Your Best Bets for UC Features With an ROI in 2010

 

As for what lies ahead for UC in 2010, I expect this to be a watershed year for UC in the SMB. Everyone is cautiously optimistic about the communications market in general and the UC market in particular for the coming year. While purse strings will loosen up a bit in 2010, we know that businesses, especially those that are small and medium-sized, will be looking for value — no matter what they are buying.

 

We certainly found that to be the case in 2009 when UC workforce productivity features with "soft" ROIs such as unified messaging, presence, and call redirection weren't reasons for buying. Not surprisingly, businesses that simply could not defer new or replacement PBXs or UC systems last year were looking for alternatives that had a low TCO (or at least low initial cost) and came with inexpensive UC features, or UC features that could be easily added later.

 

More importantly, the primary impetus for an SMB to buy a UC solution was not TCO, but rather based on the solution having a short, identifiable ROI - usually within one to two quarters.

 

The ease with which a UC vendor could define an ROI in "hard" operating dollars, and the shorter the ROI, the more likely that vendor was to make a sale. UC features that allowed businesses to reduce operating costs, do more with less, or bring better customer service were high on the SMBs' agenda last year and are likely, in my estimation, to remain so in 2010.

 

So, if you are planning to reap some of the benefits of UC this year, you will have to justify your purchase with a "hard" ROI. As David Levy wrote in this column previously, "The trick is to find the ROI opportunities with UC that are lurking, just waiting to be discovered in your business. You just have to know how to find them."

 

I suggest that you start out by identifying one UC capability that has a justifiable ROI and use it to get started. In many cases I am sure that you will reveal several UC ROI opportunities once you start to interact with a solution vendor. If you choose a flexible UC solution that lets you add capabilities as you need them (or one that initially comes with them even though you are not using them), you will find that justifying additional UC ROI's later will become easier as you gain experience. And, in many cases, desirable UC features that are more difficult to justify up front like unified messaging, personal assistants, call redirection, and presence come at a lower marginal cost and become easier to justify once you have a system deployed.

 

Based on those recommendations, here are my suggestions for the five best bets for UC features in 2010. These features are a good place to start and offer an easily identifiable ROI: Fax If you have at least two fax machines you can reduce operating costs with a UC solution that includes desktop faxing and a fax server. An embedded fax server will let you save on supplies, telephone lines, and has productivity and security benefits. If you have a distributed operation with a data network in place you can save even more by centralizing fax.

 

Business process automation If you handle a lot of calls from your customers to access information that is already located in a line of business application database, you can reduce costs and provide 7x24 service by automating customer self service with communications- enabled business applications.

Notification If your business arranges appointments or service calls, you can automate reminder calls, freeing up service personnel for other tasks while reducing the number of no-shows.

 

Conferencing If you are using a service provider conference service and many of your conference participants are internal to your organization, you may be able to reduce costs by using the conferencing capabilities in your UC system. You may also be able to reduce your costs for outside participants using internal conferencing in conjunction with SIP trunking.

 

SIP trunking If your location has access to broadband services, you can reduce your costs to access the PSTN, long-distance and 800 number service charges by using a SIP trunking provider. SIP trunking also helps you leverage the benefits for all the previous four suggestions.

 

David Schenkel is senior technology analyst with ADTRAN (www.adtran.com).