefits

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Another important aspect we’ve discussed here in the past is the role that executive champions can play in Unified Communications deployments.  The corporate leader driving the project is in a unique position to clearly communicate why the company is implementing UC (again making the messaging benefit focused) and set clear expectations around adoption and usage.  “Early and on-going positive messaging from executives, especially when combined with clear expectations, can set the table for a successful deployment and the embracing of a collaborative culture,” explained Zuniga.

A final area that needs to be checked off the to-do list is employee training.  Be sure to pay plenty of attention to live and online training, focus on the basics for everyone and provide customized, more detailed training based on user type.  Be sure to integrate use cases and real world examples into the training as often as possible.  Related: To Maximize UC Adoption Don’t Skimp on Employee Training

Managers Are Key to Day-to-Day UC Usage and Adoption

No matter how well you plan, communicate and train, if the managers aren’t on-board and driving usage, your UC deployment may just end up looking like a new phone system to your employees.  According to Zuniga, “Managers have to lead by example and push their team to use the tools with them.  They need to use the tools themselves and encourage their workers – especially the older ones – to step out of their comfort zone.  If done properly this creates real cultural change, and not only that it can make relationships better, more interactive and more fun.”

Have the UC Application Open Every Day

According to Zuniga, if you want to have a business that has a collaborative culture, it is not enough to just have new phones on your desk, the UC application has to be open on your computer or mobile device every day.  Managers in companies with successful UC deployments start with Presence Management and Instant Messaging.  By insisting that each of their team members have their soft client open and keep their availability accurate the team can start more effectively communicating and collaborating.  “It only takes one or two examples of IM saving you from a major headache to make it part of the way you do business.  By taking the lead on this, managers will find it much easier to reach their team, communicate with them and pull together group conversations as needed.  IM out a link to a web conference and suddenly team members are using advanced UC features without even knowing it.”

Another benefit of having the application open every day is that employees will see incoming calls as a screen pop.  “When team members are provided the option of answering the call on their computer it can be a real game changer.  Add a headset into the mix for hands free conversations and your productivity starts to skyrocket.”  Related:  How headsets can positively impact UC adoption

Make Meetings Mandatory

Continuing to extend UC beyond IM and phone calls means managers need to get employees into the habit of using UC for meetings. “Townhall meetings and team meetings are a great way to do this,” says Zuniga.  “Scheduling the weekly team meeting and having everybody join the web conference quickly becomes just the way things are done.  Getting everyone to join with video is the next step.”

One on one meetings can be enhanced as well. Zena shared a story about one of her team members who was struggling with a problem one of their customers was having and was having trouble explaining the situation over IM.  They quickly escalated to a phone call, which still didn’t provide enough clarity. “So I told her to share her screen with me.  She said she didn’t know how to do that, or even that she could.  I walked her through the two clicks that were necessary and we solved the problem in minutes.  Needless to say, that is now part of our team’s best practices.  It doesn’t take long once you realize how easy it is.”

What about your business?  Have you been successful in creating a UC-centric, collaborative culture?  What did it take?  Share your stories and best practices in the comments section below.

The post How Managers Can Help Create a Culture That Embraces UC appeared first on The UC Buyer.

That’s all well and good, but if your company is planning on implementing S4B you still need to get your team to use it, and use it effectively, in order to get a Return-on-Investment.  Here are three things you should build into your plan as priorities to maximize adoption and usage.

Start With Presence and IM and Insist People Use It

Since The UC Buyer has been up and running, one thing I’ve heard over and over is that companies use presence management and instant messaging and integrate it into their culture consider their UC implementations as success.  That’s why I call presence management The Little Application That Could.   

In a recent article we discussed how getting executives on board to set clear expectations can help increase presence adoption.  Insisting (in the nicest possible way, of course) that presence and IM be used seems to be a no brainer.

[As Aldo Ramirez from ANPI explained, “By communicating that ‘we are going to be a company that uses Presence Management and IM every day and each of you will be expected to open your software and keep your Presence updated,’  makes it pretty clear that UC is more than just a new telephone.” ]

Integrate With Outlook

Statistically speaking, chances are pretty good that your company is already using Outlook and it is your primary email and calendaring app.  And I hear the new Outlook iPhone app is really good, so it may be your mobile app as well.  So here’s another thing to consider right away….Integrate Skype for Business with Outlook.  Everybody schedules meetings in Outlook calendar every day, just make it clear that you can now make that a Skype meeting.  Suddenly employees have their own conference bridge – and web conference link – and video conferencing ready to roll.  Took 2 seconds.

Not everyone is going to be comfortable in a Skype meeting on Day 1, but get invited to a couple of them and employees will quickly forget they  didn’t know how to use it.  From there it’s a tiny step to start setting up their own S4B meetings. 

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Dig Deeper:  Download – The Two Shifts That Will Propel Skype for Business Adoption and Usage

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Give a Headset to Everyone Who Would Benefit

Another theme I keep hearing is that headset usage is a big driver of UC adoption and employee satisfaction. There are two real reasons why I think this is the case:

Headsets Increase Productivity

Two words;  Hands Free.  If you have knowledge workers working in your office, they immediately become more productive if they start taking their phone calls and video calls while using a headset (or a desktop speakerphone when the situation is right).  Making sure each employee has a headset that fits their work profile and that they are comfortable with can make a big difference in headset adoption. 

Related:  The Right Audio Endpoints for UC: A Balance of Business Requirements and Personal Preferences

You Can Control Your Acoustic Environment

Open offices are the future.  They can be great for collaboration, but they can also be noisy and distracting making it difficult to get head-down work done.  Headsets can help employees manage their acoustics allowing them to concentrate better.

Oh yeah, and you can listen to music on them if that is your thing. Doesn’t work for me…I start singing and nobody wants that.  And you can have noise cancelling earphones and microphones to keep the roar to a minimum for when you need to concentrate.  And with business headsets you can switch between music and headphones and they will even light up when you are on the phone or need to get some work done and don’t want to be interrupted.  

These are some of the things we have heard work.  What is working for you?  Are there other ideas we should be sharing.  Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Thinking of Implementing Skype for Business? Here’s Three Things You Should Do appeared first on The UC Buyer.

