Last week, we talked about the challenge of putting together a business case for unified communications, particularly in these economic times. As noted, a great place to start is with conferencing and telepresence, which can deliver hard-dollar savings (and a clear ROI) in a matter of months.
But they’re just the beginning. Productivity benefits can also be credible — so long as they’re clearly pegged to top-line business benefits.
Of course, these days, companies aren’t particularly open to a productivity pitch. I’ve heard more than one IT practitioner tell me, “Don’t even bother with business cases that involve saving a few minutes here or there, management won’t listen.” Another says, “The only time management will listen to a productivity argument is if you can point to a person who gets laid off as a result of improved productivity.” Grim, yes, but also realistic.
The trick here is to put “soft” productivity returns in a context that business units understand. This pitch needs to go beyond features and benefits and actually spell out projected financial benefits. Don’t assume that saying “UC is projected to decrease time per service call by 10%” will automatically be translated by the business unit into direct value.
Nemertes’ clients have demonstrated two such business cases, one in financial services and the other in healthcare. Financial services firms we’ve worked with have found that deploying unified messaging on PCs and PDAs saves traders 25 to 30 minutes per day retrieving voice mails and responding to peers and clients resulting in an annual return for the trading house of $10,000 – $18,000 per trader. That means a trading house can cut its staff by approximately 10% without affecting productivity.
Similarly, in a hospital environment, doctors can save 45 to 60 minutes per day through more efficient processing of patient, nurse, lab and pharmacy interactions, resulting in an annual soft return of $35,000 to $50,000 per year. Once again, the savings can be justified in terms of staff reduction (or potentially, deferred hiring).
But unless you’re a trading company or a hospital, this may not seem too useful. How can you develop a similar use case for your own organization?
Start the UC ROI analysis with a focus on transactions and processes that could potentially be improved by making them faster or richer.
For example, ask questions like:
* “What if we didn’t need to schedule a follow-up call to answer that question?”
* “What if we didn’t have to search for that information?”
* “What would have been the benefit of pulling in Joe, the subject matter expert, while he was halfway around the world?”
Look for transactions with measurable value that are already being tracked.
For example: project times, service call length, number of support calls, etc. Quantify the transactions into time spent. Once quantified, you can focus on the potential value of improving the transactions. For example what is the effect of expediting the transaction? Once you determine the potential for improvement you are close to building the sales pitch for the business unit. By focusing on established metrics, much of this downstream sales job is simplified.
With this approach you can build a UC ROI that applies specifically to your organization—and has credible dollar figures attached.
