Measuring Unified Communications ROI

How, then, can you evaluate if your plunge into UC has paid off in tangible ways? While every company will naturally have its own set of conditions and priorities, businesses implementing a solution from Avaya and HP ProCurve should be able to measure the return on UC investment in some or all of the following categories:

Lower IT management costs

The Avaya/HP ProCurve UC solution offers ease of management and control through modular configuration capabilities, IP phone auto-discovery, and automatic provisioning.
Overall, it costs less to manage a converged UC solution than multiple, disparate networks and legacy PBX systems.
IT departments can devote fewer resources and IT staff to managing Avaya communication solutions for mobile workers, telecommuters, and branch office personnel.

Lower IT maintenance costs

The costly maintenance and move/add/change expenses incurred with a legacy PBX or multiple independent key systems can be reduced.
Companies can lock in the maintenance cost for communications systems and also include automatic software upgrades to ensure UC systems have the latest capabilities.
Built-in, automatic monitoring and detection of potential system problems enable proactive system maintenance coverage. ◊ Statistically, 96 percent of system issues in Avaya/HP ProCurve environments are resolved without requiring technicians to be dispatched – so maintenance costs remain extremely low.
Because Avaya’s UC solutions are certified to run on HP ProCurve Adaptive Networks, and because support and maintenance of UC solutions are coordinated under the ProCurve ONE program, IT staff do not need to waste valuable time figuring out who to work with to address technical or support issues.
HP ProCurve’s industry-leading Lifetime Warranty3 can significantly reduce TCO through its next-business-day advance replacement policy and ability to forego the expensive service contracts offered by other networking vendors.

Higher worker productivity

All users, regardless of their location or job function, enjoy consistent communications with Avaya’s UC solutions.
Collaboration among workers becomes easy and natural, which leads to more efficient projects with less wasted time, fewer actions not getting done, and less unnecessary duplication of efforts.
Mobile, telecommuting, and branch office workers remain accessible to customers and co-workers. ◊ Employees can receive and retrieve all their messages (voice mail, e-mail, and fax) in a single unified mailbox; be notified of important messages and callers; and access corporate directories, from anywhere and at any time. These capabilities are also available via speech access.
Workers can choose from among various fully integrated desktop interfaces, including Avaya one-X® Communicator, Microsoft® Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007, IBM Lotus Sametime, and Lotus Notes.
For knowledge-worker-based businesses, Avaya/HP ProCurve UC solutions can improve processes that lead directly to higher revenues and profits. According to a community hospital in Florida, IT employees are extremely well connected with their remote locations. The [Avaya] Extension to Cellular application is used quite a bit, and has helped contribute to the productivity of the IT team.

Reduced labor costs

By using centralized UC solutions, travel time and travel expenses can be drastically cut or eliminated for branch office administration and other functions that previously required in-person attention.
Employee training and support costs can be reduced because workers face fewer technical issues requiring IT resolution and because the UC solution’s presence status and click-to-dial capability connect workers quickly to the right experts and resources within the company.

Reduced operating costs

Monthly telecom expenses are lower when traffic is routed over an IP network.
Avaya IP desk phones provide full unified communications features while using 30 to 40 percent less power than the industry average for other IP phones (according to a report from Miercom, December 2008).
Infrastructure consolidation yields power savings that translate into lower operating costs.
Energy costs can be further reduced through IP phone power efficiency, standards-based fine-grained power management, and ability to centrally cut IP phone power during non-working hours. By implementing Avaya UC solutions, a leading full-service market research firm successfully transitioned more than 60 percent of its staff to home offices. As a result, the company was able to move to smaller offices which lowered its real estate costs from $11,000 to $2,000 per month – a reduction of more than 80 percent.

Better risk mitigation

Reliable, high-performance Avaya/HP ProCurve UC solutions—based on a redundant, fault-tolerant network infrastructure—are far more likely than non-unified solutions to remain up and running even in stressful situations. Companies can therefore communicate during major business interruptions or crises as well as during peak demand, when communications are needed most.
The distributed nature of IP telephony can reduce risk of communications interruptions. By distributing resiliency at different geographical locations, IP telephony dramatically reduces the risk of a total system outage caused by catastrophic events such as water, flood, or fire damage. Comparable risk mitigation can be costly and difficult to achieve with a legacy PBX implementation.

Improved customer service

When customers ask questions or have issues, customer service representatives and other employees using integrated UC solutions can collaborate easily to get answers or solve problems.
Employee access to a “Find an Expert” capability allows customer service agents to use presence to locate experts in the enterprise quickly — for rapid, first-call resolution of customer issues.
Voice announcements can be changed seasonally, weekly, and daily to keep them relevant and appealing, so customers are more likely to feel welcome and encouraged to purchase products.
Avaya/HP ProCurve UC solutions can leverage Avaya’s industry-leading contact center capabilities to optimize multi-channel and multi-media customer contacts, as well as analytics and workforce management functions.
Companies can integrate their branch office communications with their contact centers to drive a consistent customer experience across all sites.

Improved differentiation and competitiveness

The ability to respond quickly and appropriately to customers, partners, supply chain vendors, and others can set a business apart from its competitors. Businesses that are easier to work with are likely to do more business.
Avaya UC’s efficient and more timely business communications can promote customer retention, loyalty, and repeat business.
UC solutions can improve communication both within your company and externally with customers and business partners.
Avaya/HP ProCurve UC solutions promote the kind of business agility that helps you respond rapidly and effectively to whatever business conditions and competitive challenges might arise. One of the first 10 fund management institutions in China has experienced great results with its Avaya-based UC platform. The company has increased service levels w