Communication Solutions

Allowing guests as well as staff to enjoy seamless communication, Hotelier India investigates the importance of unified communication in hotels.

An employee uses multiple communication tools not only in the office or at home, but also while travelling and even during vacations.

At present, businesses are becoming more and more ‘virtual’, which means a business or its workers are not necessarily confined to one physical office or address and might be running with many decentralised elements, most of which exist only online.

Hence, due to lack of integration of various communication tools such as phones, faxes, emails and video conferencing, the use of these different technologies is not optimised. As a result, while communication might be effective, it might not be efficient, both technically and economically.

Now it is possible to have phone, video conferencing, instant messaging and fax integrated into a single service with minimum hardware. This is Unified Communication (UC) in simple words.

UC is the integration of real-time communication services such as instant messaging, telephony (including IP telephony), video conferencing, call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax).

UC is not a single product, but a set of products that provides a consistent unified user-interface and user-experience across multiple devices and media types.

Owing to the widespread effects of the recession, in 2009 the industry witnessed a significant increase in adoption of conferencing technologies by enterprises for business continuity.

The major advantage that these solutions carry is travel cost cutting, real-time collaboration, better connectivity and improved collaboration irrespective of the location of individuals.

With the growing need for companies to save on their travel expenses, enterprises are largely adopting audio-video conferencing solutions in order to replace the need for face-to-face business meetings.

Traditional communication vendors are now embracing IP telephony as the future standard for enterprise communications. Along with the advantage of flexibility given to end users, IP telephony allows users to reduce costs by combining their voice and data networks.

Even in sectors like hospitality, unified communications represent an unprecedented opportunity to streamline communications across the board and enrich the entire guest experience with improved service times, personalised assistance and quality communications.

Guests can enjoy ubiquitous access to excellent service while management, concierges and staff can have secure, anytime-access to the information and resources they need to best perform their jobs.

New Launches
Technology companies recognise the demand for such a product and are making strategic announcements to tap into the market. Avaya recently announced a suite of new and enhanced products and services based on the Avaya Aura platform that are designed to improve real-time, multi-media communications.

The new capabilities in Avaya’s suite of Contact Center and UC applications improve customer service and employee collaboration while lowering the total cost of ownership.

The future of both real-time and non-real-time communications – especially for a highly mobile workforce – is Persistent Contextual Sessions.

A shift from a document based approach to a ‘people centric collaboration’ approach is built on the premise that Avaya’s SIP enabled UC architecture can support seamless, context-enabled interactions that enhance communications – delivering customer service gains, productivity improvements, and easier access to information anytime, anywhere, anyhow.

“People need to be at the centre of these interactions – with the technology serving their needs, not vice versa. We believe that communications will evolve from its current state to one that is created of persistent, contextual sessions.

Communications will become a fabric that supports conversations and collaboration across different communities – customers, suppliers, workgroups and communities through an experience that is contextual providing the right set of information and access based on past data, current status and user preferences,” explains Chee Tat Meng, solutions marketing, Hospitality Practice-Asia Pacific, Avaya Inc.

To help organisations harness the power of social media within their communications strategy, Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN) provides flexible OpenScape Fusion Social Media Integration capabilities.

These integrations allow organisations to tightly weave both public and corporate social media tools into enterprise customer contact centers and unified communications solutions.

Socially-aware unified communications is all about leveraging the breadth and reach of social media as part of any organisation’s UC strategy.

The OpenScape Fusion Social Media integrations are currently available and can be customised as required by specific business objectives and communication needs. Likewise NEC’s VPCC Solutions offer robust security, reduced TCO, greater compatibility, high-quality VoIP, smooth image processing, true mobility, and low power consumption.

These solutions are environmentally friendly and allow for better utilisation of resources. NEC has a range of fast, reliable and stylish POS terminals that enable faster customer service.

With NEC’s software solutions, you can display dynamic as well as interactive content for your guests thus enabling easier and more efficient communication.

Panel Director is a leading digital signage software solution that lets you distribute dynamic video, images and text, direct to flat panel display screens anywhere, anytime.

VIVA Communications’ new unified systems come with integrated voice, data and video applications featuring IM and presence management.

It also comes with integrated contact centre platform, video and audio conferencing and customised cloud applications, which could be industry specific.

These are deployed either as stand alone or integrated with the existing systems. The entire new UC platform comes with core management software along with APIs for integrating with the existing systems.

VIVA Communications deploys systems with distributed architecture including an array of open interfaces that seamlessly integrate third-party information and applications.

By integrating business communications with key data, organisations can leverage their assets better and attain efficiency. Unicel is an enterprise mobility solutions specialist with critical expertise in voice and data solutions.

