By Amit Roy Choudhury

Singapore businesses are placing more emphasis on co-workers and customers being contactable at all times since a failure to do so on critical business timelines is increasingly becoming unacceptable, according to a new study.

At the same time, businesses here feel that home and mobile workers have the potential to be more productive than office-based workers, the study finds.

The Asia-Pacific-based study was conducted by IT research house IDC and six countries - Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, India and China - were covered.

The survey was commissioned by Avaya, a leading global provider of business communications applications.

The survey revealed that managers in Asia-Pacific see communications as more critical today as compared to 2005, when the last survey was done.

The study also shows that managers in Singapore and Asia-Pacific are placing an increasingly higher value on being responsive to both customers and co-workers in today's fast-paced business environment.

James Haensly, Avaya Asia-Pacific's VP, noted that mobility of the workforce continues to be a priority for Singapore managers.

'However, one distinguishing characteristic that came out in this year's survey, as opposed to 2005, was the level of importance attached to a missed contact.

'Previously a missed contact just meant a missed meeting. Now a missed contact means a missed business opportunity.'

Business managers feel that mobile workers should and are always on the lookout for a new business opportunity and hence should never miss a potential contact.

The survey also shows that 36 per cent of managers miss new business opportunities when they are unable to reach a key contact and another 28 per cent of the managers miss customer queries.

In 2005, 53 per cent of the managers felt that there was no missed opportunities when managers could not contact a key person. This year, just 15 per cent maintained that perception.

Mr Haensly, who works for Avaya Asia-Pacific's Strategy and Unified Communications (UC) division, noted that the perceived opportunity cost in terms of new business acquisition in Hong Kong and Singapore are the highest in the region.

IDC's Shalini Verma noted that the survey results show that communication issues could potentially snowball into a crisis with many enterprises, if basic communication issues are not resolved at the outset.

'UC (unified communications) containing a strong dose of mobility could be the prescribed medicine for enterprises afflicted with these communication problems,' Ms Verma, who's IDC's Asia-Pacific research manager for communications research, said.

The survey also showed that 81 per cent of respondents in the Asia-Pacific either agreed or strongly agreed that telecommuting improves productivity, compared to only 61 per cent in 2005.

Telecommuting refers to working from a remote location outside the office.

Avaya's Mr Haensly noted that while the attitude towards work-life balance was largely unchanged when the region is viewed as a whole, in 2008, 76 per cent of those surveyed in China and and 78 per cent of those surveyed in Singapore saw telecommuting as a means of improving work-life balance among their employees.

'Previously there was a general feeling that workers operating from home would be less productive. However, it has now been proved that remote workers could, in fact, be more productive,' Mr Haensly noted.

Businesses in the US now are deploying workers remotely and the verdict is that they are seeing higher productivity at lower cost, added Karyn Mashima, Avaya's senior VP for strategy and technology.

'In the Asia-Pacific, we are still at the early stages of businesses adopting the idea of deploying workers remotely. Many of our customers are starting trials around this,' Ms Mashima noted.

Avaya's Mr Haensly noted that 80 per cent of the respondents in the survey agree or strongly agree that UC, the convergence of real-time and non-real time business communications applications, improves the productivity of telecommuters.

'Across the Asia-Pacific, managers are keen to deploy UC in their operations, with video conferencing and mobility being the top two capabilities being considered,' Mr Haensly said.

He added that while managers in India are mostly in favour of deploying video conferencing solutions while their counterparts in Singapore see mobility as the most likely element of UC to be implemented in their organisations.

In this context, he noted that in Singapore Senoko Power is now embarking on UC strategies. The Avaya official added that the Ministry of Manpower too was looking at UC.

Avaya's Ms Mashima noted that across the Asia-Pacific, 27 per cent of respondents surveyed are already using and deriving the benefits from implementing elements of UC in their operations.

In terms of UC utilisation, Australia leads the pack with more than 50 per cent of its managers already using some form of UC applications.

'In Singapore, the ability to do spontaneous conferencing is seen as the biggest impact of UC, while most managers in Malaysia see communicating after office hours as the biggest change that UC has brought to their workstyle,' Ms Mashima noted.

While an overwhelming majority of managers surveyed agree that UC will lead to improvements in productivity and quality of work, enterprises also perceived that the biggest challenge in deploying a UC solution involves the upgrading of applications and equipment, she noted.

Inadequate in-house expertise is also a big challenge in countries like Australia and India while those in Malaysia believe complex implementation across geographies will be their biggest hurdle in adopting UC, the Avaya official added.

This article was first published in The Business Times on 30 June 2008.