Construction Company With an Emphasis on Telecommunications

¶ … 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) III.

Goal and Objectives of the Company Theiss employees are reported to require "collaborating across time and distance barriers, both with coworkers and partners." (Cisco Systems, 2008) In addition, Thiess needed to "quickly deploy communications systems in temporary field offices, which operate only for the duration of the construction project, typically one to three years." (Cisco Systems, 2008) There are a stated 200 offices in operation at any given time and these employees in many locations required the capacity to easily access their colleagues via mobile telecommunications and at all times.

Theiss identified the solution offered by Cisco Unified Communication and in 2004 the company is reported to have 'engaged Dimension Data, a Cisco Certified Gold Partner to upgrade to Cisco unified Communications Manager 4.1 in conjunction with a network upgrade to a carrier IP meshed network." IV. Strategies Currently Employed by the Company The following statistics are stated in the findings reported by Cisco Systems, Inc. On Thiess adoption of its Unified Communication System. Figure 1 Challenges in Telecommunication and Construction Industry Source: Cisco (2008) V.

External Opportunities & Overview of Industry It is reported by Darren Kay, Enterprise Architect, Dimension Data as follows: ' "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.