How Do You Know Your UC Investment Is Paying Off?How Do You Know Your UC Investment Is Paying Off?
Replacing outdated cost-tracking metrics with a return-on-engagement strategy is the first step in optimizing your UC&C investment.
April 27, 2017
The global unified communications and collaboration market is projected to reach $96 billion by 2023, per the latest research report by Global Market Insights. Some of the key drivers in this trend are the:
Plethora of incumbent and new providers of collaboration tools
Explosion of UC as a service via the cloud
The rising adoption of smartphones and other mobile devices
The availability, reliability, and increased bandwidth and performance of LAN, WAN, and wireless connectivity
Increased compute power
Despite the growth of UC&C, the results enterprises experience from its use varies widely. UC&C technologies can miss the mark for myriad reasons, but oftentimes the cause relates to how enterprises assess UC&C success.
Activity-Based Measurements vs. Outcome-Based Measurements
In the earlier days of UC&C, enterprises primarily used reduction in travel expenses as the primary metric for gauging the value of the technology. Company A invested X in video conferencing systems, and reduced employee travel by Y. If the value of Y was greater than X, it deemed the investment a success.
While the goal of UC&C will always be about maximizing productivity and increasing efficiencies, the question of how a company can determine those improvements isn't always clear cut. And, sometimes what an organization thinks are good metrics for success can be a detriment.
As a good case in point, consider a healthcare practice implementing a telehealth platform to enable physicians to meet with more patients. After the implementation, the practice could feasibly see a 15% increase in the number of daily appointments (i.e., an activity-based measurement). However, a closer look may reveal a growing frustration with the videoconferencing system among patients and physicians (i.e., an outcome-based measurement). Perhaps the system relies on a proprietary platform that is difficult to use, or maybe physicians didn't receive proper training before they started using it. Clearly, achieving a better activity-based measurement at the expense of an important outcome-based measurement (i.e., the patient or physician experience) isn't effective in the long run.
Another example can be seen in financial services, where videoconferencing technologies enable brokers to have more engaging meetings with their clients instead of relying only on phone calls or face-to-face meetings. However, one large Northeast-based financial institution discovered a big difference between having several videoconferencing systems throughout its facility and improving productivity and the client experience (outcome-based measurements). One problem was conference room hijacking, which occurred when scheduled conferences extended beyond their allotted times. This meant the next person or group had to either start their conference late or scramble to find another room. Another challenge was the inflexibility of the legacy system, which could only be used from a dedicated conference room and with other parties on the same system. Only after the financial services firm upgraded its legacy videoconferencing system to enable brokers to conduct conferences at their desks using PCs or mobile devices was it able to resolve these issues.
VC firm OpenView Venture Partners addressed this topic in the article, "Engineering Metrics: Grow Your Business with Outcomes, not Activity," (and not only for measuring engineers' performance). In the article, Melanie Ziegler, founder of engineering peer group VPE Forum, discussed the differences between activity-based and outcome-based measurements. Even as she acknowledged the benefit of using activity-based metrics to manage workflow and assess team performance, Ziegler warned against letting those metrics find their way into other parts of the company. "What we don't want to see as an engineer," she said, "is the executive leadership looking to measure the engineering organization based on the activity-based goals that the VPE (vice president of engineering) uses to plan the team's work and drive continual improvement."
Click here to Page 2: Rethink Your Productivity Index
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Rethink Your Productivity Index
Before an organization can switch to an outcome-based productivity model, it must establish a productivity index, comprising specific outcomes deemed to be important to the organization. In the engineering example mentioned earlier, Ziegler recommended evaluating the engineering team's performance using "big" outcome-focused questions like:
Are you delivering value for the customer?
Are you delivering results each quarter that will help grow the business?
Are you mitigating risk?
Do you know the ROI of the features you're building?
Did you ship when you said you would ship?
When identifying the factors for measuring productivity at your organization, the key is to ask yourself how each outcome-focused question can lead to a relevant outcome for your business. In my recent No Jitter article, "How to Finesse Post-M&A Collaboration," I shared a personal example from my previous role of collaboration engineering and delivery manager at Merck. Seemingly simple activities -- like contacting a new boss or talking to new team members -- become very complex following Merck's mega merger with Schering-Plough, with facilities and employees spread across several continents. Following the merger, I saw varying levels of commitment to due diligence regarding communications. At one end of the spectrum are those who "rip the Band-Aid off" and force in new technology, dragging their users chaotically through change. On the opposite end are leaders who take time to assess the situation, design properly, implement in phases, survey their users, and leverage data for informed decision making.
In a recent CIO article, Eric Bloom, president of IT leadership development firm Manager Mechanics, discussed another prerequisite for measuring productivity, which is understanding the dependence of each department within a company. Every department within IT, for instance, is part of an overall technical ecosystem that is connected to all other departments in some way. For example, business analysis provides functional specifications to the programmers. Trainers provide classes that help programmers learn their craft. Database administrators design database schemas for use by the programmers, etc. If any of these departments fall short in the execution of their responsibilities, then IT and the company it services could fail.
While identifying and documenting departmental dependencies and conducting a communications assessment may not have an immediate and/or direct tie-in to UC&C cost savings, it will provide clarity on several relevant business outcomes, which collectively can be used to gauge the return on engagement (ROE) of the communications system.
In the coming weeks, I'll explore the ROE concept further and consider the key components of a UC&C ROE strategy, including:
Conducting assessments. Look at your current UC&C solution and evaluate all the ways your organization is currently using it and consider new ways it might use it. For example, if you're currently using streaming video for quarterly town hall meetings, perhaps you might also use it for onboarding new employees or conducting employee trainings.
Establishing benchmarks. If you were utilizing your UC&C platform to its fullest potential, what would that look like? We'll explore this and look at ways to identify and set key benchmarks.
Determining your productivity indexes. After establishing benchmarks, we'll look at creating indexes an organization can use to identify performance gaps, track improvements, and make adjustments.
Evaluating ROE is about much more than controlling costs; it goes to the heart of issues that next-gen workplaces care about, such as improving the workforce and customer experience. While these metrics will continue to allude shortsighted enterprises, those that see the value of improving employee and customer engagement will also see a positive ROI on their UC&C investment in the long term.
