I spotted them this afternoon as I was perusing my VoiceCon conference agenda. There they were, those three little letters that can make or break any IT project: ROI.

Calculating the ROI of any proposed application or service is often essential to convincing management to fund the IT project in question. Unified communications (UC) is no exception.

At a session dedicated to determining the ROI of UC, reps from systems integrator INX, IP telephony vendor ShoreTel, and the ubiquitous Microsoft offered their advice:

• Look for hard savings first. How much less per month will it cost to maintain a UC system, versus your current, traditional communications tools?
• Then look into productivity gains. And be specific. If you determine deploying UC will improve productivity by 5%, how will workers spend that extra time?
• Recognize that ROI is different for different types of workers. For knowledge workers, ROI is best measured by looking at end results: increased sales and revenue, for instance. For contact center workers on the other hand, ROI depends on reducing transaction times. For example, how many more transactions per hour do you expect call center reps to take thanks to UC?
• Consider the future. Microsoft predicts the costs of VoIP will be reduced by half within three years. Be sure to take into account market factors like this when trying to determine the ROI of UC.