With a soon-to-be-launched new range of exciting voice solutions for the enterprise, they aim to simplify the hugely complex and overloaded communication system by bringing together accessibility, mobility and efficiency on the mobile phone.

Services like the Outbound Dialer to highly-efficient Customer Support IVRs, hold a world of possible applications in highly customer-centric industries, most importantly the hotel and hospitality industry.

Cisco’s IP Communication solutions and endpoints allow organisations to extend consistent communications services to employees in all workspaces, whether they are on the main campus, at branch offices, or working remotely.

Amongst others, Cisco offers the Unified IP Phone 6900 Series, a simplified, fully-featured and cost-effective voice communications option. Customer contact solutions by Cisco provide an open, strategic platform for extending customer care beyond simple phone transactions to content-rich, customer-centric experiences.

Related products include Cisco Unified Expert Advisor that expands the scope of customer care by allowing presence-enabled knowledge workers to handle incoming customer calls and improve first-call resolution and increases customer satisfaction as well as Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, which allows sophisticated call routing and contact management capabilities for contact centers.

Mobile Collaboration increases employee productivity and controls mobile costs by helping mobile devices to operate from a secure, enterprise, managed platform.

Technology Integration
Specific new technologies for contact centers include enhanced workforce optimisation (WFO) solutions – enabling companies to make more informed decisions about customer service, and a proactive outreach manager solution – designed to let businesses reach out to customers via self-service, putting all multimedia interactions on a single platform.
Srinivasan S, founder and director, VIVA Communications, says, “Among the new technologies being used are IP based communications with both hardware and software based UC framework with PBX, email, collaboration tools having IM, presence management and groupware.

Cloud based architecture with sharing of resources and applications, SMS, SIP and H series for voice and video sharing and convergence features in the voice and video applications are new technologies.” Avaya Aura’s rich, collaboration applications now include enhanced conferencing, messaging, presence services and instant messaging that are easy for IT to deploy and easy for employees to use, regardless of their device, network or location.

The latest version of the Avaya Aura platform supports real-time, multi-media, multi-session and multi-device business communications and collaboration with greater security, scalability and flexibility than any communications solution on the market today.

The impact is to decreases costs, hardware and management requirements to the business while increasing flexibility, accessibility and collaboration for employees throughout the enterprise.

Vissal Mathew, Joint Managing Director, IDS Softwares Pvt Ltd opines, “The role played by the integrator is very critical. Primarily, there are two types of products in this space – the telephony vendors who present UC as an add on module to PBX; and software vendors who try to ride on PC.

The integration approach should be to leverage the existing infrastructure and build a complete UC solution with minimal add-ons. UC is all about interoperability. Hence, a lot of research is dedicated to achieve higher interoperability.

Newer products offer a higher feature transparency, and are moving beyond SIPIN 19.” Adds Vinay Aggrawal, CEO, Unicel Technologies, “2010 will see SIP-enabled brand-agnostic providers who will be able to provide an all-encompassing UC solution according to the enterprise’s needs.

UNICEL’s data and voice solutions are innovatively designed to easily integrate into an enterprise existing ERP/CRM systems and add a whole new level of accessibility and mobility, yet keeping the enterprise’s data secure and privileged.”

Cost Savings
Results documented by Sage Research demonstrate a multitude of benefits – both in terms of employee time savings and financial savings. Unified business communications applications not only facilitate productivity improvements for employees wherever their work takes them, they also enhance the way in which all employees communicate.

Organisations using UC clients saved an average of 32 minutes daily per employee because presence technology enabled staff to reach one another on the first try. Use of soft phones resulted in an average savings of USD1,727 per month in cell phone and long distance charges.

Mobile workers also saved 40 minutes each day, enjoyed greater business communications convenience, and generated annual productivity gains of 3.5 days per year through business continuity impact.

Organisations using unified messaging reported that employees saved 43 minutes per day from more efficient message management while mobile workers saved 55 minutes per day.

Companies using integrated voice and web conferencing reported a 30% reduction in conferencing expenses (by making integrated conferencing capabilities available in-house and on-network) and an average savings of USD1,700 per month in travel costs.

In the past, communication-based business activities have been highly manual and prone to delays and workarounds. According to Frost & Sullivan, the UC market opportunity in 2010 is expected to be worth slightly over USD4.45 billion, growing at 4.4% over 2009.

“Admittedly, both productivity and economy are considerably attractive indeed and hence, more and more organisations consider UC today, as evident from the market size.

In a typical ROTI scenario, significantly quantifiable paybacks (200% or more) could be expected over a period of 9 to 12 months by means of enhanced user productivity, consolidated and ‘softened’ communications infrastructure, reduced out-of-pocket expenses such as carrier or travelling costs,” says Asheesh Pandia, communications manager, Siemens Enterprise Communications.

