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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.

(Podcast length: 31:33) BCStrategies Experts Kevin Kieller, David Danto, Thomas Brannen, Jon Arnold, Melissa Swartz, Robert Harris, and Steve Leaden cover their key takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2025 -- the most surprising, interesting, or thematic items from the great conference put on by Eric Krapf and his team.

(Podcast length: 20:14) BCStrategies Experts Blair Pleasant, David Maldow, and Martha Buyer discuss their key takeaways and observations from Enterprise Connect 2025 (moderated by Kevin Kieller). They then share expectations and hopes related to hashtag EC26 as it moves to Las Vegas for next year.

B usiness C ommunications S trategies Expert analysis, insights, and opinions Search BC Strategies Welcome to Business Communications Strategies (BCS), your go-to source for expert insights and guidance for enterprise success in Communications and Collaboration. Popular Tags Artificial Intelligence (14) 14 posts CCaaS (4) 4 posts Future of Work (2) 2 posts UCaaS (2) 2 posts Generative AI (2) 2 posts 8x8 (2) 2 posts Follow Us Featured Article Enterprise Connect 2025 – A Farewell to the Gaylord Palms Blair Pleasant 6 days ago 13 min read Quick Picks Latest Events Upcoming Events AI Videos Featured Expert New Expert Latest Research Latest Podcasts Latest Events Upcoming Events AI Videos Featured Expert New Expert Latest Research Latest Podcasts Latest Events Upcoming Events AI Videos Featured Expert New Expert Latest Research Latest Podcasts Latest Events Upcoming Events AI Videos Featured Expert New Expert Latest Research Latest Podcasts Latest Events Upcoming Events AI Videos Featured Expert New Expert Latest Research Latest Podcasts Latest Podcasts Key takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2025 - Part 2 Mar 28 Takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2025 (part 1) Mar 27 Latest Posts 8x8 Analyst Summit Takeaways – Track Some Mud on the Carpet My favorite line from A Complete Unknown – “ Don’t be afraid to track some mud on the carpet ”. My favorite line – and pretty much... Jon Arnold 30 minutes ago Q&A with Pete Lavache, Avaya CMO and Blair Pleasant, COMMfusion president and principal analyst Expert Blair Pleasant asks questions of Avaya's CMO Pete Lavache Blair Pleasant 4 hours ago Chalice AI: The DeepSeek of Ad Tech In this exclusive interview, Adam Heimlich, Founder and CEO of Chalice AI, breaks down how his company is disrupting the ad tech space by... David Maldow 23 hours ago Unified Communications & Collaboration The Future of Eye Contact in Video Calls: Which of These 3 Methods Works Best? David Maldow 23 hours ago 1 min read Vedubox: The All-in-One LMS with Zoom-Powered Live Classes David Maldow 23 hours ago 1 min read Customer Experience 8x8 Analyst Summit Takeaways – Track Some Mud on the Carpet Jon Arnold 30 minutes ago 8 min read Q&A with Pete Lavache, Avaya CMO and Blair Pleasant, COMMfusion president and principal analyst Blair Pleasant 4 hours ago 6 min read Artificial Intelligence Chalice AI: The DeepSeek of Ad Tech David Maldow 23 hours ago 1 min read RingCentral Analyst Summit 2025 Blair Pleasant Mar 11 4 min read Infrastructure Das AI: The Good, Bad, and Weird from My Week in Berlin Tom Brannen Sep 12, 2024 4 min read The AI Chefs With Kevin Kieller and David Maldow The AI Chefs: AI Kitchen Tools and Inspiration Rodizio Feb 17 The AI Chefs: A Deep Dive into DeepSeek Jan 30 AI Show With Rob Scott and Kevin Kieller AI Show - The Fifth Industrial Revolution and Why AI is Reshaping Everything Nov 27, 2024 AI Show - Is Ambient AI Watching You? The Rise of 'Always-on' Technology Nov 15, 2024

Experts BC Strategies Expert analysis, insights, and opinions We are a collection of experienced, independent analysts, consultants, and thought leaders focused on unified communications, customer experience, artificial intelligence and other technologies associated with effective business communications and collaboration. Together we participate as presenters and panelists in major communication and collaboration industry events, create hundred of articles, blog posts, and videos every year, have deep industry relationships with every significant vendor, have a combined social media reach of 250,000+ LinkedIn followers and 400,000+ X (Twitter) followers. Jim Burton Dave Michels Blair Pleasant Jon Arnold Stephen Leaden Kevin Kieller Joseph Williams David Danto Melissa Swartz Evan Kirstel David Smith Nicolas de Kouchkovsky Chuck Lear Robert Harris Elizabeth English Tom Brannen Chuck Vondra Ted Colton Martha Buyer David Maldow Our Experts

Latest Events BC Strategies Expert analysis, insights, and opinions Recent Events Inside Enterprise Connect 2025: Conversations, Insights, and Industry Trends A Farewell to the Gaylord Palms In this article, BCStrategy Expert Blair Pleasant covers key announcements and news, and offering valuable insights through informative vendor interviews she conducted at Enterprise Connect 2025. Read More A Congregation of Thoughts Read BCStrategy Expert Kevin Kieller's high-level impressions and takeways from Enterprise Connect 2025. Read More Key Takeaways - Part 1 Join BCStrategies Experts Kevin Kieller, David Danto, Thomas Brannen, Jon Arnold, Melissa Swartz, Robert Harris, and Steve Leaden as they share their key takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2025, highlighting the most surprising revelations, compelling insights, and overarching themes shaping the event. View Here Key Takeaways - Part 2 In this podcast, BCStrategies Experts Blair Pleasant , David Maldow , and Martha Buyer discuss their key takeaways and insights from Enterprise Connect 2025, offering thoughtful observations on the event's most impactful moments. View Here