For the financial industry, there are a lot of challenges in terms of restrictions because you are restricted with the amount of information that you are allowed to give out but the industry is looking at it as more of a competitive gain over other banks. However, it is sometimes hard to determine where it would benefit you the most and it is not really easy to say it will improve user productivity because it’s quite hard to measure this. But we are getting there, hopefully companies like PNB and other banks would see the real benefits of this because it can really give us an edge in terms of better serving our customers.

Bragado: To discuss unified communication is to discuss economics. Recently, we had a revolution in communication sparked by YM (Yahoo! Messenger). Now you can do collaboration as well as send e-mail and Voice over IP (VoIP). Yahoo, you may say, has been the testing ground. YM has provided e-mail, telephone connectivity, of course, instant messaging and, recently, the SMS (short messaging service) integration. So these functions are actually already in place, providing a pattern for us. Note that Yahoo provides these for free, requiring only an e-mail account registration so, needless to say, we are leveraging this in our environment for collaboration. The only concerns here, however, are security and privacy. YM does provide us with a communication tool but security cannot be provided with it. Providing security and integrating this with business applications, all these features may need serious budgetary considerations. Microsoft Exchange provides these features but collaboration software is expensive. We recently planned on acquiring Microsoft Exchange 2007 but we had to forgo this because our systems administrator found out that a lot of our hardware and SEAIR’s collaboration infrastructure need to be upgraded to be able to deploy Exchange. Obviously, before going into things like this, we have to consider the end results, which is the bottom line.

Sac: In our case, this is really the direction we have to take; we want to converge all our applications into one infrastructure. So, whenever we evaluate new infrastructure projects, UC serves as our guideline; everything should be aligned with the UC direction.

Gabriel: For us, we do know the value of unified communication and we have already been planning for this but, again, we have to evaluate the business requirements and consider the current infrastructure that we have and, of course, check on the users because, at the end of the day, they will be the ones who will use the technology.

CWP: Jojo, do you know of any other hotel that is really thinking of going UC?

Baniqued: I think most of the hotels here in Makati City are already going into unified communication. Our industry actually seems to follow the same trends when it comes to information technology, we use the same POS (point-of-sale) and hospitality systems and our Internet services are provided by almost the same companies. When it comes to UC, one of our priorities is the telephony systems of the hotel. In addition, we’re also looking for a click-to-call TV menu that can enable guests to order directly from our hotel’s restaurant or room service.

Bragado: I would like to highlight one business function that airlines and the hotel industry usually practice. In many occasions, hotels and resorts partner up with different airlines and come up with packages for travelers. Thus, we see these two industries and their need to collaborate. Unified communication could have a great impact on this partnership, especially in providing differentiation to the services or offerings.

CWP: Is Dusit a SEAIR partner?

Bragado: Not yet, but who knows? You see, when you travel and visit any foreign place, you will almost always need hotel accommodation. There is now an online facility that allows the airline passengers to select and book hotel rooms when they buy their tickets. So you see, a form of collaboration between these two, the airline and hotel industries, provides opportunities for maximizing profits and increasing market reach. Servicing the client, obviously, is made more efficient. This is now happening with SEAIR and several local hotel and resort owners in locations we fly to like Boracay and Siargao. We communicate with them via e-mail and instant messaging, give each other exposure on our own Web sites, integrate our booking data with theirs; we really collaborate.

Pascual: I’ve been meaning to ask Jojo (Baniqued) because what he mentioned earlier was very interesting. You mentioned being able to combine everything through the click-to-call TV menu because we are already seeing this in hotels in other countries like in Las Vegas. In our local hospitality industry, what time frame do you see for such plans? Is Dusit or other big hotels planning to have these, even if it is just for the suites at first?

Baniqued: I think most of us are looking into it. We have this sort of group for hotel IT professionals wherein we exchange ideas and strategies and what usually happens is when one of the hotels here use a certain technology, it is highly likely that the rest of us will do too if, of course, it makes business sense for us.

CWP: So you share best practices?

Baniqued: Yes, we have regular meetings and activities where we discuss new technologies or share success stories with our colleagues.

CWP: Aside from those have already been mentioned, are there any other concerns you have in deploying UC in your infrastructure?

