Aberdeen Report Confirms the ROI on Unified Communications

One of the great claims of unified communications solutions vendors is that UC offers a fast return on investment because it helps boost employee productivity by streamlining communications and improving collaboration.

But there’s never really been a way to prove this – because it’s been almost impossible to measure.

 

A new report from market research firm Aberdeen Group, however, concludes that UC does deliver measurable business value.

The report, "Unified Communications: Gaining a Competitive Advantage While on the Move," claims that 79 percent of companies surveyed achieved a break-even return on their UC investment within the first 12 months. The savings was realized by streamlining internal and external communications, maximizing telecom spend, increasing productivity through improved collaboration, and reducing customer churn through increased customer responsiveness.


The research study, which surveyed over 150 organizations, also found that the broad acceptance of mobility in the enterprise has made it the most reliable way to contact an individual, and the need to integrate mobility into the larger organization's communications infrastructure emerged as one of the primary drivers for increased UC adoption.

Companies participating in the study reported that UC had increased knowledge sharing among the workforce by 35 percent, increased workplace flexibility by 35 percent, improved their organization's competitive performance by 25 percent, increased collaboration for decision making by 16 percent, and accelerated speed of conflict resolution by 11 percent, on average.

"Unified Communications (News - Alert) holds enormous promise as a coherent approach to business communications, as a way to cut through 'communications clutter,' and more directly connect a customer to a company, employee to employee, and more tightly bind business partners and suppliers," said Andrew Borg, senior research analyst, Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group, in a release. "The challenge of our connected era is that the greater the number of communications options, the more difficult it can be to connect with a specific individual when you want to. UC therefore becomes increasingly important to mend the fractured digital communications landscape."