Cisco Unified Communications implementation at Thiess construction company

¶ … CISCO Systems Telecommunication System at International Mining and Construction

Overview and Present Status

This report examines International Mining and Construction Company and their stated challenge in Telecommunications. It is reported "…Thiess, a wholly owned subsidiary of Leighton Holding Limited, is one of Australia's largest construction, mining and services contractors with operations throughout Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and India." (Cisco Systems, 2008)

Characteristics of the Company

Theiss in collaboration with Dimension Data worked to upgrade to Unified Communications Manger and Unified Presence 7.0 enabling business-to business exchange of presence and instant messaging with partners." Cisco Systems, 2008 Stated for example are proposal teams who "spend as long as a years developing proposals…" and as the deadline nears, being able to reach someone for one extra piece of information can make the difference in winning a multibillion dollar deal, which can be lost by as little at U.S.$100,000." (Cisco Systems, 2008)

"Employees at Theiss

"…can locate and collaborate with its Dimension Data service managers as easily as if they were Thiess employees. "With business-to-business presence and instant messaging federation, my Thiess clients can see when I'm available and immediately reach out to me," Kay says. "Typical turnaround for a service request has decreased from two days to 30 minutes." "With business-to-business presence and instant messaging federation, my Thiess clients can see when I'm available and immediately reach out to me. Typical turnaround for a service request has decreased from two days to 30 minutes." -- Darren Kay, Enterprise Architect, Dimension Data (2008 Cisco Systems, Inc., 2008)

It is stated by Benjamin Creevey, Network & Telecommunications Manager, Thiess as follows:

"If we need an answer from one of our partner's engineers while developing the proposal, we will use Cisco Unified Personal Communicator to see which engineer is available and then just send an instant message. Near a proposal deadline, the ability to communicate across company boundaries can make the difference in winning a contract." -- Benjamin Creevey, Network & Telecommunications Manager, Thiess (2008 Cisco Systems, Inc., 2008)

The communication devices are rapidly growing and mobility is the call world for employees who required many methods of conferring with one another to avoid delays and missed opportunities or even missing deadlines in today's global business environment.

VI. Analysis of Company's Telecommunications

A survey of organizations states findings that the following UC applications are presently in use:

Web conferencing and collaboration 58%

Room-based video conferencing 52%

Contact centers 46%

Unified messaging 42%

Desktop video conferencing 35%

Instant messaging -- Enterprise IM 42%

Team Portals 32%

Unified Communications clients 27%

Mobile Unified Communications 20%

Presence 18%

TelePresence 17%

Speech-based Access to apps 14% (Cisco Systems, 2008)

This information led the choice made by Theiss for its organizational communications choices. The report states that in 2008 all employees at Thiess began using Cisco Unified Communications System 7.0. Business disruption was avoided by upgrades being conducted on different weekends by Dimension Data installing Cisco unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco unified Contact Center Express, Cisco Unified MeetingPlace and Cisco Unified Presence. The management of the Thiess system is simplified by Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0 in the following ways:

(1) Simplified dial plan -- Cisco's Unified Communications Manager 7.0 has a feature that automatically dials the dialing prefixes including international country codes depending on the location of the caller.

(2) Local route groups -- Cisco's Unified Communications Manager 7.0 is no longer required to create routing patterns for every new Theiss site and this bring about a reduction in the number of entries that have to be maintained from 285 to 72 and a reduction in translation patterns from 663 to 375.

(3) Easy installation -- the Unified Communications Manager application can be installed with a single download file and future upgrades will make requirement of only one file. (Cisco Systems, 2008)

Benefits reported include those stated as follows:

(1) Lower costs;

(2) Reduced travel;

(3) Increase ease of working with a global workforce.

(4) Enhanced collaboration with external partners. (Cisco Systems, 2008)

Summary and Conclusion

Implementation of the Unified Communications Manager application has served to streamline the communication processes for Theiss as well as to bring about more efficiency in communication between various sites of the company and its employees.