Preface

Establishing ultra large internationally competitive manufacturing groups by means of mergers and acquisitions quickly improves economies of scale and upgrades the entire industry. During mergers and acquisitions, however, enterprises tend to focus on the integration of tangible assets, including assets, strategies, technologies, personnel, and organizations, rather than IT-enabled applications, which leads to dubious large enterprise syndromes: It is one company on the surface, but has many potential problems among geographically distributed subsidiaries and factories. These problems include inexperienced collaboration management, low refined management level, different ICT penetration degrees, insufficient internal communication, fragmented internal operations, and low business operating efficiency.

Building a convergent office system will dramatically improve cross-regional communication and collaboration capabilities for employees, enable refined management, and enhance core competitiveness for enterprises. This system will connect HQ, subsidiaries, factories, partners and customers, and offer an impressive array of functions, including instant messaging, video conferencing, file transfer, information query, and request and approval.

Challenges

Large manufacturing enterprises have diverse branches and business units that involve more than 30 service systems. Office collaboration and service integration urgently await to be achieved in a convergent office solution.

Complex office collaboration

Collaboration difficulty and operation complexity: Subsidiaries have their own communications systems. Different communication means (smartphone, fixed-line phone, VoIP, and video endpoint) demand different systems, contact numbers, and operation processes. One employee has more than six contact numbers that are mutually isolated and difficult to remember. Users have to dial different contact numbers and find the appropriate one when calling an employee who is out of the office.

Device complexity resulting in frequent disconnections and high investment costs: Internal communications are extremely difficult due to the coexistence of analog and IP phone systems, devices from multiple vendors, inconsistent device formats, different numbering rules, and long and short numbers. The emergence of new IP voice and video services (such as convergent conferencing and VoIP) leads to the coexistence of traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) networks and IP networks, resulting in extreme wastes in operation, maintenance, and investment.

Difficult service integration

Inconsistent accounts and passwords, resulting in operation complexity: Independent application systems, including ERP, MES, CRM, have their own accounts and passwords that are difficult to remember. Users have to switch between multiple systems and enter the accounts and passwords when processing a single service. For example, a simple purchase process involves four application systems and forces users to enter accounts and passwords for four times.

Low efficiency due to lack of group service notification methods: An entire service involves diverse processes in different systems. System switching is complex. Users do not know what services to process. After a service request is initiated, responsible users do not receive instant notification, leading to a delay in service processing.

Huawei Convergent Office Solution for Manufacturing

Overview

In response to challenges faced by customers in the manufacturing industry, Huawei collaborates with industry system integrators (SIs) and offers the pre-integrated and ease-of-use enterprise software development kit (eSDK) for partners based on Huawei's sleek products, including unified communications (UC), telepresence conferencing, servers, and storage devices. The eSDK seamlessly integrates UC and industry-specific applications, and constructs a convergent office platform for manufacturing enterprises. The convergent office platform uses one network to bear office collaboration and has the features of one user interface, one core, and consistent experience. This platform significantly streamlines work processes and improves work efficiency for enterprise employees.

One network to bear office collaboration

Small distributed core voice gateway, bearing diverse services with one network and enabling one-number-link-you (ONLY): The solution uses the unified IP network architecture and enables network-wide cross-regional voice dispatch through the U2990 core voice gateway (accommodating 130k to 300k users). U series landing gateways are deployed in branches to support IM, voice call, and multimedia conferencing. Users can set phone linkage on the personal portal to display the IP phone number, mobile number, and UC client number as one number (ONLY), which tremendously improves communication efficiency.

Unified corporate directory, organization structure display, and rights control: The UC server synchronizes the corporate directory to clients, displays the directory by organizational structure (20-level), and supports search by keyword. The tree-shaped structure improves search accuracy. Rights control prevents the leakage of key information.

IP and TDM compatibility, maximizing customer investments: Large-capacity U series gateways support unified analog and IP access as well as hybrid networking (IP and TDM). A single integrated access device (IAD) accommodates the access of up to 224 analog phones. Huawei gateways comply with diverse signaling types to interwork with devices from diverse vendors, fully use legacy devices to smoothly expand convergent conferencing and VoIP services, and maximize customer investments.

Integrated service experience with eSDK

Unified portal for multiple services and consistent experience among multiple terminals: The unified portal provides entries for all services. The eSDK allows service systems to invoke the conferencing, call, and messaging functions of the UC system, integrating service and communication systems. A wide variety of terminals, including smartphones, tablets, computers, and IP phones, are integrated through the eSDK client.

Single sign-on (SSO) and cross-system service operation: The eSDK service middleware integrates UC and authentication systems and offers unified identification for UC and service applications. Users can access multiple service systems based on preset rules after entering accounts and passwords for one time. This simplifies cross-system service operations and improves work efficiency.

Automatically and efficiently pushing service messages with eSDK service middleware: Service systems, including ERP, MES, and CRM, send real-time service notifications to the UC server through eSDK WebService. The UC server pushes messages to UC clients, mailboxes, smartphones, and enterprise web portals. Instantly pushing all service messages allows users to process service requests in a timely manner.

Figure 1: Overall architecture for Huawei convergent office solution for manufacturing

Customer Benefits

Small distributed core voice gateway, bearing diverse services with one network, enabling ONLY, and simplifying office collaboration: The office collaboration capabilities are dramatically improved due to the following: unified convergent network architecture, TDM compatibility, use of legacy devices, unified voice dispatch, ONLY, and free switchover among diverse terminals.

eSDK service middleware, unified portal, SSO, and trouble-free system switchover: The unified enterprise information portal, service entry, and SSO optimize the cross-system service operations and improve work efficiency.

Multi-client eSDK integration, consistent experience, instant notification push, and easy service integration: A wide variety of terminals, including smartphones, tablets, computers, and IP phones, are integrated through the eSDK client. This enables consistent user experience, instant notification push, zero service delay, and simplified service integration.

As a basic ICT-enabled platform for manufacturing enterprises, the Huawei convergent office solution for manufacturing greatly improves the cross-regional communication and collaboration capabilities for enterprise employees, enable refined management, and enhance core competitiveness for enterprises.

• Contacts can be reached anytime and anywhere after different systems are integrated into the unified portal.
• Any service process requires only one-time account and password input.
• Responsible persons are automatically notified by the system during service handling.
• Different contact numbers are integrated into one number.
• Office calls can be answered anytime and anywhere.