If you need to start driving better ROI for your business’s IT projects, you’re not alone. In fact, according to this year’s State of IT report, 50% of organisations plan to take precautionary measures to prepare for a market downturn in 2023. And many of these businesses are spending on IT as part of these measures, to improve efficiency and workflows with automation. But we know it’s still important to show how these IT projects are improving your bottom line in a tight economic climate.
From reducing costs on hardware to consolidating customer service and business communications, here are five ways businesses can optimise IT budgets and ROI to achieve operational efficiencies.
Let’s dive in.
5 ways to get better ROI for IT projects this year
1. Avoid surprise billing with predictable, subscription pricing
Businesses can improve ROI on IT projects by migrating to the cloud. This is an easy way to avoid the hidden costs associated with on-premise hardware maintenance, upgrades, and security. Cloud subscriptions allow for license flexibility and thus, budget flexibility. With a premise-based solution, each feature, service, or maintenance agreement is an added fixed cost. This lack of future proofing is a looming TCO issue for any company in 2023. An all-inclusive cloud solution like RingCentral MVP not only includes basic and advanced features at one low cost but also continues to deliver new innovations every month to your end users.
With RingCentral, you can expect a more predictable and competitive telephony expense. Overall, our customers in 2022 saw telecom costs decrease by 23% and IT spend decrease by 16% when they migrated from on-premises to the cloud. Corteva Agriscience, stated: “We don’t have to factor in roaming charges or additional fees for going over our minutes. RingCentral is much more cost-effective because we pay a fixed amount for licenses—and that’s it. No phone-bill surprises.”
Did you know: To give our customers the most value, your allowance is pooled at the account level, meaning you’re not penalised for team members that use services more.
2. Unify systems across locations and departments
Having different infrastructure at different locations (or even in different departments in the same office) is costly to maintain. It requires manual tinkering to stand up new sites or additional users. It also introduces complexity and even more costs when connecting with global sites. These factors, combined with the lack of scalability, have driven many businesses to adopt unified cloud communications.
RingCentral offers a cost-effective solution for multisite management. With its web interface, non-technical staff can easily add phones or numbers, make changes, or handle moves from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Additionally, RingCentral handles updates, bug fixes, and telecom compliance requirements, decreasing IT costs for ongoing updates. And that means an increase in ROI for these important IT projects.
If you operate a business that requires some on-premises equipment, RingCentral can interconnect your on-premises PBX and cloud users through free onNet calling too.
Did you know: Our customer, Glory Global, was able to reduce telecom costs by over 30% after deploying RingCentral’s integrated communication service.
3. Reduce up-front hardware costs with Device as a Service (DaaS)
Many businesses face these two issues: the need to save money while also improving organisational speed and efficiency. It can be expensive to provide hybrid workforces with the devices they need to do their job optimally. But it doesn’t have to be.
With Device as a Service (DaaS), organisations can deploy equipment with a cost-effective, subscription-based service, which decreases capital costs and improves your ROI for IT projects. DaaS can also make sure that they have the necessary infrastructure in place to meet their needs as they grow. Not only can it reduce IT workloads by up to 16%, it also actually declutters your tech stack if you choose your vendor wisely. Pick a vendor that can provide hardware, software, and IT management all wrapped up in one neat bow.
With RingCentral’s DaaS, you’ll get lower upfront costs, headache-free fulfilment, and easy upgrades to use best-in-class hardware for your RingCentral Rooms conference rooms or headsets for business communications and contact centres.
Did you know: According to a 2022 survey of over 1300 RingCentral customers, our customers saw a 20% decrease in hardware costs with RingCentral.
4. Consolidate your software subscriptions
Today, organisations use multiple communication apps, relying on standalone products such as IM and fax, and even 2 or more messaging apps for their collaborative and communication needs. Not only does this increase app overload, but it also adds to the additional subscription costs charged by third-party vendors.
With RingCentral, you can consolidate subscriptions into one. Enjoy business calling, eFax, team messaging, video meetings, digital whiteboarding, and webinars all in one subscription.
Optimise your IT budget with a business communication system that includes automation tools, so that you can do more with less. For example, you can automate call logging and call transcriptions by integrating RingCentral MVP with popular CRM apps such as HubSpot and Zoho to gain insights and improve close rates. Or maximise the return on investment in Microsoft 365 by utilising Teams for messaging and video and RingCentral’s advanced cloud phone system for advanced communication to reduce TCO.
Did you know: RingCentral customers experience as high as 75% faster integrations
5. Improve customer experience and reduce churn with the right support technology
Your existing customer service solution might be a hassle to maintain and a nightmare to upgrade. Plus it doesn’t provide the digital experience that today’s consumers expect and the ability to integrate with your other systems, not to mention self-service capabilities.
At RingCentral, we bring together market-leading unified communications (UCaaS) that are integrated with contact centre (CCaaS) solutions so you can enable easy collaboration for your employees and agents and deliver seamless omnichannel experiences for your customers — all across 30+ digital and voice channels.
Your customer service team enjoys a simple, intuitive tool to onboard quickly, receive up-to-the-minute guidance, and can work from anywhere. Our solutions are powered by one common telephony that is easy to manage, one secure and compliant platform to mitigate risk, and one vendor relationship to deliver high ROI by up to 615% and reduce payback time to less than 3 months.
Did you know: Our customers see an average of 30% reduction in cost to serve with RingCentral.
Better ROI for IT projects: Spend less and save more with RingCentral
Many IT leaders are beginning to re-evaluate their tech stack in light of the market uncertainty. Now more than ever, they need to balance priorities around cost, risk and innovation to accelerate time to value on projects.
Through rapid investments in AI, reliability and cloud resilience, RingCentral helps you decrease total cost of ownership (TCO) and mitigate continuity risks while increasing end-user value and productivity. Run and grow your business easily while we help you maximise your ROI.
Talk to our team to see how you could start saving.
Originally published Nov 13, 2023, updated Nov 29, 2023
