Analytics Delivers ROI for Calling and Collaboration

You are investing money in your UCaaS (unified communications as a service) platforms like Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and Zoom Workplace.

You think this investment is boosting productivity, improving customer service, making employees more engaged and driving innovation.

You invest for return, focus on ROI (return on investment), and yet while organizations track their investment they often “guesstimate” the return, or even worse, simply “hope” for a return.

Hoping is not a strategy to drive adoption. “Thinking” you are getting return is not proof. You need data, “hard numbers”, to understand what is working and what is not. This is where analytics comes in.

The Imperative of Data-Driven Decision-Making

The deployment of UCaaS solutions generates a substantial volume of data pertaining to call patterns, meeting dynamics, messaging activity, and employee/customer interactions. This data, when properly analyzed, provides invaluable insights into the operational efficiency and strategic impact of these platforms. Analytics tools turn data into actionable insights, helping you measure, and optimize your return on unified communication investments.

Key Metrics for ROI Assessment

To effectively quantify the ROI of UCaaS deployments, organizations should focus on the following key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Usage and Adoption:

• Who is using which tools and what features in your communication and collaboration tools (adoption)?

  
  

• How much of specific service are being used (usage)?

➡️ Adoption is typically more important than usage in terms of delivering return on investment. Where adoption is low, consider if more training is required, different tools need to be deployed or existing tools reconfigured. Consider surveying users to gather qualitative data.

• Quality and Reliability:

• Are calls being reliably connected and maintained from and to all locations?

  
  

• Is call quality in offices or for remote users adequate?

  
  

• Are meeting join times on laptops and video conferencing devices fast?

  
  

• Is meeting video, screen sharing, or audio quality being impacted for some users, locations, or devices?

➡️ Poor call quality or reliability can impact adoption or user satisfaction. Alternatively, users may choose to use other, sometimes more expensive options, for example using their mobile devices to make calls.

➡️ Laptop processor, memory, or other running applications often impact UCaaS communication quality as much as the network.

• Meeting Productivity/Efficiency:

  
  

  • Evaluation of meeting attendance, frequency, duration, participant engagement, screen-sharing activity, and chat interaction within Teams, Webex, and Zoom Meetings.

    
    

  • Identification of unproductive meeting practices and implementation of strategies to enhance meeting efficiency.

    
    

  • Assessment of feature adoption to ensure optimal utilization of platform capabilities.

➡️ Gathering and interpreting actionable insights related to meetings is often more difficult. Many analytics tools ignore this area.

• Messaging and Collaborative Workflows:

  
  

  • Monitoring of message volume, channel activity, file-sharing patterns, and integration with third-party applications within Teams, Webex, and Zoom chat functionalities.

    
    

  • Identification of collaborative bottlenecks and implementation of strategies to streamline workflows.

    
    

  • Analysis of feature utilization to ensure employees are using the tools correctly.

➡️ Effective use of the various collaboration channels (chat, email, calling, SMS) often involves establishing and communicating organizational best practices.

• Employee/Customer Experience Metrics:

  
  

  • Evaluation of user satisfaction scores.

    
    

  • Where UCaaS solutions are used for internal “contact center” processes, for example an IT, HR, or travel coordination service desk, “call center light” metrics such as call volumes, average hold time, handle time, abandonment rate, etc. is valuable.

    
    

  • Identification of areas for improvement in customer service delivery.

    
    

➡️ Not all UCaaS platforms directly capture user satisfaction scores. You may need to survey your end users.

➡️ Follow-up conversations with users who repeated score low for user satisfaction is often insightful. In my experience, low scores may be related to technical issues, training issues, or simply a reaction to change.

The Distinct Advantages of Cloud-Based Analytics

Cloud-based platforms provide several distinct advantages in the realm of analytics:

• Centralized Data Repository: Cloud-based architectures facilitate the consolidation of communication data, enabling streamlined data collection and analysis.

  
  

• Real-Time Data Visualization: Cloud analytics platforms offer real-time dashboards and reporting capabilities, enabling prompt responses to dynamic operational conditions.

  
  

• Scalability and Adaptability: Cloud-based analytics solutions can readily scale to accommodate evolving data volumes and organizational requirements.

Translating Data into Tangible Business Outcomes

The utilization of analytics in UCaaS deployments yields tangible business outcomes, including:

• Reduction of Operational Expenditures: Identification and elimination of superfluous communication expenses. Optimization of resource allocation and network efficiency.

  
  

• Enhancement of Productivity: Usage, adoption and meeting metrics can help streamline workflows, improve team collaboration, and mitigate meeting fatigue.

  
  

• Improvement in Employee Satisfaction: Matching the right tools to the right people and providing adequate initial and on-going training can drive broad-based adoption, improve employee satisfaction, and improve ROI.

  
  

• Promotion of Innovation: Properly deployed and used, UCaaS can foster collaborative environments, facilitate and speed knowledge sharing, and accelerate product development cycles and issue resolution.

  
  

• Enhancement of Strategic Decision-Making: Data-driven insights inform strategic decisions regarding technology investments and business strategies.

Conclusion

The implementation of comprehensive analytics is indispensable for quantifying the ROI of UCaaS deployments.

Organizations that fail to adopt a data-driven approach risk operating in a state of uncertainty, unable to ascertain the true value of their technology investments. By embracing the power of calling, meeting, and collaboration analytics, enterprises can optimize their UCaaS deployments, enhance operational efficiency, and drive sustainable business growth.

About CallTower

CallTower provides industry-leading Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), and collaboration solutions along with analytics services that support these solutions.

CallTower does this using 15 geo-redundant data centers strategically located around the globe, providing connectivity in 80+ countries.

CallTower provided me with this opportunity to highlight the importance of using analytics to optimize the return on investment associated with UCaaS solutions and some of the best practices in doing so.