Justifying the spend on UC collaboration | NetworkWorld.com Community: ""
Monday, May 04, 2009
Justifying the spend on UC collaboration | NetworkWorld.com Community
Good, brief article on justifying the spend for UCC (Unified Communications and Collaboration) tools in the enterprise. I'm a big believer in the value of integrated presence-aware applications to speed up the flow of information around the corporation and reduce the friction inherent in time-space. Reducing the latency in communications, the need for travel (can you say "pandemic") and ability to build and maintain relationships just makes sense. Unfortunately, it rarely if ever makes dollars and cents, at least in a direct enough fashion to be able to satisfy the CFO. At some point, it's a bit of a leap of faith and as such it's critically important that the CIO enlist the support of the rest of the executive team. If you can't get them to believe that faster communication is better, then you're going to run a significant risk of being seen as pushing a technology solution without a problem.
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2 comments:
Patrick, great article! You have hit the nail on the head on this one. Unless there is significant business buy-in for the technology, it will never be a success and has a best case scenario of becoming a marginalized tool used by small pockets in the organization.
I've found the best way to show value is to walk through several business scenarios where tangible time savings can be shown. This in turn will demonstrate how the technology translates into both dollar savings and increased revenue.
A low-cost trial aimed at a specific business process will help strengthen the argument.
Of course, if it can't demonstrate its tangible worth, then walk away before you look like a crazy IT guy.
Nick- I completely agree that proofs of concept or low-cost trials are absolutely necessary in this space. Hard to quantify something like unified communications and even collaboration. Put it in place though and my experience says it becomes indispensable.
What's the value on faster flow of information? Hard to quantify but just try turning it off.
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