I've had a chance to go over some of the slides for the upcoming Virtual Event on mobility and UC, and I think this one from the RIM/BlackBerry presentation does a good job summing up the key issues around ROI for the integration:
The big near-term drivers are cost savings and policy. What I found striking in this slide is it very closely echoes the VoiceCon Orlando 2010 material from Steve Leaden that I've begun posting. Steve provided some great details on where to look for the cost savings when you're managing mobility; and the policy drivers and enforcement mechanisms that may be available to you.
I do think that the longer the enterprise goes without attempting to rein in costs and policies from the infrastructure level on up, the more difficult it's going to become to ever do it at all. As the mobility marketplace becomes even more diverse, and as users become even more set in their preferences, it's going to be that much more difficult for enterprise communications managers to build in mechanisms for avoiding international roaming, excessive or inappropriate texting and application deployment, etc.
Cost control and policy are sort of two sides of the same coin--offensive and defensive, you could say: You can aggressively go out and implement Telecom Expense Management as well as dial plan/call routing-oriented controls, and hopefully push some savings directly to your bottom line. And you can also implement policies that may not save you money but can help you avoid costly problems.
One thing that Steve Leaden mentions in his presentation that I Slidecasted here is the legal concerns around things like texting while driving. Namely, you may need a policy prohibiting this sort of activity, in order to limit the company's liability if the employee does it anyway and causes some sort of damage.
Next week's Virtual Event is going to focus a lot more heavily on the wireless technology and mobile UC applications, but I think that Steve's perspectives complement the bigger technology picture.
