Time to market could be reduced if companies used existing unified comms technologies better

Quick win possible if firms extend use of collaboration tools outside of the organisation

Companies are missing a trick by failing to use unified communications and collaboration (UCC) tools to optimise their supply chains.

In a survey of 150 IT decision-makers at medium to large organisations, Computing found that UC tools were mainly being deployed internally rather than externally.

While supply chain management could definitely benefit from the sorts of tools firms typically use to manage internal meetings, use of UCC tends not to extend far outside of the organisation. Instead, traditional methods such as face-to-face meetings and phone calls are used to communicate with suppliers (in 80 per cent of cases), with consultants (64 per cent), vendors (68 per cent) and contractors (72 per cent).

In comparison, only 43 per cent of respondents use UCC tools to communicate with suppliers, and there is also a considerably lower proportion of respondents that use UC tools with consultants (45 per cent), vendors (35 per cent), and contractors (42 per cent).

Mark Grant, senior practice lead of Microsoft Collaboration Services at Dimension Data, suggested that there is an increase of suppliers that are demanding rapid deployment of products.

During a Computing webseminar panel discussion focused on simplifying supply chains using UCC technologies, Grant explained that companies could benefit from being able to communicate with manufacturers, for example.

"If companies took the principles they apply to their salesforce and apply it to their supply chain then it could help with timescales. If you think about problems with certain products, these can be found earlier on in the timeline and you can use UCC technology to help notify other parts of the supply chain," he said.

"What is surprising is that it's not being utilised anywhere near as much," he added, commenting on the above findings.

According to Grant, a UCC strategy for the supply chain should be put in place by CIOs. The technology is already there, he said, but it's about finding out how it's being used and applying that to the supply chain.

"CIOs will buy in on making efficiencies but once the technology has gone down to the user it's how best the technology can actually be used," he said.

According to Computing's research, video conferencing is the most widely used UCC technology - 72 per cent of firms have the technology in place and in use.

This is followed by audio conferencing (71 per cent), web conferencing (69 per cent), instant messaging (57 per cent), mobile VoIP (44 per cent) and social collaboration tools such as Box, Yammer, Huddle and Jive (34 per cent).