Step 3: Understand interoperability
Integration is a key aspect of the implementation phase. “No customer has a greenfield site,” C2C Consultants’ Eva Shafer says. “The manufacturers say a lot of things about interoperability but the reseller needs to understand the interoperability relationships between vendors.”
Interoperability takes different forms depending on the vendor. Shafer gives the example of Cisco and Microsoft, who she says have very different approaches to unified communications. Microsoft looks to the desktop as a platform for its UC software; Cisco’s focus is on the meeting room where a hardware solution is more appropriate for one-to- many communications.
Some resellers have baulked at the integration step and left pieces of the puzzle unfinished, letting the project fall short of customer expectations. M5 Networks’ John Hendry emphasises the importance of delivering a full solution that ties into business processes rather than a basic communications system. Most CRM platforms, from Business Dynamics to Salesforce, have the ability to integrate with phone systems using connection points.
“The reseller needs to look for those possible linkages and then bring them to occur, not just [deliver] the promise of them.
“The manual on page three will say it can be connected to the phone system but it is really important for the reseller to make it happen because otherwise it won’t.”
One tip is to go for vendors that support open standards, as these are more likely to be interoperable. Some examples are Juniper, Siemens and Shoretel.
“The cost of sale is lower (with open-standards vendors) because you don’t have to build in a lot of extra services cost in order to make it work,” Avnet’s Friend says. “The more proprietary stuff there is, the harder it is to make sure it will all work together.”
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