Your challenges

YOUR CHALLENGES

Collaboration strategy

The requirements for hybrid working have forced organisations to completely rethink how their staff interact both internally and externally.

With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, organisations with no collaboration strategy rushed to deploy tactical solutions to enable their staff to continue to keep working remotely. Subsequent events have taught us that the requirement for hybrid workplace is here to stay and it is now time to rethink how collaboration fits into your organisation’s long-term strategic goals.

Collaboration strategy challenges we see

What is a collaboration strategy?

Now is the time to rethink how the tactical decisions forced upon you by the pandemic can be rolled into your long-term strategic planning. In an unpredictable world, your organisation needs to be confident it can continue to operate, even in the most demanding of situations. Having a collaboration strategy can significantly improve your organisation’s ability to weather
any storm.

Which platform should I choose?

Although the major players might be obvious, the specific requirements of your business may not. Collaboration is not just about real-time communication, it’s also the ability to model workstreams and tightly integrate applications that form the heart of
your business.

How will it impact my network?

Nothing stresses a network like real-time video communications. It places unique demands on your infrastructure and forces you to ask, is good enough really good enough?

What devices do I need?

The key to great collaboration is a great experience, regardless of location. Are your meeting spaces suitably equipped to offer equality in meetings? Do your users have quality audio and video products that maximise the experience, regardless of where they are working? Are their compute devices able to run the latest applications and host collaboration sessions simultaneously? Are you able to monitor and manage all these devices?

How can I maximise the value of my licenses?

By maximising the usage and adoption of your collaboration tools, it offers the perfect opportunity to wring every penny out of your EULA.

YOUR CHALLENGES

Enablement

We can help you enable your workforce to collaborate effectively.

The biggest obstacle to success in collaboration projects is not the technology but getting users to adopt the change. In an age where technology can be deployed quicker than people can adapt, having a strategy for encouraging user enablement and adoption is critical to achieving anticipated performance improvements and accelerating the return on IT investments.

With our in-house expertise in transformational collaboration projects, we can enable your users to adopt new technology. Faster, better adoption by users means faster return on investment (ROI) and ensures you gain the performance improvements which they anticipate. We have the capability to deliver all end user training to our customers, no matter what the software or hardware, by utilising a proven methodology that is both vendor and device agnostic.

Enablement Challenges
we see

Employees are more likely to adopt new technology when they are equipped with the skills and knowledge to confidently use it, understand it’s use in context, and how it can benefit the wider organisation.

Collaboration programmes are rarely just the brainchild of IT, but are typically a steppingstone to achieving strategic goals, such as improved customer engagement or user productivity or satisfaction. Where a deployment is accompanied by a training and communications programme, user adoption of new technologies greatly increases, with Gartner recommending that 17% of the implementation budget being dedicated to user training.

Benefit Realisation

We can help ensure that the benefits promised by investments are realised.

Risk Minimisation

We can help to minimise the risk of failure when deploying a new collaboration solution.

User Training

We can provide user training at the scale and geographic reach required by the Collaboration deployment.

Skills and Knowledge

We can ensure all users have the level of skill and knowledge to be effective which drives satisfaction and adoption.

YOUR CHALLENGES

Hybrid working

The hybrid workplace requires new skills, better technology, fresh perspectives, and
expanded priorities.

A hybrid workplace needs to provide flexible and seamless collaboration from anywhere. While the benefits are clear, this shift requires a change in the experience people have when working from home or in the office. A key requirement for the hybrid workplace is to provide employees with feature-rich, intuitive collaboration tools to message, meet, call, share content, and collaborate from any space.

Hybrid working challenges

Hybrid trends have driven us to a new work environment—an approach that supports a blend of in-office and remote workers while providing people with the flexibility to choose where and how they’ll work. Business that fail to adapt risk retaining or attracting key talent, reduced productivity, and higher costs.

Home is the new
collaboration hub

The home office is an extension of the corporate office. In the hybrid workplace, it’s more important than ever that people can work from anywhere with access to tools that support productivity and collaboration. Employees who work remotely, or switch between home and the office, need to be enabled with collaboration software and purpose-built devices to ensure high-quality teamwork and a seamless experience wherever they are.

Intelligent workplaces are needed for better experiences

Businesses can plan to reduce their office footprint, provided they have the data and the technology to make intelligent decisions.

Flexibility is key

Over 70 % of the global workforce is never expected to fully return to the office full time. Employees believe they will have an improved work/life balance and better and more productive meeting experiences if given the choice of joining from home.

Hybrid challenges

Offices serve a unique purpose

The office still serves as the central hub for people to participate in rich collaboration experiences, build rapport with colleagues, and connect to the work culture and community. With a hybrid workplace model, you can expect a rotating cast of office workers. Technology is needed to assist them in finding available spaces to work and collaborate. Understanding the data decreased office footprint provides the opportunity to extend technology-driven, intelligent experiences in
every space.

