Often when an organization considers change that will impact every employee such as an enterprise-wide IP telephony,the process tends to focus on hardware, software, and getting the technology up to speed as quickly as possible. However, a company's infrastructure is composed not just of hardware and software, but also of people. The successful conversion to IP telephony does not rest solely on viability or reliability. It requires a careful combination of the right products, people, processes, tools, services, best practices, and methodologies all working in concert.
While the needs of every enterprise are different, some things are universal. Planning, communication, teamwork, and understanding your users' requirements are as important as technical expertise.
Tip 1. Build a Cross-Functional Team
The greatest up-front contributor to a successful, large technology migration is building a cross-functional team that not only has the requisite skills and technical expertise but represents users in every area in the organization impacted by the implementation. This team is responsible for ensuring rapid delivery of the migration that optimizes company investments.
Key members of the team include an executive program sponsor and steering committee composed of organizational stakeholders; a project Team lead; technology experts; security specialists; and subject matter experts in the areas of design and engineering, support, finance, and project management. When global or multinational theaters are involved, include team leads for each theater who will represent the needs of that location and user community.
After skill sets are identified and all representatives chosen, this well-represented team should start off the implementation by clearly defining the objectives and overall goals of the project, and identifying the tasks necessary to achieve those goals. Also begin defining the change management process, at-risk factors, and problem escalation challenges, which will minimize the risks of integrating an enterprise-wide IP telephony solution.
Tip 2. Get Your Users On Board
Resistance to change is normal and should always be anticipated. Managing user expectations will be paramount to making the process run as smooth as possible. One key way to achieve this is to take away the mystery and uncertainty among the individuals affected through education, and open, honest, and frequent communication with the stakeholders. Create a plan that gives you the ability to be flexible and proactive. Anticipate the glitches and constantly improve the process along the way, tailoring it to the specific needs of the stakeholders and the users they represent.
In addition to managing users' expectations, an IP telephony implementation typically will require significant business adjustments, staff training and education, and some redesigned business processes and fundamental shifts within the organization. All of these changes must be identified early and continually managed, and change initiatives coordinated and integrated in a timely fashion.
Tip 3. Do Your Homework
Corporate culture is often defined as "the way we do things around here." Culture builds a common language and brings people together, enabling them to work toward a shared goal. Understanding and working with your organization's culture is critical to successfully implementing new technology on a large scale. Does your company encourage risk taking? Is change incorporated often, and does the company embrace it? How has change been introduced and institutionalized in the past? Was the process successful or fraught with problems? Is new technology welcomed or resisted? Do employees solve problems in a team environment? Is communication a top priority? Is yours a virtual company with telecommuters or employees scattered across the globe? What have previous technology deployments taught you about how users prefer to be trained? All of these factors are part of your organizational culture and can influence your ability to integrate a new solution. Take the time to know your users. Do your homework, capitalize on what has worked in the past, and learn from the mistakes of others.
Equally important, it's essential that you have the participation and cooperation of all team members from the outset. A planning workshop will help you to educate and rally cooperation among the team, as well as ensure that the initiative stays true to the business requirements of your organization and meets implementation objectives. The team should work together to plan project deliverables, address solution capabilities, define hardware, software, and security requirements, assign third-party implementation services, identify the project critical path and milestones, and outline the migration strategy.
Tip 4. Ensure That User Requirements Drive Design Requirements
Consider developing a "Voice of the Client" program that consists of client-targeted surveys and focus groups to benchmark and track user-preferred services, products, solutions, and features. Use the survey as a tool to identify critical phone features, validate key business needs, gauge risk tolerance and user discomfort, and identify key functionalities that are paramount to your business. You can also use the survey as an opportunity to incorporate features of the new IP telephony system and to help determine the priority of which features should be enabled.
Survey results provide the design and engineering team with a "report card" that validates their concept of the new design. Missing key design elements are a critical mistake that can be avoided by listening to your users, conducting traffic analysis, performing a network audit and readiness assessment, understanding how the technology will impact your current infrastructure, and familiarizing yourself with the new technology.