You move into a new office space and implement a swank new unified communications suite, with all the bells and whistles. All of your users get headsets that are intended to give them plenty of freedom to move about and maintain a quality audio experience – both essential to acceptance of UC applications.

But things don’t go as planned. Users are complaining about static on the line and dropped calls, even when they’re not straying far from their base. If the situation isn’t fixed fast, it could torpedo the entire UC rollout.

What this situation may well represent is a failure to adequately plan for the environment in which your headsets will live. It’s likely they’re experiencing interference, either with each other or with Wi-Fi devices that are sharing the office space.

It’s a situation that can be avoided with some advance planning. To learn what goes into it, I talked with Amy Brown, a technical consultant who works primarily in pre-sales for the support team at Jabra.

A Detailed Questionnaire Helps Avoid Headset Interference

Jabra starts with a questionnaire that enables the company to get a handle on the environment in which its headsets will be used. Among the questions it tackles:

• What devices will the headsets be connected to, including desk phones, computers, mobile phones, video conference phones and the like?
• How many users?
• Is Wi-Fi in use and, if so, which frequencies?
• What percentage of users will be using the Wi-Fi?
• What other wireless devices will be in use, such as keyboards, mice, cordless phones?  

The idea is to get a sense for what kind of obstacles may stand in the way of good headset reception and which technology – DECT or Bluetooth – will prove most suitable. As we’ve covered previously, among the considerations is the distance that users will want to roam from their audio device (DECT has far greater range) and whether the same device will be used with office phones as well as mobile phones (in which case you’ll want Bluetooth).

For Best Wireless Headset Results, Beware Many Users and Heavy Wi-Fi

When looking at the answers on the questionnaire, Brown says one red flag is simply numbers.

“For Bluetooth, when we get into triple digit numbers of users, we do due diligence about other devices that may cause interference,” she says. Bluetooth can easily handle two or three connections per user, such as to a cell phone, keyboard and mouse. But when you multiple that by hundreds of users, now you have to dig deeper.

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More: Download the Research Report – The Advantages of Moving to Wireless Headsets

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Among the first criteria to look at is the floor plan. Increasingly, it’ll be an open plan, with lots of shared spaces and few offices. That makes wireless configuration more challenging because barriers including cubicle walls, offices and elevator shafts help keep wireless signals confined to a specific area, Brown says.

Another concern is the frequency of the Wi-Fi network. Bluetooth operates in the 2.4gHz spectrum while Wi-Fi is either in 2.4 or 5.0gHz. While Bluetooth should offer 120 channels in a given area, if it’s sharing the spectrum with lots of Wi-Fi users that number could drop dramatically.

DECT operates at 1.9gHz and offers about 60 channels (at least in North America; elsewhere it’s double that).  So you won’t have to worry about Wi-Fi interference so much but you’ll have far fewer channels to work with.

Addressing Wireless Headset Interference Issues

When a questionnaire indicates that users will run into interference problems there are remedies. First, as indicated above, is to create barriers that keep wireless signals confined.

“A clear line of sight between the headset and the base station gives the best audio experience,” Brown notes. That means breaking up that line of sight with even a moderately high cubicle wall or glass panes can help keep wireless signals from straying too far and causing interference.

Another solution is to shrink down the wireless range of the headsets. Imagine there’s an umbrella around each base station which represents the reach of each wireless headset, Brown says. If you shrink the size of the umbrella, you can squeeze more umbrellas – and more users – into the same space.

Also be careful about giving certain users far more range than others. You may be tempted to give a small number of managers greater range than their direct reports, figuring they’ll be roaming around more.  

“Depending on the layout, location of the base station and where they need to roam, those high-powered managers could trample the wireless signals for their direct reports,” Brown says. A better solution is to use a mix of products at that point – with the managers on DECT, for example, and the others on Bluetooth.

What’s is hopefully clear from all this is that it pays to get started early on planning your wireless headset deployment. Some customers get Jabra involved when they’re in the office design phase, during which the company can make recommendations on everything from the office layout to furniture.

“The earlier the better,” she says. “Even if it’s just having a conversation. We can learn a lot just by chatting.”

The post How to Get the Most Out Of (and Avoid Interference in) a Wireless Headset Deployment appeared first on The UC Buyer.

Communications technology has been an enabler of two significant trends. The rise of the remote, mobile and home worker and the reduction in the amount of office space that businesses require.  These smaller offices are quickly being redesigned to take advantage of open floor plans to increase collaboration and in-office communications. These open offices have many benefits, but the resultant reduced privacy can negatively impact employees’ ability to do heads-down work and stay on task.  In this podcast interview with Mitch Friend, president of Plenom, the maker of the BusyLight and other ‘presence management’ related technology, we discuss these trends, where they’re headed and how businesses are helping employees adapt to these new realities. 

The post Podcast: Open Offices and The Changing Face of Collaboration appeared first on The UC Buyer.

Since 2005 the number of employees that work from home multiple days per week has grown by over 80% representing over 3.3 million U.S. employees, or 2.6% of the total workforce.  If you look at part-time home workers, that number jumps to 20% – especially on Fridays, it seems :o)  Business of all sizes are increasing their work-from-home workforce and for good reasons, one of which is that employees love it.

During the recent Telework Week sponsored by the U.S. Government, average participants saved an average of 4.5 hours per week in commuting time by teleworking 2 days per week.  If that was extended for a full year, those workers would save $4,500 in commuting costs and reclaim nearly ten full days of their lives back from sitting in traffic. Not to mention is is great for the environment.

The whitepaper focuses on some of the downsides of remote working both for workers and for the in-office workers that have to interact with them, as well as the risk for businesses that aren’t doing a good job of supporting remote workers.  They define the main issue as one of ‘social dislocation’.

Social Dislocation of Remote Workers and How it Impacts Productivity and Corporate Culture

For all the tremendous advances in remote collaboration over the last decade, there are still some things that can only be experienced when you are face-to-face with your colleagues.  For example, if you are a home worker on a conference call and your co-workers are in a conference room, you can’t hear the sidebar conversations that are taking place, or there may be multiple sidebars taking place and all you hear is mumbling.  Or when someone comes up with a great idea and rushes to the whiteboard to flesh it out, you may not be able see it or hear what the person is saying.  Or people completely forget you are on the call and when you speak up it throws everybody for a loop.  Your ability to understand nuance be a productive collaborator in these situations can be curtailed and can be frustrating for all involved.

