Five Tips To Consider Before Implementing IP Communications

15/03/10

Trevor Richer, marketing director EMEA, Empirix.

Communicating with customers is the cornerstone of success for any enterprise. New IP communication solutions present unique opportunities for businesses to interact with their customers and employees. A positive experience is essential for building loyalty and winning new business.

However, today's communications infrastructure is complex, whilst technologies such as VoIP, unified communications and SIP bring undoubted benefits, there remains a certain amount of confusion around the solutions. The five tips below aim to help companies get the very most out of an investment in IP communications, ensuring a smooth transition and a quick realisation of the perceived...

...benefits.

1. Understand your business needs

As with any investment in technology it is critical to understand your overall business needs. You should have a full understanding of your whole environment from the capacity of your current network (for example, whether or not it can handle VoIP applications), the volume of communications currently occurring, as well the impact of IP and unified communications on the way your company interacts with its customers.

2. End-to-End Testing

End-to-End testing is crucial if organisations are to make the most of their investments. The pace at which technologies like VoIP are being installed into business environments means that testing can seem like an unrealistic prospect - especially with increasingly tight budgets. However, research from the Customer Experience Forum and sponsored by Empirix shows the project cost overruns can be over 90% if testing is not performed. End-to-end testing most accurately reflects the real business environment and is therefore the most effective at ensuring that everything works as expected.

3. Ensuring Quality of Experience

Identifying the problems before they reach employees or customers is the ideal scenario for any new technology investment. Validating the Quality of Experience (QoE) using real-world scenarios delivers quantifiable, objective information, which can... continued on page two >

 

 

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