Tip 5. Crawl First, Walk Proudly, and Run Aggressively
Your implementation strategy should allow you to progressively go faster as your experience levels become more efficient. You don't want to go too fast or, conversely, too slow. The number of employees, complexity of user requirements, size of the campus, and how widely all are dispersed will, of course, affect your migration strategy. Like most organizations, you are not dealing with a static environment. There will always be employees changing locations, getting hired or leaving, or exercising their mobility working on the road, at home, in the field, and places other than their office desktop. To accommodate this ever-changing environment, develop a migration strategy that takes into account all of the variables that can change, alter, or otherwise affect implementation of your new converged voice and data network.
Make sure no one falls through the cracks by dividing your migration. Your categories might be, for example, new employees; existing employees who are moving to a new location; buildings coming online;retrofit of existing buildings; merger and acquisition related facilities; or buildings with upcoming PBX lease renewals.
Tip 6. Follow the 80/20 Rule for Implementation
When it comes to actual implementation, the success of your IP telephony migration will depend on several considerations: proper planning, creating consistent standards, identifying at-risk factors, having a ready backup/backout plan, customer service, doing the prep work up front, applying best practices, paying attention to detail, and automating as much of the process as possible. Of all these important factors, planning weighs most heavily. In fact, a winning formula for migration success consists of 80 percent preparation and 20 percent installation. Quite simply, if you focus on your plan first, the implementation will go a lot smoother.
Tip 7. Ensure a Successful Day 2 Handoff
A successful Day 2 handoff requires a well thought out support plan (Day 2 is defined as the time period immediately following cutover of your new IP telephony solution). Four critical components are required to enable efficient operation and responsive support of your converged network: the support team, support processes, support services, and support tools.
Tip 8. Keep Your New Network Clean
Most large enterprises have hundreds of lines and circuits that, through the years, have either been forgotten about or are simply unused. While this tip isn't meant to cover all the technical considerations required to "clean out" your network, it's an important reminder to view your IP telephony implementation as an opportunity to clean out your network to start anew, as well as clean, groom, and prepare the IP infrastructure. So, when the implementation team begins the conversion to IP telephony, remove as many unused lines off the PBX as possible, and only convert those lines that were proven as valid. Conduct a final cleanup at the end of the conversion to ensure that the implementation team has ample time to carefully review and trace all unidentified analog lines and circuits. Take steps to verify that business-critical lines aren't removed, and make it a point to only migrate what you use, not what you have, so that you can help to keep the network clean.
Tip 9. Plan for PBX Lease Returns
At the time of implementation, you might have equipment that is leased, which meant that your IP telephony implementation schedule was largely dictated by the PBX lease return dates. To ensure that the massive effort of returning large quantities of leased equipment is organized and that items are returned on schedule, the team leader responsible for the retrofit cleanup should enter all PBX leases into a spreadsheet and develop a project plan to keep the returns on track. Carefully match the equipment list on the original lease agreement to the inventory being returned, create a box-level inventory list, and get a signed receiving list from the vendor.
In addition to managing the return of all leased equipment, there is also the process of removing all ancillary solutions and systems that are tied to the main PBX. The process of completely decommissioning your main PBX will take longer than you expect; therefore, assemble a project team to address the removal of all applications still running on it.
Tip 10. Look Back, Move Forward, and Prepare for the Future
Whether an IP telephony implementation involves 200 phones or 20,000 phones, careful and comprehensive planning, communication, teamwork, and knowing where the "gotchas" are hiding will divert problems before they even arise.
You can see your destination and it is a fully converged voice and data network with all users migrated to IP telephony. Before celebrating, however, there are still a few important items that require your attention. You still need to be ready to address how to prepare your network for the future.
Change management will be the toughest process to maintain once your new network is in place, but not because of routine changes or software upgrades. Maintaining a strict, yet manageable and scalable, process will be key to your success. Not only will your methods and procedures require a solid execution plan, but so will the standards by which you communicate the plan. Eliminate as many unknowns as possible by documenting your procedures, capture and incorporate lessons learned, and optimize your change management process. Make the commitment to continually support your new, dynamic network by reevaluating contingency plans often, conducting ongoing audits of network performance, incorporating new features through software upgrades, and reexamining the contract services that protect, monitor, and support your network.
To prepare for the future, you must embrace being prepared for new IP telephony applications. As applications become available, a system must be in place to analyze the technology for applicability, test it for feasibility, provide an adoption position, and ensure that all teams are involved, in agreement, and ready to reap the benefits that will come from rolling out another new IP communications application.
