Executive Summary | Scenario | Evaluating Wireless E-Mail ROI
Executive Summary
Networking technology is, at its core, all about facilitating communications. In our RFI for a wireless e-mail service for our fictitious MSE firm, we assessed:
• System architecture supported, including client and server application requirements, location of wireless e-mail gateways, synchronization and scalability, support for wireless applications besides e-mail, high-availability features and management capabilities
• Return on MSE's investment as it attempts to serve the needs of remote sales and field support/project management staff
• Device types supported, including specialized messaging devices optimized to work with the vendor's wireless e-mail system
• Wireless service support, coverage footprints
• Cost of ownership, including cost of devices (where applicable), cost of client and server software, cost of wireless services, and recurring support/maintenance costs
In addition, we examined specific product capabilities, support services, market positioning and vendor viability. Our comparison chart offers a breakdown of each vendor's offering. For MSE's needs, we selected Synchrologic's Mobile Suite; its in-house mobile middleware infrastructure was compatible with a wide range of devices while fulfilling our request for expanded mobile application support and solid device management.
Scenario: McDonald and Seifert Engineering
McDonald and Seifert Engineering is a vertically integrated engineering-services firm working in such areas as water resources, wastewater management and environmental services. The company offers consulting, engineering, scientific investigations, laboratory analysis, construction management and contract operations and maintenance services. Its clients include an international roster of several hundred customers in both the public and private sectors.
MSE has 800 employees working out of offices in 13 U.S. states and five foreign countries, including a distributed direct sales force of 75 people and 300 field employees working on the many engineering projects being managed by the company. Field staff often work out of temporary facilities in remote locations. Maintaining effective communications with the sales and field support staff is an ongoing challenge, and the firm is heavily dependent on both cellular voice and
e-mail communications. About 74 percent of the staff relies on Microsoft Exchange for e-mail services, while the balance--new employees of MSE by virtue of a recent acquisition--use Lotus Domino. Long-range plans call for consolidation onto a single messaging platform, probably Exchange, but that is unlikely to occur until late 2004.
Most of MSE's remote employees access e-mail via notebook computers by dialing to a remote-access VPN. Almost half of the remote employees also use PDAs, including devices from Palm and Compaq and even a few smart phones from Samsung and Handspring. Most of these devices have been acquired by the employees. While MSE's IS staff attempts to provide support when problems arise, the company has no official supported platform and has not deployed any enterprise applications to these devices. The most common applications are maintenance of address books and synchronization of appointment schedules with Microsoft Outlook.
Although MSE would prefer to accommodate personal preferences and deliver e-mail services to a range of different devices, it's clear that standardizing on a single platform would be more efficient. MSE management feels that employee resistance to standardization would be manageable, provided the services available would be perceived as beneficial to most employees. MSE understands that the implementation of wireless e-mail services will likely result in increased service fees, but it hopes that at least some of these costs will be offset by a reduction in cellular-phone usage. The company also envisions eventual implementation of other mobile applications and would like to acquire an extensible wireless e-mail system to support a range of back-end systems.
Vital Stats
• 800 employees
• 6 countries, including the United States, with MSE offices
• 375 mobile employees
Evaluating Wireless E-Mail ROI
Enhanced communications is one of those benefits that drive budget analysts nuts. Unlike many IT projects, it's extremely difficult to quantify the returns associated with a wireless e-mail system. But the difficulty of documenting the benefits doesn't mean they aren't real.
We're willing to accept the general notion that wireless e-mail increases productivity, particularly in organizations that have a large number of field sales and support staff. However, delivering these benefits is costly. A recent Meta Group study estimated the per-user cost for a wireless e-mail system at approximately $1,600 per year, a number high enough that few organizations are able to demonstrate positive ROI. According to Meta many, if not most, wireless e-mail projects are driven by a desire to provide premium convenience services to senior management. In short, politics, rather than economics, drives implementation.
If this description fits your organization, consider a network-service or desktop-redirection model. While somewhat more tactical, they tend to be less expensive when a small number of employees need to be equipped with wireless e-mail.
If you are thinking more strategically, you might view wireless e-mail as a way to get your feet wet in supporting mobile applications. Viewed from this perspective, it may not be necessary to establish compelling ROI because many of the benefits lie in building the infrastructure and gaining the experience necessary to support future mobility applications. If you do try to establish ROI, consider both staff efficiency and effectiveness in your benefit calculations. The efficiency benefits of wireless
e-mail come in several flavors. For example, if mobile staffers can process e-mail while waiting for an airline flight or appointment, that can translate into significant time savings, which can easily be monetized. If you believe Meta's estimate of $1,600 per employee per year, that means a typical $75,000-per-year employee would need to recover less than 50 hours of time per year--less than an hour per week--to break even.
Of course, more efficient use of dead time is not the only benefit of wireless e-mail. Equipping remote workers with timely information, which can often translate into better service or more closed sales, is where the real benefits reside. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to quantify these factors, so you'll have to rely on common sense and experience to incorporate them into your ROI analysis.
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