Optimising business processes

An effective communications infrastructure can in today's competitive economy supercharge organisations' process chain - from developing a product, to procurement, manufacturing, sales and customer management.

The meanwhile

In the meanwhile, valuable employee productivity is compromised as the workflow has effectively come to a standstill due to the breakdown in communications, exactly according to instructions and figuratively.

This is where an effective unified communications and collaboration strategy becomes very relevant, as it is in substance designed to optimise your communications processes, enabling your business to run smoothly.

UCC offers the possibility to any business to optimise its communication-intensive processes. For one, it greatly improves the accessibility and "contactability" of decision-makers, employees and partners, ensuring that processes are fast-tracked as opposed to grinding to a halt.

The foundation of UCC

The foundation of UCC, which effectively establishes an integrated presence, means users can quickly and efficiently locate one another and communicate business-critical ideas and final decisions, whether it is through e-mail, instant messaging or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) options just as Skype.

No more time-wasting attempts to contact one another using different terminals, phones numbers and mail boxes. A mouse click is essentially all that you need to call the available contact and - when required - broaden the call into a phone or videoconference to include other parties. The entire process becomes flexible and, importantly, time and cost saving.

Joint working in secure, virtual project rooms on the Internet enhances and simplifies collaboration. Users can to the letter edit a document at the same time, mitigating delays due to "human latency".

Effective UCC infrastructure in place

With an effective UCC infrastructure in place, communications are connected directly with no media discontinuity - enhancing employees' process related work environment and aligning it with their scheduled tasks.

Gone are the days where communication is limited to human interaction. To all intents and purposes, if an organisation's communications are optimised to enhance business processes, it effectively gives way to a more general "process optimisation" strategy.

Each and every individual and their function within the organisation benefits from this process optimisation strategy, whether they are at their office PC, notebook or smartphone.

For example, UCC-enabled automated systems and incident response processes can help business teams communicate quickly with one another, or with the required specialists, whenever needed by simply clicking a button or entering a command. Incidents will be managed and resolved through the best available means of communications.

Hosted VOIP effectively takes the benefits of calling over Internet Protocol to the at once level as the integration, migration of operation of VOIP systems are in the hands of experienced service providers.

Central service from the organisation's network

When voice communications are set up with a central service from the organisation's network, it effectively simplifies the management of the solution. Moreover, the integration of various locations is much easier as the service provider can quickly implement relocations and new users anywhere in the world.

However, hosted VOIP's real value proposition becomes evident when it forms part of a UCC strategy, as it is at the time integrated into various channels just as videoconferencing and instant messaging to name however a few.

As with all network-centric services, the costs are aligned with the actual need, as the price is always flexibly adjusted according to the number of users and ports. Users can simply be added or removed as and when the need arises.

Effective UCC design

An effective UCC design and strategy will eliminate the barriers that have traditionally separated voice calls, e-mail, instant messaging and conferencing in all forms.

The justification of the business case for UCC rests upon increased competitiveness, acceleration of business decision-making and enhanced operational efficiency and productivity. It effectively gives companies a whole new set of capabilities and tools.

Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 129 million mobile clients, roughly 37 million fixed-network lines and 16 million broadband lines. The group provides products and services for the fixed network, mobile communications, the Internet and IPTV for consumers, and ICT solutions for business clients and corporate clients. Deutsche Telekom is present in over 50 countries and has more than 250 000 employees worldwide. The group generated revenue of EUR64.6 billion in the 2009 financial year - more than half of it outside Germany.

Global infrastructure of data centres

Drawing on a global infrastructure of data centres and networks, T-Systems operates information and communication innovation systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions. T-Systems provides integrated solutions for the networked future of business and society. The company's 45 300 employees combine industry expertise and ICT innovations to add significant value to clients' core business all over the world. T-Systems generated revenue of around EUR8.8 billion in the 2009 financial year.