Dig Deeper:  Download Why Your Remote Workers Hate You (It’s Not What You Think)

These issues and the rapid move towards remote working can also lead to difficulty in maintaining a cohesive corporate culture.  For businesses interested in ensuring their employees work and collaborate at maximum efficiency and that employees all feel part of the team, it is important to do all you can to address social dislocation.

Overcoming The Challenges of Remote Collaboration

To put home workers and and their in-office colleagues in the best position to succeed it is important to first look at the overall experience from the remote worker’s perspective.  Understanding challenges from their point of view, like unclear audio, difficulty making out individual voices due to non-directional microphones in conference rooms or jitter in audio or video feeds identifies concerns and puts the business in position to  outfit the team with the right devices and infrastructure to overcome collaboration problems.  

Looking at the experience from the in-office team’s perspective provides another layer of insight into how to provide the best experience.  First it is key to have systems that are easy to use, conference calls that are easy to setup and video conferences that quickly launch.  We’ve discussed the increasing number of collaborative or huddle rooms that are appearing in offices due to the move towards open office spaces.  

Related: The Race is on to Outfit the Huddle Room with Voice, Video and UC for Serious Collaboration  

With in-room systems designed to streamline professional quality collaboration like the Google Chromebox and the Microsoft’s Surface Hub (if it ever gets released) and Jabra’s new conference and huddle room speakerphone that has zoom talk microphones that uses software to identify and focus on individual voices, the cost of outfitting these rooms is coming down while significantly improving the experience for both local and remote workers.

When it comes to corporate culture the paper had some good common sense suggestions in addition to ensuring terrific quality.  First, encourage video conferencing whenever possible.  It really does add another level to the communication.  The key is to overcome the shyness of using it.  Making it part of the culture that people use video even if it is early in the morning or if a remote worker has just returned from a lunchtime gym workout starts to make it part of corporate culture and improves collaboration while reducing the feeling of social dislocation.  They also suggest increased communication with all workers and coming up with reasons to bring remote workers to the corporate office on a consistent basis so that people can build deeper, personal relationships.

It all makes sense to me.  What are you doing to improve collaboration and productivity with your extended team?  Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Do Your Remote Workers Hate You? Steps to Take to Address Social Dislocation appeared first on The UC Buyer.

A decade ago, the only person in an enterprise worried about managing and maintaining a fleet of headsets was the contact center manager.  Unified communications, VoIP, video conferencing and the rise of a mobile, remote workforce has changed that game as the UC portion of the headset market is expected to exceed the size of the entire contact center segment within a few years.  In a recent conversation with a colleague at Microsoft, I learned that they have over 100,000 headsets deployed, only a small portion of which are related to their various contact centers.  When a new employee comes on board, a headset appropriate to their role is part of the technology kit they are provided with.  With more and more large companies deploying advanced communications and collaboration solutions and providing their employees with headsets, let’s dig into the challenges they need to address to effectively manage these devices.

Keeping Headsets Current With Firmware Updates

Headsets do more than just plug into a deskphone nowadays.  With softphones, smartphones and UC clients part of the mix for a highly mobile workforce, headsets need to be able to play nice with various hardware and rapidly changing software environments according to Stefan Heise, product manager for business and UC headset maker Jabra.   “Companies going from an Avaya phone system to a unified communications platform, for example, need to be sure the firmware on their headsets is updated to ensure compliance and proper functioning with the new phones and UC clients.  Doing this easily and remotely for a company managing five thousand headsets is critical to avoid not only hundreds of hours of manual updating, but also potential software conflicts that can cause quality and performance issues”  

According to Heise, by utilizing a solution like Jabra Xpress, which sends out updates for firmware over the corporate network, companies are able to update the headsets with service packs to deliver improvements to the software in the headset as well as to provide new features that weren’t available when the product was first purchased.  “If a company just procured new headsets six months ago and they worked perfectly with Lync, but they decided to migrate to Cisco Jabber, they can run into trouble.  They need to be sure those headsets have all the current service and value packs in place to make sure the user experience doesn’t suffer.”

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Dig Deeper:  Download the Headset Research Report from Benchmark Portal on The Advantages of Moving to Wireless

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Profile Management is Key To Managing Headset Density and Security

Imagine you are an IT manager and you just deployed a shiny new UC platform and suddenly you have 10,000 headsets to manage.  And not just that, 5,000 of them are wireless and you are having density and connectivity issues in a few of your offices you never even considered before.  As we’ve covered previously, there are a number of things businesses need to think through prior to deploying headsets en masse, like Bluetooth vs. DECT connectivity and the number of employees working in close proximity to each other.   Contact centers have been performing density and environmental assessments for some time, but with headsets being rolled out to knowledge workers company-wide, businesses need an easy way to manage profile settings for these devices to ensure they perform properly.

“Your typical Bluetooth headset comes with Bluetooth Class 1 factory settings set to enable thirty meter range,” says Chris Schultz, portfolio manager at Jabra.  “If you have a densely packed floor you can quickly run out of available channels in this scenario and not all headsets can connect.”  That is where profile management comes into play.   By sending updates to headsets based on where each employee sits, or the group they are part of, IT managers can remotely update the headset profiles to reduce the wireless range to ten meters for all headsets that might have a channel concern, thereby eliminating density conflicts.  

Another example of how profile management comes into play revolves around a company that works in a very high security industry. This business defined a profile for their softphones and devices that contained certain applications, certain software clients with their appropriate drivers, and firmware versions for their headsets.  This profile had been blessed, they knew it was secure and they locked it down, so even if newer firmware were available, they wouldn’t push them out until a whole new image update was approved by IT.  In this case, if an employee breaks their headset and goes to Staples to buy a new one, as soon as they connect it to their computer, their device management solution will bring the headset up to date based on the company’s parameters and policies, even if that means downgrading the most current firmware.

Asset Tracking Addresses Headset Shrinkage and Warranty Management

Headset, especially wireless headsets, are mobile devices.  That is great when a salesperson is hitting the road, but can lead to some unintended consequences, like shrinkage and lost devices.  According to Heise, this is another area where a software driven headset management solution can come in handy.  “Employees may use a device on multiple computers or on their smartphone.  With an asset management solution in place, each time a headset is connected to the network it can track the location and timing of that connection and put that into a log file.  This is great for not only helping employees track down missing headsets but also for providing insights into adoption rates at both the headset and the UC level.”

