Untapped assets – one of the most sought after items in any strategic plan. What do you have that can be converted into an engine of growth, competitive advantage, and profitability?

It’s time to re-evaluate an asset that has been long overlooked – team output.

The subject of teamwork is nothing new. The output of organizations large and small is driven by collective effort. The core values that solidify team performance – trust, commitment, engagement, communication, accountability and results – are unchanged. However, the environment that surrounds and influences team performance has now changed immensely. It’s time to set aside conventional wisdom about enabling and managing teams, as it no longer applies.

The Landscape Has Changed

In the distant past, a stable of team members were co-located in one site and could meet face-to-face daily.

Then, increasing globalization and networked communications enabled a more distributed organization model over the past two decades. Now, we are often remote, mobile and distributed.

Virtual teams are quickly ‘crowd-sourced’ based on business needs, skills and knowledge. In popular culture this could be referred to as a ‘flash team.’ Major business media are reporting on the emerging office-less enterprise – one that has no fixed office spaces, and doesn’t intend to create them. Companies working that way claim up to 50% savings in operating and infrastructure costs1, not to mention increased flexibility.

Siemens Enterprise Communicationswww.siemens-enterprise.com

Amplify collective effort. Dramatically improve performance.

amplifyTEAMS

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Here is a quick summary of some of the more influential teaming trends in the new millennium:

And, with the new technologies that enable team communication, the center of gravity has shifted increasingly to team member choice rather than IT department control. To survive and thrive in the new virtualized teaming world, users expect technology that collapses the distance between distributed members without usability hassles – enabling meaningful collaboration and achieving outcomes regardless of where the work is being done. Meanwhile, the tidal wave of easy to use yet powerful smart phone and tablet devices has ushered in a new era of user expectations and multimedia communications.

But, this wide proliferation of disparate communication options creates its own challenges. How do you deal productively with the onslaught of public and private social media outlets, text messages, instant messages, emails, voicemails, documents, phone calls, audio conferences, shared workspaces, web conferences, video conferences – and the list goes on. Just checking in once a day – can take all day.

Why Focus on Teams, and Why Now?

The nature of work lifestyles and team collaboration has fundamentally changed, forever.

We are now virtual, mobile, distributed, social, and we bring our own devices to work. At the same time, the proliferation of disparate communications has created a complex, fragmented and overwhelming mess – in many cases hindering collaboration and productivity, rather than enabling it.

What’s more, for many companies that have provided laptops and smart phones to their employees, little has been done to improve the productivity of those workers in the context of team performance or govern the betterment of collective effort. Not surprisingly, 62% of workers responding to a new global Ipsos-Reuters poll found remote working socially isolating3. Clearly there is an opportunity to improve the connectedness of virtual team members.

“A well-run team can

achieve far more than the

sum of its parts.”2 Then Now■■ Face-to-face, fixed roles■■ Directive, transaction-oriented ■■ Company-defined systems and tools ■■ Longer, predictable cycle times

■■ Virtual, mobile, ‘crowd-sourced’ ■■ Conversations, dialog, collaboration ■■ Employee-defined engagement tools ■■ Short iterative cycles

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Here are some highlights from our research4:

• 79% of respondents always or frequently work in distributed teams, but only 44% find it as productive as face-to-face teamwork.

• 43% of users feel frustrated and overwhelmed by team collaboration and communication technologies that they work with.

• 75% find their team members more likely get distracted during “virtual meetings”.

• Older technologies like email (93%), phone calls (89%) and audio conferencing (79%) are still the most common tools used to support distributed teams.

• 72% would find teamwork easier if collaboration included video, but only 34% use it.

• Only 8% have formal team performance management systems in place.

Siemens Enterprise Communications global research conducted September/October 2012. Sample size n=320, 95% confidence level within +/- 5.44% margin of error.

We strongly believe now is the time for enterprises to revisit the untapped potential of team performance – to effectively look at team collaboration as a corporate asset.

Our recent global research study4 shows that while the vast majority of organizations rely on remote, distributed and mobile team members today – a smaller minority report having sufficient tools to enable effective team collaboration and coherent information sharing. And even fewer have formal training strategies to ensure productivity with the tools they do have, or a means to measure and manage teamwork in the enterprise.

Our research shows that more than 4 in 10 users ‘always or frequently’ feel frustrated or overwhelmed by the complexity of disconnected communications technologies, and only about half of respondents experience success in establishing trust and maintaining fluid dialog among team members within today’s new ‘virtualized’ landscape.

