ROI of VoIP: computing labor cost

When you look at a VoIP solution, one of the most difficult problems to solve is the labor cost problem. The difficulty of this issue may be second only to the quantification of the impact on user productivity. This is partly because the vendor promises that such integration will reduce staffing while doing marketing, so that your mind will have the impression of reducing staff. However, integration and technical support are new technologies. This technology always means more work, not less work.

In a medium-sized enterprise, the salary of your IT staff is at a medium level. No additional staff is added for VoIP applications, but the existing staff only need to work a little longer. Because these IT employees pay according to normal standards, this will not have a great impact on the return on investment. However, in large organizations, you need to handle various resources when deploying VoIP and subsequent technical support. This once again raises a question: Will I save labor costs?

To answer this question, you 'd better divide your VoIP deployment into multiple components, analyze the components, and then combine them. Three major components of VoIP deployment need to be evaluated: the plan itself, infrastructure technical support, and user Technical Support/upgrade.

VoIP plan

If you don't have any plans to maintain this situation, all your planned costs are equal to $0. Therefore, you need to minimize the labor cost budget. However, it should be noted that the real key issue lies in execution. If you encounter integration troubles and technical difficulties, making a new plan in a hurry may ignore the return on investment. The best way to get a realistic number is to consider your plan's risk mitigation strategy when calculating the ROI of this plan.

Infrastructure support

This component includes support for voice networks, soft switches, and gateways. Theoretically, merging people who manage data and voice networks into a department may save money. However, for many different reasons, it is difficult to save money. If you think you can save money by integrating engineers and administrators, you must be prepared for a high-level and thorough investigation.

User support and "Move, add, modify"

I understand that you have not reduced your workload, so is the allocation of labor. For example, if you want to move a department from one area of the office building to another area, the telephone technician may move a phone from one desk to another, and then change the cross connection, configure the 911 emergency call on the vswitch. When using a VoIP phone, you can still choose a designated Telephone Technician to relocate the phone. However, you can also ask the user to relocate the phone. Since the Ethernet MAC address on the phone has not changed, the only job the Administrator has to do is to update the location of the 911 service. Therefore, the question becomes "How much does your 'move, add, and modify' job cost ?".