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December 3, 2009

Explore the power of presence as part of your Unified Communications strategy

Microsoft’s Unified Communications solutions use the power of software to streamline communications. Office Communications Server (OCS), at the centre of Microsoft’s UC solutions, is the platform for presence, instant messaging, conferencing, and enterprise voice for businesses around the world.

Presence plays a crucial part in any Unified Communications platform, and in the workflow processes for an organisation. Presence opens up the opportunity to link an entire organisation together into a single, multi-media communications environment, allowing calls, emails, faxes and messages to be transmitted seamlessly from one person or one department to another. OCS also allows for federation between organisations.

What is presence?

'Presence' technology tracks individuals' availability. Presence allows users to check the availability of colleagues and partners, chat and collaborate online. Individuals can share files, share screens and call other users.

Instant Messaging is an example of presence. An individual may be 'Available', 'Away' or 'Busy'. If someone is 'Away' then you know they aren't available, if someone is 'Available' then a tentative ‘You free to chat?' message will determine if they can to be interrupted. This is fine for one-to-one communication – when you already know who you want to talk to, and simply wish to contact them as quickly as possible.

However, presence also opens up huge opportunities for improving the way a business operates. New technologies such as OCS allow presence to be integrated into business processes and drive productivity and efficiency. To enable this to take place presence needs to become ‘Multi-Dimensional’.

Presence and its integration into business processes

For an organisation to build processes around presence we need to add some additional dimensions, such geography, or skill-set. There are many other dimensions that can be added that transform one-to-one communications to multi-dimensional presence. 'Presence Aware' business applications utilise presence information for automated real time transaction routing, and require reliable, real-time presence data.

This not only improves task management processes, but also improves reactivity and increases productivity in an organisation, whilst reducing costs.

Additional Dimensions include:

Geography
Let’s say your organisation needs to despatch a member of staff to a particular location – urgently. This is a requirement in many organisations with mobile workforces. Often new assignments will be identified during the day and priorities will change. Imagine if the organisation has a presence solution that enables them to perform a real-time check on availability, skill-set and location, in order to best allocate assignments.

Skill-set
Another such dimension could be skill-set. A customer has called an organisation's call centre, and the call centre agent needs to find an expert in a particular product. They need someone who is both 'Available' and has a particular skill. A multi-dimensional presence solution would help identify someone based on these two criteria, so the call can be transferred. This if far better than asking the caller to call another number, or logging a call, with a promise of a call back. The customer will be better served, and the organisation's processes more streamlined and efficient.

Position
Seniority within an organisation, especially if escalation is required, is another such dimension that allows the power of presence to deliver enhanced customer service and an immediate response to customer concerns.

The more dimensions that can be built into a Presence solution, the more radical can be its impact on the organisation's operation. Whether office-based or mobile, knowing a worker's presence (in this new multi-dimensional sense) allows that worker to be better utilised.

Your system requirements

Differing organisations have different requirements, and different systems and processes in place. So the way that a multi-dimensional presence solution is implemented will vary. Nevertheless, there are some common components that are needed:

  • A presence engine. This may be an existing Unified Communications platform, such as Microsoft's OCS.
  • An aggregation service, to gather information from multiple sources to create a complete, multi-dimensional view of presence.
  • A task or call management solution – for allocating tasks and calls based on presence information. This may be an existing call distribution of workflow management solution, or a bespoke business application.
  • Where mobile workers are involved, a mobile device equipped to collect and transmit geographic location.
  • System interfaces and integration – ensuring real-time, multi-dimensional presence information is available to the users and systems requiring it.

The potential for presence embedded into an organisations' business processes is enormous. The first step is the implementation of a Unified Communications platform and instant messaging and presence solution. The next step is to start adding additional dimensions that are relevant to your organisation, opening the information up to users and systems.

Learn more now

Generation-e is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Unified Communications, championing Microsoft OCS.  Generation-e has the expertise and experience to design, implement then support your unified communications environment. Please contact us on 1300 553 088, or complete the form.