“Now, with UC, these communication steps can be streamlined and software-assisted to reduce costs and also improve results. Increased productivity, cost savings and unified messaging are just a few benefits IP telephony can deliver to an organisation.

Tailor-made to reduce operational costs, NEC offers a wide range of solutions that are applicable for the hospitality sector, including state-of-the-art IP telephony solutions that enhance business productivity and reduce total cost of ownership,” says Ravinder Raina, Head – Private Network Solutions (PNS), NEC India.

Return on investment on UC deployments can be found in IP transport savings, reduced mobile phone charges, increased employee productivity and cost savings inherent in a modern communications platform.

An Avaya UC customer recently reported that it was able to increase first call resolution of customer problems from 7% to 72%, compared to the prior year.

Another business used Avaya UC solutions to integrate multiple customer service platforms to drive a 12% reduction in costs in its first year of implementation.

Specific to the contact center space, insight gained through quality monitoring has been forecast to reduce agent training time by 30%. More effective workforce scheduling can lead to a 20% cost-reduction according to Avaya calculations.

And outbound self-service can drive new revenues and savings, with one customer reporting a 10% increase in payments, and USD50,000 in annual savings from automated appointment reminders.

The Hotel Nexus
The hospitality segment in India is booming at an unprecedented pace. The deployment of UC – integrating voice, data, video and mobile communications enables hotels to move up the value chain, drive additional revenues, promote better service, increase customer loyalty and optimise operational efficiency.

In the hospitality space, several layers of communication can be dramatically cut down to ensure better and more efficient communication internally, as well as externally.

NEC solutions are built upon proven platforms and industry standard applications to offer powerful, low cost options for business continuity issues and to remove communication bottlenecks by providing constant access to employees.

NEC enables people to connect with one another while lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with productivity applications. It is imperative for a hotel or any other hospitality establishment to have details related to its guests, which are made available to the staff at all times.

With details on what a guest’s preferences are, a staff member is equipped to deliver better service, faster. It is critical to have information stored properly for billing as well as customer information.

The backend systems handling the customer data should be reliable, available round the clock and secure as well. NEC also has a series of generic tower and rack servers to support all your database and storage requirements.

Thin clients are great for all customer-facing desks, the business centre, and internet browsing for guests at the lounge area. All rooms can be equipped with thin clients, which can easily be connected to the telephone infrastructure, thus enabling a single device for data and telecommunication needs.

Avaya recently introduced innovations in hospitality technology that enhance in-room guest services and allow hoteliers to improve revenue streams and cost-efficiencies.

The Avaya Hospitality Enablement Suite is an advanced software solution that integrates with many of the most popular property management systems used by hotels worldwide, enabling rich interactive applications to be accessed directly from a guest’s room.

This server-based suite helps hospitality providers generate revenue opportunities by giving guests easier access to a wide range of services. It also enables hotels to keep track of and more efficiently respond to guest requests, such as room service, housecleaning and restaurant reservations.

“With an IP-based network infrastructure, hotels can deploy a flexible solution integrating data, voice, video, and convergence applications tailored to their needs.

This converged network is a strategic asset for hotels to profitably improve guests’ overall experience. The Cisco® Connected Hotel delivers an IP infrastructure that effectively supports the current and the next generation of hospitality solutions.

With a converged Cisco IP network, hotels can add services and reduce costs by integrating existing communications, security, and building automation systems over one secure, flexible, and scalable network.

Hotels can better respond to guests using automated check-in and checkout, online concierge, service, and help desk requests.

Next-generation services, delivered over a Cisco converged network, include personalised room settings for controlling temperature and lighting, personalised interactive multimedia, and high-speed Internet access with personalised content.

In addition, a Cisco Connected Hotel supports the trend toward self-service—allowing guests to access personalised content, which is then delivered over the converged infrastructure into the guest room.

It allows hotels to improve sales and marketing capabilities, enhance room management, refine front-office services, and develop better employee and human resources management.

It integrates with existing database management solutions, reservation and booking systems, and human resource management systems.

With this solution, hotels can integrate disparate communications systems radio, analog, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and pager communications – onto one converged network.

Hotel staff can be equipped with land mobile radios (LMRs), which integrate existing two-way radio systems with Cisco IP telephony.

Dual-mode phones allow hotel management to use a single device for both GSM and wireless communications. The Cisco Intelligent Property allows hotels to integrate disparate building systems that run over separate networks with independent control devices.

Lighting, elevators, HVAC, fire control, energy management, video surveillance, and other security technologies can all be managed and controlled over one converged, IP-based network,” says Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager, Cisco India & SAARC. Integration is certainly the way forward!

By Bindu Gopal Rao