The industry has, rightfully, spent most of the last year and a half focused on technology in general, and specifically the need to get remote-access technologies into the hands and onto the desktops of end users who had largely moved to home working. With that task essentially accomplished, now is a good time to take a step back, assess what you’re using, what you still have but aren’t using, and what you need as we move forward into a future of hybrid work in 2022.
I’m particularly excited about a session at
Enterprise Connect 2021, taking placing in Orlando, Fla., Sept. 27-29, that’s going to tackle these challenges. Robert Harris of Communications Advantage is bringing together four of his consultant peers for a discussion of “
How to Reset Your Communications Budget and Expense Strategy.” They’re going to focus on the ways that your enterprise communications environment may have changed, the implications of these changes for your current spend, and your strategy of technology investment moving forward.
The top takeaways from the session represent a good start on this analysis:
- Finding the hidden costs of a remote workforce
- Identifying which new costs of enterprise communications will remain
- Sorting through legacy services that no longer fit in the enterprise
- How to conduct a holistic audit of all communications expenses
- Aligning carrier, cloud, and equipment contracts with a flexible hybrid work plan
Each of these points carries its own challenges and risks, as well as the potential for conflict within the organization. At a high level, before you start eliminating unneeded or duplicative services or applications, someone will have to decide what constitutes “unneeded” — meaning that business units and others outside of IT will have to weigh in about what’s necessary, what’s nice to have, and what’s expendable.
And of course dealing with contracts can be daunting even in times of little disruption. Now you have to deal with the fact that, in the past year and a half, your communications environment may have changed, but your carrier and service provider contracts probably didn’t. You may still be tied down to terms and conditions you signed up for in a very different climate. (Another great Enterprise Connect session, “
Re-building the WAN for the Post-Pandemic Office,” led by Joe Schmidt of TechCaliber Consulting, will provide even greater detail around these issues).
The good news is that Robert and his colleagues have been doing this kind of audit and expense management work for years, and these kinds of issues are exactly what they like to sink their teeth into. I’m expecting a ton of great practical advice to come out of their session.
We’ve always prided ourselves that Enterprise Connect blends those two equally important challenges that enterprise decision-makers face: understanding technology and building a strategy for it; and getting down into the weeds, which is where you find the cost savings and ROI that can help fund your strategic technology transformation. I hope you can join us in Orlando for
Enterprise Connect 2021, and join in the conversation about how to make sure you have the resources and plan for executing on your next enterprise communications/collaboration strategy.
