Unified communication systems enable your workforce to carry out their jobs, talk to customers and suppliers and collaborate with their colleagues. To say it's important that your UC systems are always running properly is an understatement. It doesn't matter whether you use Avaya, Cisco, Skype for Business or others or whether you use a mixture of them, they still should always be working. Here are some compelling reasons why you should monitor Avaya's UC system to ensure it continues to hum.
1. Understand the Entire UC Ecosystem in One Place
Regardless of your choice of platform, you need to perform monitoring with a tool that looks at all pieces of the ecosystem. Over 65% of customers have a hybrid environment, which may include call control solutions from Avaya. Monitoring everything in the one place can allow you to understand the entire ecosystem, along with the ability to pinpoint where the cause of a specific issue lies. It saves time from jumping from one analytics tool to another. With an overarching solution if it's a router or a routing table within the router, for instance, it's possible to immediately identify which organization owns the issue. You'll be able to affect a repair and shorten the time to resolution, which increases customer satisfaction and uptime.
2. The Consequences of Not Monitoring Avaya's Unified Comms
The Nemertes Real-World IPT and UC Costs: 2017 report found that organizations not using monitoring tools had almost triple the operational costs compared to those who had. Customers in a non-monitoring environment do not have a tool to keep track of the user experience. By not monitoring, companies must rely on the community to report problems. These organizations find that 7 out of 10 problems are reported by the end-user. This kind of reactive approach elongates the time to repair because they must convince people that the problem lies in a certain area. Approximately 80% of the time to repair is time to identify/time for ownership. Additionally, it usually takes an average of eight people to determine who is responsible for the issue so that a resolution can be effected.
3. Identify Avaya Issues Faster
An experience monitoring environment allows you to identify issues quickly and effectively. If 80% of time to resolution is time to identify, that means figuring out where the issue lies could have a drastic impact on the business. Let's say a group of servers that are needed for line of business applications has gone down. Getting these critical servers back up and running sooner could directly impact revenue, which subsequently has an impact on margin and shareholder value.
4. Overcome Challenges of a Multi-Vendor Environment
A monitoring tool that only looks at a single component is only able to provide limited information. In the case of Avaya, it would only be able to look down at Avaya Call Control and Avaya Edge. What about Polycom video-in ports or a switch route network that isn't an Avaya product? If you only look at one piece of the environment, you aren't seeing the full picture. Now you're back to trying to figure out where the issue lies. That's why you need the ability to monitor the entire multi-vendor end-to-end ecosystem including the edge, call control, contact center, or core route switch. Only when you have the full picture can you determine where the issue lies and effect a repair.
5. Decrease Repair Time by Monitoring Avaya's Unified Comms
Avaya unified comms monitoring tools make a substantial difference when it comes to repair time. You need to ensure that collaborative environments have as much uptime as possible (with collaboration tools, they're either up or down.) If and when issues arise, you'll want to minimize repair time so that services are back up and running immediately. People in the enterprise rely on these environments to stay connected, and the sooner you effect a repair, the sooner everyone can get back to driving innovation.
6. Increase Quality of Service and Uptime
If you have the ability to bring people together in real-time, it results in faster decision-making and shorter cycle times. You'll reduce costs and potentially drive additional margins and shareholder or principal value. Organizations adopt collaboration solutions not because they want a dial tone, fancy new hardware, or the ability to move to the cloud. They use these solutions to drive business value, whether it's through call control or video, in the contact center, instant messaging, or the entire UC stack. People out in the field now have real-time access to executive and technical talent, and value comes from the associated shortened cycle times between design and manufacturing. These solutions make it possible to expand partnerships and improve go-to-market routes, which also unleashes agility.
7. Add a Different Voice to the Mix
It's sometimes useful to introduce an external voice, especially because customers might look at the manufacturer with a wary eye. Organizations want to get a third-party independent confirmation of exactly where the issue lies. Once pinpointed, you can go to the hardware manufacturer and show proof that part of their architecture is exhibiting the issue. It also allows you to ensure you're getting service levels that you may have negotiated. Now you have your own capability to understand uptime, so you have the comfort level that comes with using a monitoring tool that provides an honest, accurate view of what's going on in the environment. You're now equipped with hard information to take to the manufacturer and help effect a solution.
8. Allow Companies to Cater to their Strengths
Companies like Avaya are good at creating a particular solution, but monitoring may not be their core area of expertise. When we met with Avaya at their international user group in Las Vegas, it was evident that they had an extremely positive outlook. They are taking advantage of Chapter 11 not only to restructure debt, but also to restructure operationally and knock down some of their internal walls, allowing them to better utilize their resources. Their innovation engine is still hard at work, driving additional revenue and margin. We're seeing new innovation from Avaya around contact centers, desktop clients, and mobile clients. Like other companies, however, their monitoring component is almost an afterthought. If you ask Avaya how to effectively monitor your entire UC ecosystem, they'll recommend Prognosis.
9. Maximize your Investment in Avaya's Unified Comms
With IR Prognosis, we stay up-to-date with all manufacturers. We're actually the only monitoring solution certified on all current versions of Avaya's unified comms and their competitors. We've had a relationship with Avaya for over 7 years now, and we work hand-in-hand with their teams. As soon as they release a new solution, we're already compliant. When you implement an IR Prognosis solution in your environment, you're obtaining a rich, purpose-built tool designed to give end-to-end visibility and troubleshooting capability. You made the wise investment in collaboration tools to successfully drive innovation, margin, and growth. Now you can ensure they stay up and running at all times.
10. Unleash Power through Collaboration
If an organization tells the market that they will launch new product lines, enter into new markets, revamp cost structures, or change the way they serve clients, they need to back up those promises by driving business value. Collaboration is the most powerful way to do just that, because it unleashes people power.