Hybrid challenges

The importance of data analytics

The insights gained from this can inform a workplace strategy. In the short-term organisations need to track data to understand their own performance trends, the data informs short term decision making to ensure workplace effectiveness and employee wellbeing. However, we’re increasingly seeing organisations using data to determine longer term plans. As organisations gather and utilise data, it can inform their occupancy strategy and help to build an environment to support a highly productive workforce and better manage the cost of real estate.

YOUR CHALLENGES

Network readiness

Meet the challenges of collaboration safe in the knowledge that your network is capable.

As organisations transform their technology landscape to support modern ways of collaborating, critical service interdependencies must be considered and factored into overall solution strategy and design. Failure to do this effectively could lead to challenges with performance, capacity, and functionality ultimately resulting in a negative impact to end user perception and satisfaction.
For any organisation utilising or planning to utilise modern collaboration applications and services the underlying network infrastructure is more important than ever. If you are implementing any of the following collaboration technologies and require assurance that your network can support them, SCC's network readiness assessment services are designed to help.

Network readiness
engagement model

Discovery

Typically starting with a short discovery exercise, our experienced consultants will engage with your in-house network team or service provider to gather key information about your network infrastructure identifying bottlenecks and architectural and topology concerns where they exist.

Optional detailed WAN review including readiness for
software defined
Optional detailed Wireless review

Optional detailed network
security review
Optional detailed QoS design review
High level plan for agreed
follow-on activities

Network readiness
engagement model

Business benefits

Our specific recommendations highlighted as part of the discovery exercise further ensuring that any resulting investment is made in the right areas. Fully adaptable we can start small with discovery and expand scope based on identified areas of concern allowing you to implement new services with confidence, reduce risk of service affecting network issues and outages and assure a positive
end-user experience.

Engagement model for
Network readiness

Recommendations

After discovery we will produce a summary report including a list of recommendations and proposed follow-on activities which may include.

Review of
summary recommendations
Optional detailed LAN review including readiness for
software defined
Optional detailed WAN review including readiness for
software defined

Optional detailed Wireless review
Optional detailed network
security review
Optional detailed QoS design review
High level plan for agreed
follow-on activities

YOUR CHALLENGES

Proof of concept

For organisations that wish to understand the benefit and user experience of a particular product, our Proof of Concept (POC) service framework provides a time bound, fixed scope, step-by-step methodology for Test and Acceptance.

POCs allow organisations to discover and learn about new technologies with less risk.
If new technologies are explored and deployed without a solid underlying framework, decision makers and budget holders can become confused as to whether the new solution provides a clear benefit or meets a specific need.
POCs encourage the structured adoption of new technologies, providing a framework to manage time and cost, and the ability to evaluate the outcome constructively. This results in a more coherent technology strategy moving forward into deployment, adoption, and service.

Proof of concepts challenges we see

Manage Risk

Most technology projects contain significant unknowns and assumptions. POCs are one of the most effective mitigation tools to surface risk, and often go hand-in-hand with discovery exercises on larger projects.

Increase Stakeholder buy in

A well-designed and executed POC is a strong, demonstrable anchor point in the evolution of a project that proves that not only is a solution viable, but that the ability to both technically and operationally implement that solution exists and can be scoped in terms of both time and money.

Create a culture of innovation

Not every POC will be a business success, and even among POCs that are a success, not all will drive a production project. Acknowledging this reality is important in organisations that want to embrace innovation.

Our process for proof of concepts

Agreed entry and exit criteria

We will work with you to ensure that entry and exit criteria is met prior to commencement of test execution.

Discovery audit to understand current environment

SCC will work with your organisation to understanding the current environment to provide the best possible bespoke service for you.

Functional & non-functional requirements gathering

We will carry out a specific test element to demonstrate the proof of concept is installed and functional.

Engineer lead installation, testing, & hand over

SCC will be there to support your organisation from installation, testing and hand over.

Funded options

Big project? Commercial options for funding are available which enables you to explore how you can improve your collaboration technology.

Project plan for agreed rollout and adoption

We will agree a project plan for rollout and adoption, ensuring your organisation is fully supported.

YOUR CHALLENGES

Security

Ensuring all your collaboration solutions are underpinned by robust security.

Everything we do with technology brings its own inherent risks. This is no different in the collaboration space. As we all interact, we connect to others and some form of open channel. Building the required security elements is key to providing a solution which will not become an additional risk.
We leverage the security history of our vendors as well as the experience of our internal teams across all architectural areas to provide a safe environment whether you are holding meetings, communicating over messaging platforms or talking via the cloud.

Security challenges we see

Meeting devices

With the desire to use multiple devices to connect to meetings, the requirement to secure these has grown. This means each type of device i.e. in-room, mobile, laptop, needs to be considered with a different security model depending on the software platform being used
to collaborate.

Cyber attacks

New ways to electronically attack businesses are being released all the time meaning security needs to be constantly reviewed and protection regularly updated.

Lack of awareness

With the rise of remote working, many organisations have not been able to keep up to date with the security requirements of home workers who may be communicating with many other organisations over multiple platforms. Educating employees on the best way to keep their communications safe is a key factor in keeping the whole organisation secure.