At the same time, surprisingly, most enterprises are still primarily relying on traditional tools – phone calls, conference calls and email – to drive team collaboration among those who cannot communicate face-to-face. A huge untapped potential for richer conversations, productive dialog and information sharing clearly exists.

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“Teamwork remains the one

sustainable competitive

advantage that’s always

been largely untapped”2

Ports■■ Success = connection and transaction■■ Device on every desk■■ Add to the connection■■ Technical services

People■■ Success = team performance■■ Information-based value■■ Enabling anywhere worker■■ “Enterprise-caliber” consumer technology

Our amplifyTEAMS Vision

As a solutions vendor, we have helped our customers reduce their communications infrastructure, IT and operating costs through migration to IP, consolidating their systems, and leveraging open software-based approaches. We will continue to drive those outcomes for customers.

But now, the focus is shifting to the user: usability, mobility, productivity and collaboration. Instead of a phone on every desk, it is about enabling your teams’ success through dialog and conversation. It is about delivering information value in the context of communications, automatically and in real-time.

The focus is on enabling the ‘anywhere worker’ who believes that work is a thing that gets done, not a place to go – and expects the tools they use to be easy and intuitive, and basically just work. It is about embracing ‘enterprise-caliber’ consumer technology in the communications mix.

Ultimately, amplifyTEAMS is aimed at allowing organizations to unleash the untapped potential of their teams, in the context of the new landscape of communications and work lifestyles. We call this a shift in focus, “from ports to people” – from communication devices connected to a technology platform, to a focus on the user experience and enabling high performing teams to collaborate. Success is not about delivering transactional communication, it is in creating an enabling ecosystem around the user.

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■■ The communication and collaboration tools you use feel like second-nature, learn from the way you work, are self-aware and adapt to your prevailing situation and needs – automatically.

■■ You have ubiquitous, anywhere seamless access to the right communications, applications and data – regardless of device, location or network.

■■ Effortlessly move among media – voice, text, web, video, and social – and be presented with filtered information, in a rich and visual format, in context of your work at hand.

■■ Conversations are captured and easily retrieved, and data becomes rich information.

■■ You are provided only the information you need in the format you need it – everything else is filtered out.

■■ All devices and communications applications are presented with a consistent, intuitive and ‘joyful’ user experience – desktop, laptop, smart phone, tablet, appliances.

■■ Content is aggregated from multiple sources like social networks, business applications and prior conversations into a single view.

■■ You can simply control your communications world to prioritize when and how you can be reached; who can reach you; and ‘respectful’ reminders and notifications are never in your way, but always available.

■■ Secure access, privacy and credentials can be established ‘organically’ and automatically, and applied across all devices, networks and applications.

■■ Communications media and channels are unified, synchronized and integrated, providing an intelligently filtered and contextual view of your communications world.

“An organization is healthy

when it is whole, consistent

and complete, when its

management, operations

and culture are unified.”2

Now, Imagine If …

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Achieving Dramatically Improved Team Performance

How do we deliver on the promise of amplifyTEAMS and make it real?

amplifyTEAMS is ambitious, definitive and far reaching. It is based on five key pillars that support our vision for dramatically improving team performance. Let’s take a closer look.

Pillar One: Vibrant Conversations

Vibrant conversations move from a single media transactional mode, to a more fluid and rich dialog or conversation stream. This includes all media and allows the user to easily add video and visual content to the discussion, all with one user experience.

To collapse the distance of remote and distributed team members, the experience is in high-definition – crystal clear audio and video, and immersive.

And, the context of the work being done automatically draws in the information, content and people-relationships (even from your social networks) that will get work done, and presents it all in a very visual and intuitive way.

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Pillar Two: Thought Trails Pillar Three: Be Seamless

All team work efforts attract content, history, context and communication trails. But capturing and keeping track of all that can be very difficult, especially as the dialog moves across various media and formats. How is it all captured, organized, and retrieved when needed?

We call this Thought Trails. In the simplest terms, it is about automatically capturing, transcribing, and organizing all content and dialogs (regardless of media) and making it easily accessible when needed through filters, smart searching and easy navigation.

Customized views, and transcriptions from text-to-speech or speech-to-text help make the information needed to move team efforts forward close at hand, and easily consumable.

Being seamless implies mobility, but it is more than that. To be seamless includes moving easily among various devices, media, networks with no ‘drop out’ of conversations, contacts or content. The applications and information you need are fully portable no matter what work setting you are in, and the team members you need to dialog with are always close at hand.

