* Strategic vs. tactical ROIs
Last time, we began addressing the difference between strategic and tactical ROIs, focusing on the tactical ROI where there were no significant new capabilities added, but the existing tasks were simply performed at a lower cost.
Carrying that discussion further, we’ll move to discuss a strategic ROI. By our definition, a strategic ROI is an investment analysis where significant capabilities are added by making the investment. In many cases, the fundamental business mechanisms may be redefined as a part of the ROI.
There are many excellent examples of strategic ROIs. In the convergence space, the movement from a traditional call center to an IP-enabled contact center would require a strategic ROI analysis. This becomes more than simply replacing a bank of traditional phones with IP-enabled phones. Instead, the contact center may not even start with phones since the initial point-of-contact may be Web-based rather than phone-based. And if a phone call is needed, then skills-based routing would most certainly be involved in routing the call to someone with appropriate knowledge early in the process. Further, the agent to whom the call is routed may very well not even be sitting in a call center as the most appropriately skilled agent may be working from a home office as a part of an (admittedly oxymoronic) “distributed call center.”
The good news about the strategic ROI is that it provides the financial justification needed to upgrade to next-generation technology and to restructure internal business processes that may well be required for survival in the emerging virtualized business world. But the bad news is that the parameters and the calculations become much more complex. For instance, one of the advantages of the above-mentioned IP-enabled contact center is improved customer satisfaction, resulting in reduced client churn and more loyal customers. But what does this mean in terms of real dollars? This is not a question that’s easy to answer.
Nevertheless, we have some evidence that these strategic ROIs are having a major impact, and we’ll wrap up this discussion with some hard numbers in the next (and final) newsletter in this series.
