Opinion: Best practices for deploying Cisco CallManager 7

Dimension Data’s Recommendations

With all this in mind, if your organisation is considering a Cisco Unified Communications Manager rollout, here are a number of best-practice recommendations, gleaned from our hands-on experience with our own system:

Understand your needs.

Unified communications is a powerful tool with many benefits but you must be sure you’re using the right tool for the task.

Engage with managers and users to ensure you understand their needs; Cisco’s UC solution has many features and your case for implementing it will be much stronger if you can create a ‘roadmap’ document.

This will demonstrate how the rollout will benefit your organisation over time, and address key questions such as scalability, upgrades, specific feature rollouts, ROI and integration with other IT systems.

Capacity planning is crucial.

There’s no point in deploying a communications solution if your network isn’t up to the task.

Dimension Data recommends a network capacity analysis before you roll out any technology, to ensure that your organisation will be able to fully leverage the new capabilities UC enables. This also helps you to fully understand the solution’s TCO and ROI, crucial factors in actually getting a deployment approved.

Ensure you have the resources you need.

This doesn’t just mean network resources (investigated in the capacity planning phase); it also refers to the human resources required to deploy UC across your network and train key users in its new features.

Have an identity management solution.

If you really want to take advantage of the full range of benefits UC can provide, you need an identity management system that will provide a single point of truth for identity information that is communicated to, and synchronised with, your entire system.

Schedule sufficient time for deployment.

Yes, it’s obvious, but nobody likes to rush their work. Cisco’s UC solution is relatively straightforward to deploy but as with any such task, unforseen circumstances or complications can arise and it’s better to have more time allocated than less.

Deploy.

This is where your IT team really comes into its own. Deploying new technologies can be a hair-raising experience but if your team is qualified and experienced, or at least assisted by some experts (internal or external), then the process of deploying Cisco’s UC solution should be quite straightforward.

Train key stakeholders.

A new technology is only successful if it’s actually taken up by users. At Dimension Data we trained our key stakeholders – senior management and their personal assistants – in how to use the technology. This helped drive take-up from the get-go and helped ensure it would start delivering value to the business immediately.

Make it easy for new users.

To help drive adoption by other users, we also produced a handy reference card, instructional videos and several email broadcasts. This allowed savvy users to get started right away and provided less adept users with a handy orientation that made the system approachable (once they started using it, of course, they soon realised how simple it is).

Feedback is vital!

It’s important to keep users happy, not just for your own peace of mind but also to ensure that the system is being used and desired features deployed.

At Dimension Data we keep our lines of communication open, so if a user has a need or a difficulty they can be confident that it will be heard and actioned promptly.'

7 callmanager cisco collaboration data dimension networking