Another aspect of asset management is keeping track of which devices are coming out of warranty and when it is time to update / upgrade.  By maintaining a rolling inventory, the IT team can have ready access to the data to build device refresh into their budget.

With so many businesses expanding their unified communications footprint, headset management is quickly becoming an important issue companies must address.  Having a software solution in place to manage and maintain your fleet seems to be vital, but what are the issues you are struggling with when it comes to headset management?  Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Challenges Businesses Must Address When Managing a Fleet of Headsets appeared first on The UC Buyer.

We’ve written several times about home workers and the telework phenomenon since we started publishing last year, and it’s hard not to.  Since 2005 the number of employees that work from home multiple days per week has grown by over 80% representing over 3.3 million U.S. employees, or 2.6% of the total workforce.  If you look at part-time home workers, that number jumps to 20% – especially on Fridays, it seems :o)  Business of all sizes are increasing their work-from-home workforce and for good reasons, one of which is that employees love it.

During the recent Telework Week sponsored by the U.S. Government, average participants saved an average of 4.5 hours per week in commuting time by teleworking 2 days per week.  If that was extended for a full year, those workers would save $4,500 in commuting costs and reclaim nearly ten full days of their lives back from sitting in traffic.  “It’s very appealing not only because of the work / life balance it provides, but because all that saved time can lead to an increase in productivity,” says Bill Rice, Executive Sales Leader at Jabra.  Rice work works with medium and large businesses to outfit their work-from-home staff with the right audio endpoint technology and has had scores of conversations with business leaders about their migration towards teleworking.  “The telework trend is here to stay and it is only accelerating,” says Rice, “There are just too many benefits to businesses and their employees.”  

Reasons Businesses are Increasing Their Work-From-Home Workforce

Some of the business benefits that are cited by companies for the growth in their Telework workforce include:

Productivity – According to a recent Harvard Business Review Article, some businesses are seeing more than a 13% productivity increase and lower turnover among home workers.  Employees self report being much more productive due to lower numbers of interruptions and non-productive meetings.  

War for Talent – Global Workforce Analytics says that 95% of employers say telework has a high impact on employee retention.  Providing work-from-home flexibility is high on the list of items key employees are looking for.  As Rice explained, “Employees are asking themselves if they would rather be stuck in traffic or catching their kids’ soccer playoff game.  The company that offers them that opportunity while trusting them to get the job done can differentiate themselves during the hiring process and when it comes to retention.”

Lower Real Estate Costs – More workers telecommuting at least part-time means smaller offices and significant savings.  Coinciding with the move to open office spaces, the increase in teleworking is triggering a projected reduction in square footage per employee by 33% between 2010 and 2017.

Improved Tools Allow for Better Management – “Five years ago there were a lot of managers that were hesitant about encouraging employees to work from home due to concerns about their ability to monitor their productivity,” says Rice.  With the rise of Unified Communications, mobility, web and video conferencing and cloud-based business apps, those concerns have quickly subsided.

Hiring and Cultural Issues to Consider

There is more to expanding your work-from-home team than just deciding it’s a good idea.  According to Rice, there are a number of HR and workflow related issues to consider.

The Right Roles – Some roles are tailor made for teleworking, like marketing, sales, contact center agents or administrative workers.  Others, like accounting or engineering need to be considered on a case by case basis.  Managers need to put together plans that make sense for their department and their organization, (although recent college grads should probably not be high on the “work from home” list).

The Right Hires – Businesses need to spend the time during the interview process to determine if someone will be a good telework hire.  “Home workers need to be self motivated and comfortable with themselves,” says Rice.  “If they have prior experience working from home that is a plus, because it takes time to adapt to the lack of face-to-face and social interactions.”  Also, always be sure any potential teleworker has a dedicated space for their home office.  Being able to “go to work” can make a big difference, even if the commute is only one flight of stairs.

Cultural Cohesiveness – Having a work culture and workflow that incorporates home and remote workers makes a big difference.  This is where UC has really come into its own.  A business that embraces collaborating with teammates via video or web conference as a first choice quickly makes up for the diminishing number of water cooler discussions.  According to Rice, “In some ways, it tightens relationships with the right people.  Presence Management and instant messaging means rapid access to your colleagues and team members and means easier collaboration.”

Providing Teleworkers With The Right Technology

Home workers have somewhat unique needs when it comes to technology.  Businesses need to make sure they are outfitted with tools that maximize connectedness and productivity.  Some tools that are “must-haves” include:

Unified Communications and Collaboration:  Whether this is Skype for Business, Cisco Jabber or a UCaaS platform like 8×8 or WestIP – or for smaller businesses, just plain old Skype –  work from home employees need to be connected and ready to collaborate.  Presence management and IM are crucial for instant access to colleagues and customers, as are the voice and video conferencing capabilities that allow for internal and external meetings.   Extending these capabilities onto mobile devices via apps allows teleworkers to bring that cohesive connectivity on the road.

Audio Endpoints: When it comes to productivity increases few things equal hands free audio. Being able to type and collaborate while using a high-quality headset or a desktop speakerphone is a revelation to most home workers who have never used one before.  According to Rice “Having a device that can easily go back and forth between calls on your phone, your mobile or your computer can make all the difference for a marketer or a salesperson, while a corded headset is great for a home contact center agent.”

Other Vital Tech for Home Workers:  Start with a very solid, reliable broadband connection, layer in a VPN if necessary.  Have cloud based storage and email available.  Suggest mobile apps that are company approved like Box or OneBox for storage.  And if it’s me, I provide every teleworker with a second monitor if they don’t already have one.  As a long time teleworker myself, my second monitor and my headset provide huge productivity increases…I couldn’t live without them.

How is your business approaching the growth in remote workers?  Do you have a process for hiring new work-from-home employees?  What about deciding which existing employees are given the opportunity to work from home at least part time?  What tools are you outfitting them with?  Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Considerations for Businesses When Increasing Their Home-Based Telework Workforce appeared first on The UC Buyer.

