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Kate Gerwig, Editorial Director
1) Reduce telecommunication costs by eliminating toll charges for interoffice communications, routing these via the IP network to avoiding telecomm service provider charges.
2) Reduce moves, adds and changes costs because the all digital VoIP solutions are easier to move and reconfigure.
3) Reduce telecommunication management costs via convergence, whereby separate staff to manage telecommunication systems and network infrastructure are no longer required.
Although these hard cost savings are compelling, the business benefits of VoIP are more significant if the organization can take advantage of the productivity and business enabling features and applications. These include unified messaging, call center automation, personal assistant and other applications.
These immediate cost savings can typically offset the required investment in VoIP telecommunication hardware and software, which typically includes:
• IP phone sets or soft phones• Network upgrades for possible quality of service and performance upgrades
• Implementation labor and professional services
• On-going support and administration labor
• Support and maintenance contracts
• Increased support calls and potential user downtime losses on initial deployment
• IT training
• User training
• Write-off, write-down and disposal costs for existing telecommunication assets
Companies also need to carefully weigh risk factors that could lower VoIP's ROI, especially in the short term as staff and technology get up to speed on efficient use.
• Quality of service / performance• User training and adoption
• Administration and support skill levels and resources
• Proprietary vs. open systems interoperability
This was first published in March 2005