The Real Cost of Unified Communications Downtime — What You Need to Know
Unified communications, or UC, is a framework for integrating various real-time communication tools, with the goal of enhancing business communication, collaboration and productivity. So what happens when UC aren’t working properly? What does it cost your business when your UC system goes down? And what does this mean for a business like yours?
Direct Costs vs. Indirect Costs
Direct costs are easy to calculate, as this would be the amount of money it actually cost to fix the outage, including the provider or consultant charges that may arise. Indirect costs, however, are a bit more difficult to calculate. This could include IT staff time involved in solving the issue, and possibly even overtime. How much of your IT team’s time was spent focusing on the outage? It’s resolution? It’s cause? What else would your IT team been working on, had this UC outage not occurred? An accurate calculation of lost productivity will often provide all the justification necessary to invest in a more reliable system.
Opportunity Cost
Maybe even harder to calculate than the previous indirect costs are opportunity costs — what opportunities might have been lost during this UC outage? Research has shown, in today’s fast-paced marketplace, the majority of customers reach a purchasing decision before they even contact you. So will your customer be patience and wait until you’re available, should you be experiencing a UC failure? Or will they quickly move to their second option? How will this affect your reputation?
Actual Cost of UC Downtime
The actual cost of downtime is based on the individual — a top executive obviously being more expensive than an entry level role. However, one important factor that is often forgotten in the mix is the element of spend to have IT investigate the UC outage. The quicker the IT team can diagnose the problem, the quicker they can get back to doing other important tasks for the business, from a proactive standpoint especially. One thing is apparent though, lost productivity for any team can be devastating. Especially when you take into account the ripple effect this downtime for one individual can have on other parts of the business.
Discovering the true cost of a UC system failure should be a factor when it comes time to decide between UC solutions for your business. UC technology used to be a “nice to have” but it’s becoming more and more clear that UC technology is now a high priority for many businesses. If your employees are not given the tools they need to properly perform and communicate, the can easily find another opportunity elsewhere.
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