This isn’t your father’s workplace anymore.  

The days of centralized company headquarters with every employee showing up to work in an office or a cubicle from 9 to 5 are on the run.  Since the start of the great recession, an explosion in enhanced communications and UC capabilities has led to the rise of a mobile, remote workforce, which has in turn led to businesses adopting smaller, leaner, open office spaces.  All of this has forced businesses and employees to adapt how they work and collaborate, which of course has had a significant impact on corporate culture.  

It’s an interesting enough trend and topic that I recently had a podcast interview with Urban Gillis the Vice President of Channel Sales for North America for Jabra, the high-end headset maker.  Because of the nature of their products, they’ve had a front-row seat as companies work to integrate communication and collaboration technology into their work processes and have watched as businesses work to increase adoption rates and make these new ways of working part of the corporate identity.  

Unified Communications Is Leading The Charge to a Mobile Culture

The technology we cover here at the UC Buyer is breaking down the barriers between time and space in a way not seen since, when?  The invention of the PBX, maybe?  Voice, video, presence management, IM and web conferencing is now ubiquitous, and the consumerization of IT means knowledge workers all have serious, mobile tech with them all the time.  Of course this also leads to the feeling that we are all available 24×7, which can have cultural repercussions.  According to Gillis, this is something businesses need to address. “Smart companies are starting to put policies in place that take ‘downtime boundaries’ into consideration.  Many of us have already experienced a significant shift in the blending of our work and personal lives due to the mobilization of technology, and having a culture that respects employees need to unplug can go a long way.”  

From a purely business perspective the reason for investing in communications technology is to enable employees to improve productivity and collaboration.  Unified Communications allows workers to access information and their colleagues at any time and for companies that do a good job of adopting these tools they become a key part of the company culture.  “Companies have to plan to eat their own dogfood when it comes to rolling out UC.  The goal is to enable more fluid and friction free collaboration that becomes part of the corporate culture,” says Gillis.   “For example, in my mind leveraging video makes for a better phone call and improves and enhances not only the communication, but the connection between colleagues and customers.  Businesses that turn to these tools consistently report a more cohesive work environment, even when that takes place across multiple locations.”

Workers Are Out of the Office…and They’re Staying There

All this tech means that employees just don’t need to be in the office as much to be connected and productive, and as a result, they’re not.  According to Gillis, 35% of knowledge workers are now mobile workers, either working on the road or out of a home office for a portion (or all) of the week  That trend is accelerating as this infographic shows.  Based on recent research, Jabra believes the number of knowledge workers working remotely will increase to up to 75% in just the next few years.  This is a huge number.  

One piece of tech that is taking on an outsized role in knitting this remote workforce together is presence management.  Many companies that I have spoken with that have had successful UC implementations are fully committed to having everyone keep their presence updated.  This leads to easy access to colleagues for a quick IM if you need a question answered, and also let’s you know when that person is unavailable or doesn’t want to be disturbed so they can get some work done.  “The average knowledge worker is interrupted every 10 minutes and it takes an average of 23 minutes to get back on track,” says Gillis. “If you are constantly being interrupted you are losing productivity.  Keeping your presence updated allows you to collaborate with the right people as needed and to stay in your concentration zone when you need to do ‘heads down’ work.”   

Open Offices Are Here to Stay

As more employees work remotely, companies don’t need as much office space.  As Gillis explains, “Over 50% of existing office space sits empty with workers on the road, or working from home.”  This trend has coincided with the rise of open office spaces, which are growing like crazy as we lay out in this handy infographic.    Open office spaces can be smaller, increase space utilization rates and create a sense of collaboration and a more open culture.  Since 2010, by moving to open office spaces businesses have decreased the square footage per employee by 33%, and increased the utilization of that space to closer to 80%.

These open offices can have a major impact on corporate culture as employees are much closer together.  On the one hand, this makes it easier for teams to collaborate and can lead to improved creativity and productivity.  The flip side is that they can be noisy and for many knowledge workers it can be harder to concentrate.   Jabra has been following this trend closely and has products designed to address these challenges, like their Evolve noise cancelling headset line and even a Busylight to let people in the office know your status just by looking your way (hint: red means leave me alone, I’m trying to work!).  

Another area we discuss in the podcast is the rising importance of conference and collaboration spaces in open offices.  The trend is towards a greater number of smaller conference rooms or huddle rooms so that team members can more easily collaborate on a project with some privacy.  These are less expensive when compared to large, telepresence-enabled conference rooms, and can just feature whiteboards and conference phones or they can be outfitted to with lower cost conferencing solutions in order to bring in remote team members or customers via video or web conferencing as needed.  

Challenges and Benefits Companies Face as UC Drives Change

According to Gillis, the greatest challenge companies face when it comes to successfully making the transition to a mobile, uc-driven culture, is adoption.  Without a good plan for getting the employees on board with the new technology and ways of working and collaborating, businesses won’t get the benefit from the investment and culture won’t adapt.  Related: Read How headsets have been proven to drive increased UC adoption rates.   

“If companies and employees adapt to these mega trends, they can realize significant business and cultural benefits,” says Gillis.  “Employees build closer relationships across time and space barriers, and improved employee moral is a huge benefit.”  In addition he says that getting a leg up on the war for talent is a big upside for businesses in that they can offer flexibility of location and improved work life balance to the right candidates.

How is your business adapting to these changes.  How well have you done adopting new technologies and incorporating them into your culture?  Are you in an open office space and what are the pros and cons?  Let us know in the comment section below.

The post How UC, Mobility and Open Offices are Changing Corporate Culture appeared first on The UC Buyer.

Listen to this informative podcast featuring Urban Gillis, the VP of Channel Sales, North America for headset maker Jabra, as we discuss how evolving communications technology, mobility and the move towards remote working and open office spaces is changing corporate culture and what businesses need to do to prepare.  

What does it mean to be part of a team when most of the people you work with aren’t in the same building?  How can you build a great corporate culture with a workforce that is going to be 75% mobile in a few years?

Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcasts at iTunes (they’re great for the drive to work!) and stick with The UC Buyer for on-going insights into developments in the unified communications and collaboration market and how businesses and business people are changing the way they work.

The post Podcast Series: How Unified Communications (UC) is Impacting Corporate Culture – and Vice Versa appeared first on The UC Buyer.