Oscuro: I guess one concern is more for the vendor. Right now, most of the materials that I see and read are focused on the technical side of UC and, for us, it’s very hard to get a budget if you are going to justify it by mere “technology speak.” You have to show a benefit to the business, in terms of improving processes or whatever. Sometimes the justification that it will improve employee productivity does not fly because management always asks how that could be measured and how it translates to the bottom line: do we get savings, for instance. So I think UC should be marketed in such a way that companies see the benefit to the business; say, okay videoconferencing basically saves travel cost but the rest of the features of UC should be tied up with either a business need or a process that can be further improved by implementing the technology.

Gabriel: It’s also necessary to check whether the technology is available in your locations, especially in your remote sites.

Oscuro: I guess we still have to bridge the digital with the analog particularly in the remote sites. We still have island branches, so it’s quite difficult to implement the full suite of unified communication that’s why, again, UC must be marketed strategically. You have to identify which out of its many features would benefit a certain company rather than selling the entire system to every company.

Pascual: The telco infrastructure actually also plays a big role because where unified communication is, there should also be telecommunication facility.

Sac: In my case, what I am looking for is a unified infrastructure that converges non-standard, different technologies or integrates all these things in a single device. But I agree with Roland (Oscuro) that it is also a matter of justifying the cost benefits of UC to the management.

Pascual: Given all those discussions about presenting the cost benefit, if I can tell you your company will save around 20% to 30% in your cost bottom line if you implement UC, when you bring this up to upper management will they say “Okay, go ahead and do it” or will it still open up a new set of questions about why you are doing unified communication?

Oscuro: It will not be more of a why; the question would be more about how. As I have mentioned earlier, putting in a new technology for the business is not enough, you need to have users who know how to use it. This is why, for us, we make it a point to get the buy-in of the users first and we even try to work it out in such a way that the users will be the ones demanding it.

CWP: What major benefits do you want UC to bring to your operations? What are the current pain points that you hope unified communication will resolve?

Bragado: First and foremost, to improve the bottom line.

Oscuro: We are hoping that it would provide us an infrastructure to deliver what management is asking for and to be able to do more for less. These are the real challenges that we face.

Sac: What I think should be resolved is the utilization of bandwidth. Response time is very important. Vendors should also consider that users are unifying CCTV (closed-circuit television), VoIP, WiFi, video conferencing and some other service-oriented applications and latency is very important, so I hope this could be addressed by vendors in the future.

Baniqued: We’re looking for a system that we can integrate with our main hospitality system; we are also looking for a mobile VoIP phone that we can use in the hotel so that we can give faster and better service to our guests at a lower cost for us.

Bragado: One of the benefits we want to get is efficiency in operating the business and in administrating the whole communications infrastructure. Let’s look at administrating application systems installed at SEAIR ticketing offices, for example. In addition to achieving centralized control over the way information is shared between branch offices, the systems administrator utilizes the same network infrastructure to provide, monitor and manage communication. Unified communication clearly gives cost reduction and better bottom-line figures.

Oscuro: It is important, however, to instill discipline in the users in the way they use, say instant messaging, and have ground rules on how it should be used to get the full business benefits out of this.

Bragado: Going back to what Mandy (Pascual) said earlier, what may be vital is the implementation of a security system; this is a major concern but this can be managed and controlled. As long as business policies are in place and the appropriate technologies are implemented and supported, productivity can still be achieved without compromising security. Unified communication just enhances and streamlines the end-user collaboration process.

Pascual: That’s actually a reality in unified communication, because the irony there is you want to expand the access of your network for productivity purposes, but when you expand access, here comes the problem of security – people hacking into your system, users using it for personal use, etc. That’s why when we deploy solutions like this, we always talk about security measures that should be inherent in the solution. We know your concerns about policy and the type of usage that you want because you don’t want to tie down your network just because somebody is downloading a 100-megabyte file or accessing Multiply. That‘s why we make sure that we address these with our solution.

CWP: Do you think unified communication will be a means by which employees can blend family commitment or lifestyle changes with their careers easier and more seamlessly?

Gabriel: Yes, it can improve not just your career but also your role as a wife or a mother. You can work remotely and you need not stay long in the office, but, of course, you have to make sure that the infrastructure allows you to access the applications and the network remotely.

Oscuro: It really depends on the culture of the company, whether the company allows you to work from home or not. Again, there are restrictions on this for some industries but for some companies that allow this practice, such a setup this could really bring benefits; although at some point you may hate the technology because of its capability to reach you anytime, anywhere you are.

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