When selling a unified communications solution, vendors will often talk about the average time users save per week and tout the collaboration advantages of the system. However, Blair Pleasant at VoiceCon's eWeek Online makes the excellent point that the ROI associated with UC solutions won't materialize unless workers are encouraged and trained to use the available time-saving features.

Pleasant advocates creating a "sponsorship team" and an individual "sponsor" charged with encouraging the best users and uses of the new UC system. She says the sponsorship team should include representatives from each aspect of the business, and that it's crucial to include business managers who understand communication pain points on the team.

After the internal UC sponsor is identified and tasked with driving uptake, he or she should be sure to get C-level employees on board with best practices, so that use cases are communicated top-down. Pleasant says that advocating the system in this way and providing guided training on the system leads to higher usage of presence, IM and other UC time optimization and collaboration techniques.

For more:
- see Pleasant's article on advocating UC adoption in the enterprise here [1] 

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