Last summer I wrote an article discussing the evolving movement away from deskphones and towards myriad audio endpoints, including personal cell phones, softphones and professional headsets.  More recently, my colleague Paul Desmond wrote an article called Deskphones are on their way out…Unless they’re not, discussing the forces working against deskphones and their surprising resiliency in the face of these forces.

Now Frost and Sullivan makes it clear that not only are IP Deskphones not dying, the market is going to continue to grow, albeit more slowly, for the next 10 years, as this chart show:

Drivers of Growth in the IP Phone Market

According to their research, much of the activity and growth will come from TDM phone replacement and from growth in developing regions. Additionally, IP Phones are growing as hosted and cloud communications continue to gain traction.  In 2014 hosted and cloud comms represented 22% of the IP Deskphone market, but that number is expected to sell to 55% by 2021.  That makes sense as the pace of UCaaS growth and the deployment of Cloud PBX continues to accelerate…check out this infographic for details on UCaaS growth.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Download Now: Frost & Sullivan Report on the Strategic and Cultural Implications of UC in the Corporate World+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Additionally, F&S sees the growth of IP Media phones as a significant driver of growth for the deskphone market.  They define Media phones or video phones as:

…advanced IP desktop phones equipped with larger displays and either integrated or plugged cameras to enable personal video communication, as well as provide support for advanced telephony and UC features and integrated business applications.

1.5 million IP Media phones were shipped in 2014, and that market is expected to grow to almost 6 million by 2021.  Further drivers of growth include lower price points (as we discuss here), and the trend towards more advanced capabilities and UC enabled devices (as we discuss all the time).

Unified Communications, Headsets and Forces Eroding the Deskphone’s Dominance

All of this good news does not mean that deskphones don’t have things working against them.  For those of us that switched to softphones, UC and headsets a long time ago, there is no going back to holding a phone against your ear and getting a crick in your neck while you collaborate with colleagues.  All of this, is acknowledged in their article:

Frost & Sullivan estimates that in 2014 there were around 47.7 million active UC clients in use by business end users. However, most of these clients are still used in conjunction with IP desktop phones. Thus, while communications usage is shifting towards PC and intelligent mobile clients, IP desktop phones are still a viable alternative at the desk. We might not be using them as much as we used to in the past, but they are still there when we are at the desk. We believe that, over the coming years, there will still be a prime time for each type of endpoint, including desktop phone devices, depending on the workers’ situation, location and time of the day.

In addition to the aforementioned growth in the UCaaS and UC markets, the audio endpoint market is quickly moving towards professional headsets as they become mainstream devices for knowledge workers, as this infographic highlights.   While the IP Deskphone growth rate is expected to slow, the market for professional headsets is expected to grow at 23% CAGR through 2020, which is blazingly fast.

In addition, the headset market which has traditionally been driven primarily by the contact center space is now rapidly moving towards unified communications and knowledge workers.  UC-related shipments already account for 26.5% of the headset market, and the revenue from that segment of the market is expected to nearly quadruple from $281 Million annually in 2013 to $1 Billion by 2020.  Urban Gillis, VP of Sales at Jabra claims this growth makes sense considering that “the hands-free nature of headsets increases knowledge worker productivity, and has been proven to increase the adoption rates of UC deployments.  That’s why over three-quarters of companies choose headsets when replacing deskphones.”

Thanks to Frost and Sullivan for making it clear that although the market is changing quickly, the IP Deskphone is not dead yet.  Let us know what your company’s plans are when it comes to deskphones and deskphone replacement in the comments section below.

The post IP Phone Market Still Growing, Despite Predictions of Doom appeared first on The UC Buyer.

Over the last several years as I travel around the country to meet with companies, customers and colleagues, I have been bearing witness to the rapid shift in office spaces towards so-called open offices.  These spaces are a far cry from the corner office dominated, cubicle farm based, big boardroom offices we all grew up with and envision when we think of corporate America.  With teleworking on the rise, employees working flex hours and businesses looking to increase team collaboration, the walls have literally come down.  Businesses are decreasing the amount of space they lease, opening up the floor plans to increase team interaction and deploying unified communications solutions to streamline team and customer communications.

As this infographic lays out, businesses are on an unstoppable trend towards open office spaces and it makes good business sense -it saves them a LOT of money.  For example:

• Companies are leasing 33% less space per employee than they did just a decade ago
• Businesses have increased space utilization from 50% to 80-95%
• Organizations are now packing 7 workers in per 1000 sqft as opposed to 5 workers in just 2009

Recently I was meeting with some executives at Jabra in their new North American headquarters and received a guided tour of their brand new, state-of-the-art open office.  The thought that went into the space and the changes the new environment has helped facilitate in their business processes provided me with a new appreciation for how open offices can impact corporate culture and what businesses need to do to ensure open offices deliver on the promise of increased collaboration and efficiency.

Open Offices Require Careful Planning, Plenty of Collaboration and Specialty Spaces

According to Stefan Slattery, the Marketing Program Manager at Jabra, management was intimately involved in designing the new office.  “The overarching theme was always open office, but our facility manager interviewed and gathered details from the department heads to determine how each team needed to work and what approach would help them be the most effective,” says Slattery.  “For example, the marketing team went with an open bullpen area allowing easy access to colleagues for collaboration and rapid fire discussions.  The sales team wanted to afford a level of privacy for phone calls, but also allow for streamlined colleague access and collaboration, so the cubicle walls are shorter and they back up to each other so team members can connect more easily and see who is available for discussion.”

The other vital aspect of the open office that Jabra designed was ensuring there are plenty of private collaboration and conferencing spaces as well as specialty rooms to make sure the space performed for the employees.  According to Slattery, these rooms included:

Huddle Rooms – They have three glass-fronted rooms with whiteboard walls that groups can quickly go into to collaborate on a particular project.  By using glass the spaces are visible and teams can tell if they are available at a glance.

Silent Rooms – These rooms have their own doors and deliver privacy for employees that are looking to have a private conversation  or execute on heads down work

Relaxation Spaces – These rooms have comfortable couches and chairs that employees can use to take a break, or do some work on their laptops with their feet kicked up.

