InfoTrack Survey Finds Growth in Third-Party Partners to Grow UC Planning

Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) is gaining popularity as companies of all sizes are discovering the benefits that such an approach can provide. Much of this growth is due to strategic partnerships. In fact, a recent survey has found that IT departments will grow their use of outside partners for UC technology planning over the next two years.

This study, conducted by T3i Group’s InfoTrack division, found that these client engagements are direct avenues to growth for providers of professional services. The survey also indicated that an incumbent relationship with a professional service provider is among the top three selection criteria for planning and design work.

Such a relationship most often starts with a telephony system installation and implementation. This study supports the idea that building these relationships and delivering an exceptional experience for the client is essential to building additional revenues and extending these relationships.

An evaluation of the industry reveals that opportunities for a wide spectrum of network planning and design engagements are growing. Businesses leaders are increasingly embedding Unified Communications applications in their sales, manufacturing, fulfillment and support processes.

To sustain these implementations, IT departments must support new software applications, interfaces and standards as employees download their preferred versions of instant messaging and independently select their smartphone manufacturers. To ensure successful consistency in performance, it is also important that IT departments provide guidelines for employees.

Professional service providers are providing IT decision-markers with roadmaps to address the added network complexity and risk, as well as to assure investment protection.

The InfoTrack research found that more than half of enterprise and international business decision-makers and one-third of SMB decision-makers surveyed will consider using professional services to conduct security assessments and communications/technology consulting, in addition to other services, by the close of 2009.

Professional services relationships have been proven to be built on both the technical and management level. Service providers are able to maximize their sales by properly managing the jobs, maintaining client relationships after completion and selling new services over time.

A recently-released InfoTrack report entitled, "InfoTrack for Enterprise Services: Professional Services Customer Satisfaction," found that the highest rated service providers were able to design forward-looking customized solutions, and expand their services roles to assist their clients in attaining the best overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

"Services represent the majority of a life-cycle UC solution, and IT decision-makers look to partners to protect their networks and investments," commented Susan Hobart, executive vice president and senior research director at T3i Group, in a Friday statement.

"The challenge for service providers is to equip their teams with the skills to establish technical, contextual and account management relationships with their clients. Technology training is not enough. Successful professional service engagements require project management, constant communication, formal reports and thorough understanding of customers' applications,” added Hobart.

For those professional service providers that have already started to build relationships with IT departments within client organizations, now is proving to be the right time to expand those relationships and make recommendations for UC planning. In doing so, these companies can protect the client base and provide a more satisfying experience.