Helping CIOs explore areas where to save and reallocate budget, to move towards a modern workplace cost-effectively and efficiently.
Cost Analytics Unleashed for UC Networks
Modern work platforms, such as Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, are the foundations that enable organizations to operate. They empower employees to collaborate in a flexible and agile way, on multiple devices, and from various locations. How then to free up investment and direct it towards these platforms? How to reduce spend in other areas where required, and ensure existing investments are optimized?
THE CIO C H A L L E N G E
For the CIO, cost analytics is now a critical part of the agenda as they look to invest in the digital workplace, drive user experience, and balance costs. What elements does cost analytics aim to tackle, and why are UC networks involved? Here, we explore areas where a CIO can save and reallocate budget, to move towards a modern workplace cost-effectively and efficiently.
Users, Work Styles and Licensing
Different users perform different roles relating to their responsibilities, and these can be grouped by pre-defined personas and applied as a user is onboarded to the business. Modern work platforms support a range of licensing levels that relate to the applications available and where they are consumed – on a desktop, mobile phone, or desk phone. As an example, Microsoft Teams provides an effective entry level for an enterprise with an E3 license ($23 retail), however many organizations invest in the more expensive E5 ($38) or phone add-on ($8). Some form of calling plan ($12 from Microsoft, slightly less elsewhere) is often added on top. These monthly charges are counted as operating costs, and amount to an increasing monthly cost burden over time. Do you have excess license capacity? ▪ Are users licensed correctly, based on their role or need? ▪ Are users fully adopting what’s available to them? ▪
ACTION: Having a clear understanding of users, role requirements, and adoption of various workloads is critical to correct licensing levels. This will unlock significant monthly savings.
Ghost and Low Mileage Devices
Historically, organizations have assigned a desk phone to employees, meeting rooms, and reception points. With the move to modern work, many of these devices are seldom or no longer used, out of service, or simply not present or unplugged. Licensing on these, at $5 -$10 per month plus the associated device cost (if not already amortized) contributes to the cost budget.
Is there old configuration for ghost or non-existent devices? ▪ Can low usage devices be decommissioned and removed? ▪ Are users over-configured with desktop, laptop, and mobile devices? ▪
ACTION: In many cases, these devices and the associated costs can be removed.
Facilities, Locations, Meeting Rooms, Conferencing
As organizations evolve towards a more distributed workforce, the requirement for locations and facilities changes. Many staff are no longer office-based and with real-estate costs at anywhere between $50 - $150 per square foot depending on location, it’s vital to ensure that office space is optimized and meets the needs of a nomadic workforce. Can real-estate be consolidated or rationalized? ▪ Are your offices populated, in use, or at capacity? ▪ Are facilities old and do they need replacing for modern work? ▪
Office locations must transform to meet the needs of modern work. This means investment in:
Meeting rooms and video conferencing ▪ Hot desking and drop-down locations ▪ Infrastructure covering networking, connectivity, and equipment licensing ▪ Provider charges for telecom, telephony/DIDs (PSTN), internet ▪ ACTION: Review real estate, locations, occupancy, and required facilities based on need. This will release budget for investment in modern work facilities.
Legacy Communication Platforms
Older platforms, particularly PBX systems from the likes of Cisco and Avaya, provide telephony services for locations that employees no longer visit. Often, as part of a transformation project, these same employees have moved to the cloud. In many cases, organizations continue to pay twice, licensing devices and users on older platforms whilst also paying an equivalent fee for the same services on a cloud platform.
Are users, devices, and services configured and in use? ▪ Can existing support and contracts be terminated early? ▪
ACTION: Migration projects should be accelerated, and older platforms decommissioned.
Efficiency Gains Through Automation
Multiple technology stacks, technical resources that are hard to acquire, and multi-step processes to manage change, all add hidden costs into the IT budget. This increases as the complexity and spread of modern work platforms grow over time. This complexity can also impact the speed at which day-to-day IT service requests are handled. Technical staff should be redirected towards higher priority, strategic projects. That leaves the more mundane flow of service requests to be identified and fully automated, reducing both cycle times and the need for additional resourcing. Are service requests managed by high touch technical teams? ▪ How much time is spent on regular mundane changes? ▪ Can regular changes be delegated regionally via devolved administration or self-service? ▪
ACTION: Identify regular service changes that can be automated. Free your highly skilled engineers to work on more strategic projects.
COST ANALYTICS IN UC NETWORKS
Planning and Next Steps
Cost analytics takes a strategic, ongoing, and proactive approach to reducing operating costs, which enables the CIO to release funds for investment in priority projects, modern work, and initiatives that are aligned with business outcomes.
This release of funds can originate from one of three areas: Reducing costs and optimizing the usage of assets ▪ Rationalizing and consolidating legacy platforms ▪ Renegotiating better deals when contracts come up for renewal ▪
Don't miss the bigger picture: A non-strategic approach to cost cutting will inevitably deliver disappointing results whilst impacting user experience and performance.
Your UC network provides a detailed footprint in terms of how employees are collaborating and working. A cost analytics solution will consume this date and relate it to inventory, configuration, adoption, and capacity.
Analytics will then provide snapshots and trends over time, leading to actionable information and insight around the major cost elements:
Users, work styles, and licensing ▪ Ghost and low mileage devices ▪ Facilities and locations – including meeting rooms ▪
Legacy communication platforms ▪ Efficiency gains through automation ▪
These actions can then move you towards your strategic goals: Reducing expenditure, optimizing the usage of assets, and reinvesting towards modern work platforms and business outcomes.
VOSS Cost Analytics is here to help
It tracks critical assets such as licensing, devices, telephone numbers, and capacity, across the diverse components of a UC ecosystem. By integrating this feature from VOSS into a UC environment, customers will gain access to a single point of control for discovery, analysis, trending, and reporting on asset utilization and spending. The result: In our experience, organizations that carry out this process should expect at least a 15% cost reduction. Why wait?
THE VOSS SUITE
VOSS has a global customer base of large enterprise and service provider customers. More than 10 million devices have been migrated and are being managed and monitored by VOSS.
Using a revolutionary methodology, VOSS Migrate streamlines UC migration projects by automating the discovery, extraction, transformation, validation, and loading of large volumes of data. This saves organizations from the complexities and risks associated with manual UC migrations, ensuring faster and more cost-effective transitions.
VOSS Migrate
Offering a wide range of UC management capabilities, VOSS Automate provides a unified point of control across the digital workplace. Seamlessly integrating with UC business applications, it allows for highly customizable workflows, enabling companies to lower operating costs and adapt to evolving business needs with unparalleled automation agility.
VOSS Automate
Complementing VOSS Automate, VOSS Insights enriches the data required for monitoring and fault detection, leveraging self- healing AI logic to expedite issue resolution. By providing deep insights into the UC platform, VOSS empowers companies to continuously improve and optimize their UC environment, delivering exceptional communication experiences for employees and driving business growth as a result.
VOSS Insights
voss-solutions.com info@voss-solutions.com
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