Lync Video Conferencing Rooms – These two video collaboration rooms are fully integrated with their MS Lync UC solution, with huge video monitors showing upcoming meetings with one-click launch.  Schedule a meeting at your desk for one of these rooms, walk in at the correct time with your team and click ‘Go’.  Watch everyone else appear on the monitor as they join.  Sounds pretty sweet.

Conference Rooms with Full AV Hookups – Another 4 or 5 conferencing rooms with full AV hookups are scattered throughout the office to ensure there is never a lack of available conference space and that local teams can connect with remote colleagues or customers whenever necessary.

“These rooms are what really make the new space shine,” says Slattery.  “You never feel like there is a lack of privacy if you need it, or team collaboration space when you want it.  This makes a big difference, especially in such an open environment.”

Concentration and Productivity in Open Office Spaces

One area that it is clear open office spaces excel in is increased face-to-face collaboration among team members.  “From the marketing team’s perspective we are noticing major improvements in collaboration and the ability to more easily meet with colleagues and pull remote team members into a conversation.  This is especially true with the increased number of video collaboration rooms, not to mention desktop video at every workstation” says Slattery.  One interesting point is that the huddle rooms are quickly becoming a favorite locale for sidebar conversations and impromptu brainstorming sessions.  The additional flex spaces allow for team members to address some of the perceived downsides of open offices, namely they are noisier and employees can feel a lack of privacy.

In such open spaces, another area of concern I have heard from employees is concentration.  How do you execute on that heads down, critical project when you are right in the middle of all your coworkers?  Having the chance to discuss this with Jabra was ideal, as they are committed to eating their own dogfood when it comes to open office collaboration, leveraging unified communications and utilizing their own devices to enhance privacy.  “When it comes to creating a personal concentration zone, you are responsible for carving out your own space and dependence on your devices and peripherals is critical,” says Slattery.  “The first thing I do is change the presence status on my UC solution to ‘Do Not Disturb’ to cut down on non-critical IM’s and phone calls.  Then I turn on my busylight so my colleagues know not to tap me on my shoulder.  Then I put on my noise cancelling headset, switch it from connecting to my phone to connecting with my music so I can get down to business.”  

I had never heard of a busylight before, but it is a desktop peripheral that connects to your phone and a red light shines to let people know you are on a phone call.  You can also manually turn it on to let people know you are concentrating.  A simple idea, but it makes a lot of sense in an open office.  Having a noise cancelling headset like the Jabra Evolve can make it seem like you are alone in the office by eliminating virtually all background noise.

Getting this tour gave me a new appreciation for how a well-planned, well-executed open office space can deliver results.  Design for each team’s unique needs, commit to unified communications, have plenty of collaboration spaces and make sure each team member has the right devices to allow for privacy and execution.  Seems like a pretty simple recipe.

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Polycom last week announced a couple of new desktop phones that the company says works with “a broad array of SIP call control platforms and integrate with third-party Web-based UC and productivity applications.”  But all I could think of when I saw the press release was, “Who buys desktop phones anymore?”

To answer the question, I talked to Chris Thorson, senior director of product marketing for Polycom. As it turns out, he wrote a blog post on this very topic late last year.  His main points are that desktop phones are highly reliable, deliver good quality audio and are easy to set up and use. No arguments with any of that here.

As for Polycom’s new phones – the single-line VVX 101 and dual-line VVX 201 – they are intended as low-cost phones for certain situations where a desktop phone just makes sense. Think wall phones for use by multiple employees or “front line workers,” such as the guy in the tire store who has to use it to take calls from customers and to call other stores to find tires. Such folks are not tied to a desk all day, so a professional headset just doesn’t make sense.

I’ll go along with that. But in thinking about the issue further, with respect to typical office environments it strikes me we’re likely dealing with two main camps here. The first is folks like me who are happy to ditch their desk phone and use either a cell phone with headset or ear buds or, as I do most often, a softphone with headset – lately either Skype or Google Voice. The other camp is folks who have no interest in change. They’ve talked on a desk phone all their lives and are happy to continue doing so.

Then there’s a bit of a wild card, that being cloud-based VoIP and unified communications services. You can make a case that desk phones make good sense when used with such services, and Thorson heartily agrees.

Which leaves us with two main arguments that I’ll explore here.

IP Desktop Phones are Dying a Slow Death

The first argument is that IP desktop phones are on the way out. This makes sense if you consider that the latter camp mentioned above that loves their desk phones is on the wane. As the work force continues to get younger, it’s filled with people who grew up with cell phones and Skype and all the rest – and are quite comfortable with no desk phone in sight.

And it’s not just the young folks who want to ditch desk phones. Even some old fogies like me who can remember using rotary dial phones are doing it.  

The market numbers bear that out, as sales of IP desktop hardware, and IP PBXs, is expected to be rather anemic in coming years. As IDC reports in its Worldwide IP PBX and Desktop Hardware IP Phone 2014–2018 Forecast:

“Low-single-digit IP PBX revenue growth is predicted by IDC for 2014–2018, with an expected compound annual growth rate of 2.8% for the forecast period,” states Rich Costello, IDC senior research analyst, Unified Communications. “But product and revenue challenges will continue for IP telephony and UC&C vendors as customer interest and demand continue to evolve from hardware based to more software-based solutions.”

To be fair, Thorson says growth in desktop phones has been in single digits or flat for quite some time, with numbers closely tied to the economy in general. And he says the argument over whether phones are dead has likewise been going on for some time.

And he’s right. A 2012 post on Slashdot asked the simple question, “Do you still need a phone at your desk?”  Commenters chimed in on both sides but I thought this one from “samzenpus “summed it up nicely:

Today I have a smart phone, corporate IM, several flavors of personal IM, the Skype client and several flavors of collaboration software including Google Apps/Docs, GoToMeeting. My wife and daughter call me or text me on the cell phone. My co-workers who are too lazy or passive aggressive to wander into my office use IM. My brother in Iraq uses Skype. I use GoToMeeting and its built-in VoIP with customers. The big black phone sits there gathering dust. 

Not sure I get the passive aggressive comment but otherwise the poster paints a pretty accurate picture of the modern work environment.  