And, synchronization is automatic so you don’t have to reconcile different versions of content or ways of seeing your relationships across different devices.

‘Seamless’ means you won’t be reading manuals nor doing cumbersome software configuration – everything just works when you need it and how you need it.

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Although we have never had so many ways to communicate, the cumulative effect can often lead to distraction from important work and communications overload. Rather than being enveloped by a swarm of electronic communications and content, the idea of focus allows us to get back to prioritized communications and control over our personal collaboration environment. Your presence and availability can be set simply and automatically, based on rules or wireless location-based services. If your boss or a key customer needs to reach you, presence-based routing rules enable that on the appropriate device, while filtering out the rest. While screening out low-priority messages, Focus also means the system provides respectful reminders and notifications of key events, scheduled meetings, or incoming content that is of critical importance to your team outcomes. Social filtering rules also add structure and control over the influx of incoming social media updates and messages, so only what is desired and relevant is in front of you.

And, your collaborative applications should never be in your way – flexibly adapting to your immediate needs by minimizing screen footprint or running in the background.

Pillar Four: Focus

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Going beyond is about integration and aggregation. That is, tieing-in with the existing applications, directories, social networks and groupware already in place. And at the same time, reducing the complexity and simplifying your view of content, communications and collaboration. It also means leveraging external services that may surround you – such as wireless location-based services or security and authentication systems – to make your user experience more effortless, more automated and more productive.

Lastly, going beyond the traditional IT deployment model says that the applications you use can be consumed anywhere – on premise from your data center, from the cloud, or from public cellular networks.

Pillar Five: Going Beyond

Communications technology has become a disparate mess as work lifestyles have permanently evolved to be flexible and mobile. Since the advent of the internet, users have been inundated with new ways to communicate. With these new trends and technologies, opportunities emerge.

Because we have so many communication options, the opportunity to connect and flourish is better than ever. Harnessing these capabilities into a set of integrated and harmonized tools is an opportunity to dramatically improve the output of a team.

The need is to overcome the physical distances between mobile and virtual team members, improve ‘reachability’ and enable productive conversations and dialog – while removing complexity.

Our vision is to deliver fully integrated communications solutions that synchronize technologies, harmonize the user experience, weave communications directly into the way businesses operate and empower employees and teams.

The result is a more competitive enterprise. One that amplifies collective effort and dramatically improves business performance.

Amplify Collective Effort. Dramatically Improve Performance.

“If you could get everyone

in the organization pulling

in the same direction,

you could dominate any

industry, in any market,

against any competition, at

any time.”5

Amplify collective effort. Dramatically improve performance.

amplifyTEAMS

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Siemens Enterprise Communications is a leading global provider of unified communications (UC) solutions and network infrastructure for enterprises of all sizes. Leveraging 160 years of experience, we deliver innovation and quality to the world’s most successful companies, backed by a world-class services portfolio which includes international multi-vendor managed and outsourcing capabilities.

Our OpenScape communications solutions provide a seamless and efficient collaboration experience – on any device – which amplifies collective effort and dramatically improves business performance.

Together, our global team of UC experts and service professionals set the standards for a rich communications experience that empowers teams to deliver better results.

Siemens Enterprise Communications is a joint venture of The Gores Group and Siemens AG, and includes Enterasys Networks, a provider of network infrastructure and security solutions, creating a complementary and complete enterprise communications solutions portfolio.

For more information, please visit:

www.siemens-enterprise.com or www.enterasys.com

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Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG is a Trademark Licensee of Siemens AG.

© 2012 Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG

Hofmannstr. 51 D-80200 Munich, 10/2012

The information provided in this White Paper contains merely general descriptions or characteristics of performance which in case of actual use do not always apply as described or which may change as a result of further development of the products. An obligation to provide the respective characteristics shall only exist if expressly agreed in the terms of contract. Availability and technical specifications are subject to change without notice. OpenScape, OpenStage and HiPath are registered trademarks of Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Footnotes:1 Step Into the Office-Less Company, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 4 20122 The Five Dysfunctions of Teams, Patrick Lencioni3 About one in five workers worldwide telecommute: poll, Reuters New York, Jan. 24, 20124 Siemens Enterprise Communications original global research, October 2012, n=3205 Patrick Lencioni, The Table Group research note 2012

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For more numbers please visit our website:www.siemens-enterprise.com/amplifyteams