10. Realizing ROI with Productivity Increases
When any UC solution is being introduced, an
increase in productivity is one major selling point. How this increase
in productivity influences ROI can be more difficult to calculate.
Productivity increases are often referred to as soft costs, meaning
that you cannot put a definitive dollar amount next to them. However,
it is practical to make educated estimates based off of common
scenarios that result in productivity increases. After the solution is
deployed and used, it is possible to monitor usage and identify hard
productivity cost savings.
A key scenario in which
productivity increases can translate directly to dollar amounts is the
task of checking voice mail. When you consider the process for
listening to voice mail on a legacy voice mail system, it becomes clear
how tedious this process is. Assume that you have a billable resource.
This resource makes the company money at $300 per hour. If it takes
that person three minutes per day to listen to his voice mail, it seems
to be a small cost (under $2 per day). However, you must now multiply
that number by all resources in your organization, say 10,000 users.
That quickly turns into $20,000 dollars per day, or $100,000 per week.
When evaluating UC ROI, organizations should
also consider time that is wasted for travel. Many organizations have
resources that must travel to and from the office, as well as to and
from clients. If you were to use similar logic as that used previously
with a resource that can make the company $300 per hour, removing that
travel time and replacing it with billable work will save the company
money. Many organizations will charge customers travel time for such
resources; however, if a business no longer has to charge for travel
because moneymaking resources can work remotely with UC, that
organization is now more attractive to do business with.
Note
Although I have referenced billable-type
resources in my examples, in my experience organizations of all types
typically associate a per-hour value with their workers; these same
numbers can be used to predict productivity cost savings.
UC Presence makes it possible for
users to spend less time on common tasks and allows users to increase
productivity in many other areas. When users have the real-time
availability for their peers, their communications are more efficient,
less time is lost, and similar logic to that used previously can be
applied to calculate soft cost savings.
11. Realizing ROI with Reduced Travel Costs
The preceding section mentions cost savings
due to travel reduction. That section outlines the increased
productivity and potential “billability” of users based on less travel.
This next section explains how organizations can reduce their overall
travel costs.
Many organizations with a global footprint
spend millions of dollars per year on travel between their sites.
Today, even completely U.S.-based organizations require their employees
to travel between sites. In recent years, Telepresence video was
introduced as a way to reduce those travel costs. However, the
complexity and cost of Telepresence systems has resulted in many
organizations not realizing travel cost savings. A new and more
reliable trend for travel cost reduction is to deploy a common UC
solution across the organization that targets each and every end user.
Not all in-person meetings can be replaced
with a conference, even if HD video is involved, but the industry is
realizing that the majority of these trips can be removed and replaced
with a highly intuitive collaboration experience. When an organization
empowers its end users with a tool that allows them to seamlessly
collaborate with peers across the world, money is saved.
The process to calculate
this savings varies across the different types of organizations. This
is another cost that is hard to place a solid number on before the
product is deployed and used for some time. However, as with the
productivity increase, you can take estimates for common situations.
Consider the travel expenses and the lost time associated with
traveling for meetings, and estimate the savings when moved to a UC
conference.
There are also many tools in the
industry that allow organizations to monitor the usage of their UC
system, and use that data to calculate estimated cost savings. Look for
these tools to help you back up your original cost-saving estimates and
show true contribution to the UC ROI.
12. Realizing ROI with Reduced Real Estate Costs
Another interesting trend in the industry is
a cost reduction related to real estate. Many organizations are
exploring the idea of a “modern work space.” These modern work spaces
typically contain less formal work spaces and more of a shared
environment. The idea is that fewer users will actually be in the
office, and therefore you can reduce the size of your offices, or
remove some offices altogether. It is absolutely critical to have a
true UC solution deployed to allow for this workspace transformation.
Many organizations can save millions by moving to modern work spaces
and reducing the real estate footprint.
This approach is not typically started with
UC, but is driven by UC. In my experience, organizations that are
exploring the benefits of this solution have already been working on
this for quite some time. The amount of money that can be saved varies
greatly across regions and business verticals.
