In order to determine the value of a Hosted Unified Communications implementation, we need a few assumptions. I will be using these for the other identified benefits of UC as well:

• Company size is 22 and 100 employees
• Median income is $51,000

Using the above assumptions, if a business implemented full UC including Presence, a mobile client and collaboration tools, employee productivity would result in the following gains per market study data:

1. 49% of businesses saved up to 20 minutes per employee per day by reaching co-workers on the first try.

1. 54% of businesses saved up to 20 minutes per employee per day by escalating IM chats into phone calls.

1. 33% saved 11 to 20 minutes per employee daily using digital corporate directory access, click-to-dial and Presence.

While not every business saved using the various tools or improved communications processes, those businesses that did receive a tremendous improvement on their bottom live. By quantifying the potential savings versus simply saying “UC can improve productivity”, a business owner can measure the effectiveness of the solution. This is very different from performing the usual Return on Investment or Total Cost of Ownership models. Those models analyze the cost differential between a hosted/cloud implementation versus a premises-based solution. They typically do not quantify the dollar benefits associated with the solution. And while it is possible to implement a UC solution on premise, it is not the preferred method by any business size. Even the largest of enterprises, deploy some elements of UC using a private or public cloud infrastructure.

Next we will quantify the benefits of “Integrated Mobility”.