CFO Perspective
Managing the money in any business is a huge responsibility and challenge. As we discuss in our message to the CEO, Jack Welch believed that there were only three metrics needed to run your business: Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, and Cash Flow. He said, “If your customers are satisfied then you’re growing share. If your employees are satisfied then you’re making productivity gains. If you have strong cash flow then you’re making money.” IP Telephony will help organizations improve customer satisfaction and productivity. Customer Satisfaction and Staff Productivity can be difficult to measure, but hard savings on enterprise communications isn’t.
We advocate the following:
- As a management team analyze and agree on the value of a customer. What does it cost the enterprise to lose a customer due to a ‘bad customer experience’ or you not meeting your service levels?
- At the same time, analyze and understand how to ‘ELEVATE YOUR CUSTOMER’S EXERIENCE’. Develop a strategy to differentiate yourself based upon exceptional customer service. In our message to the Business Manager, we discuss how to consistently deliver an elevated customer experience by improving service and employee effectiveness.
- Develop a “virtual” or “home-based telecommuter” strategy or program. With the increasing cost of transportation, this will give you a competitive edge in hiring and retention, as well as help you control labor and facility costs. Remote, home-based workers are also much more willing and able to work flexible shifts, even as brief as 2 hours, giving you much more flexibility in meeting short period peak demands with the right-sized staff. Customer Interaction Center supports remote workers natively. Make sure you consider these savings and costs.
- Understand your true ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ for your communications technology and operations. See the research done by independent consulting firm, BenchmarkPortal on the TCO advantages of the “all-in-one” platform. The IC platform provides all of the features and applications you need to maintain a world-class communications and collaboration system without expensive integration points and multiple disparate systems. This saves you a lot of money. BenchmarkPortal’s report quantifies this.
- Protect existing and future investments by investing in a standards-based solutions that does not lock you into proprietary devices, such as handsets, servers, or gateways. VoIP, SIP, and SIP based carrier services offer significant cost reductions now and will deliver more in the future. Make sure that you are investing in technology that does not require proprietary devices in order to benefit from these technological advances. In our message to the CIO we discuss the importance of compliance with open-industry-standards.
Technology alone does not provide the complete business solution. This is where Altivon comes in. Altivon is a true ‘value-add’ business partner who will work with your team to customize, configure and integrate the technology to meet your exact business needs. We will also train your technical staff and users in how to get the most out of the system on a day to day basis. Furthermore, we provide consultative assistance as well as technical. We will be happy to work with you to develop an ROI analysis for your enterprise. There are many hard-dollar benefit opportunities with VoIP. You need a partner, who understands how to help you identify those and then help you deliver those savings.
In a recent pilot project conducted by Intel using IC technology they identified the following productivity savings.
Other key learnings from the project included:
- Mobility of soft phone increased productivity of key users and helped decrease cell phone usage charges
- Ability to view and control calls was very well received