Cloud-based VOIP/UC Will Breath Life into IP Desktop Phones

A development that may yet give a boost to the desktop phone market, however, is cloud-based VoIP and UC services. To the extent that companies sign on with cloud services to reduce the complexity inherent in providing the services on premise, a desktop phone that complements the service makes sense. Simply put, it’s easier to deploy a phone than a computer, and in some cases the phone is included in the price of the service.

As Thorson points out, in many ways we’re seeing a return to the days of Centrex service, when people bought phone service from their local telephone company. That was replaced with TDM PBXs on premise, then IP PBXs. Now things have come full circle and folks are happy to wash their hands of having to provide phone service in-house.

Today, however, the phones attached to those services are becoming far more capable, with some incorporating video screens to support not just audio but video communications, including video conferences. Yes, you can do that on a computer as well, but I can see where having such capabilities built into the phone, with the service coming from the cloud, would be an attractive, low-hassle option.

Frost and Sullivan sees it that way, as well. Alaa Saayed, ICT Industry Manager for the firm, in May posted a chart projecting growth for IP phones through 2025. He wrote:

Growth rates are expected to be much lower than in previous years. However, growth is still expected. Much of the activity will be driven by the replacement of TDM phones, growth in developing regions, and deployment of IP phones in the hosted/cloud communications space.  While Frost & Sullivan estimates that 22.0 percent of IP desktop phone shipments in 2014 was deployed in the hosted/cloud space, this figure is expected to reach 55.0  percent by 2021.   

He also projects shipments of feature-rich IP “media phones” as mentioned above would nearly quadruple in 7 years from the 1.5 million such devices shipped in 2014. And, he notes, “The market is still far from seeing massive replacements of IP desktop phones.”  

IP Desktop Phones vs. Headsets: Sorting Out Pricing

Pricing, of course, is always an issue in such decisions. This one is a bit tough to sort out. You can certainly buy a headset for far less than you’ll likely spend on an IP desktop phone, but whether it will have the features your users need or want is another issue.

The two phones Polycom just came out with – the single-line VVX 101 and dual-line VVX 201 – cost $119 and $159, respectively (at online retailer VoIP Supply). As Thorson says, they are intended to be low-cost options.

Jabra, a leading headset supplier, has wireless Bluetooth headsets at Amazon.com starting at less than $30 and corded headsets optimized for UC platforms such as Microsoft Lync for less than $40. More feature-rich models, on the other hand, are upwards of $100, while top of the line models that work with either soft phones or mobile phones are closer to $200 (and it’s pretty cool how they work, as we’ve reported previously).

We’ve love to hear your thoughts on the issue – do desktop phones have a future in your organization or are you phasing them out? Or maybe some mix?  Let us know in the comments below.

The post Desktop Phones Are On the Way out – Unless They’re Not appeared first on The UC Buyer.

To be honest, many of the decisions that led to this array of audio endpoints came about in an ad hoc manner based on the need to increase productivity as well as my own personal preferences.  That haphazard method is not the best approach for most businesses, according to Bill Orlansky, the Director of Strategic Alliance Marketing for Jabra.  “As the nature of work continues to evolve and more businesses deploy unified communications solutions, leading companies are putting a framework around the types of audio endpoints they believe will maximize productivity and effectiveness for the various locations and types of users in their enterprise.”  

Segmenting Users By Business Role and Work Spaces Leads to Targeted Audio Endpoint Options

According to Orlansky, there are three primary criteria businesses should take into consideration when defining the range of endpoint choices for employees – Type of worker, location and personal preference.  Here are some examples of different types of employees and how their role and workspace can influence endpoint requirements.

Related:  Making the Wireless Headset Decision:  DECT vs Bluetooth

Desk Centric Employees

• Office Based Workers – These are non-mobile employees that perform highly focused individual work, with some team interaction.  They spend most of their time at a desk in an office or home office environment and need to be hands-free to maximize productivity
• Customer Service – Non-mobile employees, they work frequently on the phone with remote customers.  These employees spend nearly all their time at their desk.  Noise cancelling and the ability to easily connect to phones or PC’s are key considerations.

Campus Centric

• Specialists  – These employees work mostly at a desk, but move around the office for meetings and occasionally work from home.  They are looking for comfort, extended talk time and exceptional audio quality
• Manager – These employees travel occasionally and when in the office spend around a third of the time away from their desk.  Hands free calling, multi-connection capability  and the ability to adapt to office and mobile use are key

Mobile Centric

• Executive – They travel often between various company and customer offices and when they are at the office spend most of their time away from the desk.  Wireless mobility and dual connection to PC and phone are important
• Field Employee – These are teleworkers, road warriors or employees that spend the majority of their time away from a corporate office.  They need to be able to work effectively from anywhere and need noise cancellation tech and wireless mobility capability

By breaking down the physical locations where communication and collaboration happens into buckets like these, and layering in the type of workers inside the company, businesses can begin to define all necessary UC endpoints.  But, there is one more thing.

Don’t Forget Personal Preference  

According to Orlansky, businesses shouldn’t go too far in mandating only certain types of audio endpoints based on the above criteria. “At the end of the day, the device makes the experience for a user of UC and you want employees to be comfortable with the device they use…sometimes for hours a day,” says Orlansky.  “For example, some of my colleagues prefer a small wireless earpiece even when on a video conference at their desk, while I prefer my comfortable, stereo (two speaker) wired headset, or if I am in a closed office, my USB speakerphone.”  

Providing guidelines while maintaining flexibility is the key for businesses, especially since headsets and effective audio endpoints have such a significant impact on UC adoption.   “Businesses should allow some wiggle room in terms of the actual device so their employees are happy.  A noise cancelling wireless headset may make great sense for a certain type of user and location, but is it an over ear, headband,  or in ear device?”  Based on the type of user, their priorities can range from comfort, to design aesthetic, to noise cancellation.

In today emerging open office environment active noise cancelling headsets with enterprise grade noise cancelling microphones not only allow the employees to create a “concentration zone” in noisy environments, but also ensure that when they are on a call they can clearly hear and be heard by their colleagues and customers.

Answering these questions can mean the difference between a highly successful UC deployment and a disappointment.  “60% of companies expect ROI on their UC deployment in one year, while only 10% achieve it,” according to Orlansky.  With the recent report from Frost & Sullivan highlighting how significantly the right audio endpoints can improve those chances, it makes good business sense to look at users, spaces and preferences.

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