Return On Investment
Ahh, the golden metric of finance. The measurement that, in an ideal world, all purchases and choices would be evaluated by to determine their worthiness. While we don't live in the ideal world (sometimes it feels like we live in a false reality world, let alone an ideal one), we have been through this enough to know that Return on Investment (ROI for short) is actually a good tool. It makes sense, it works, and, even in the world of interconnect voice, it proves its worth and utility.
So, just to summarize, what is ROI?
According to investopedia.com, Return on Investment measures the gain on an investment relative to the investment's cost. The formula is:
So simple, and it works. But often times companies either overemphasize its value or diminish its value in the choice analysis.
Take the world of interconnect voice. Particularly the software platforms that are used to manage the day-to-day business of interconnect voice. ROI, plays a role, but, far too often, it plays too small of a role in the analysis. Carriers go to great lengths to identify intangible things that they believe are equal to, or greater than, the value of the ROI analysis. Even we do it when we are selling. We tout our Reliability, Scalability and Usability. We tout our feature advantages and our reference customers. We talk about our Roadmap and our track record of innovation. All of these are good points that should influence the choice analysis. But, none of these should diminish the role that ROI must play in the analysis and final decision. Far too many companies convince themselves that ROI isn't as important as these other factors, but, the reality is actually the opposite. In the world of interconnect voice where you are dealing with a multitude of processes, people and business variables, the systems that manage the coordination and execution are critically important. It has to be reliable, it has to be scalable and it has to be usable... but it has to deliver a positive ROI, and that ROI must be considered when making the choice. It must be a critical criterion.
GCS, has long been a proponent of ROI analysis. We encourage all of our prospective customers to consider it because we believe it directly identifies gains vs. the cost of investment. And we believe that with our Dynamic Management Solution, the gains can be considerable. We have a roster of customers both large & small that have seen ROIs & Payback (a more antiquated financial metric) that exceeds what anyone would consider to be a good investment. There's one of our customers (a rather large carrier) that had planned for a payback period of 12 months. We delivered it in less than 90 days. That's 90 days on a purchase of over $500k. Think about the extra margin that went straight to their bottom line and all they did was purchase our solution. That's what we call positive ROI!
Here’s a listing of the elements of an ROI analysis for investing in a next gen interconnect voice OSS & BSS Solution:
Per minute cost reduction (U.S. and/or INTL)
# of Trouble Tickets per month
# of staff working in the routing group
% of time spent uploading rates
% of time spent creating LCR tables
% of time performing invoicing verification & reconciliation
These are some of the variables we look at to uncover the costs that carriers incur in operating their interconnect voice business, whether they are a retailer, wholesaler, OTT, mobile, etc.
So, if you are evaluating interconnect voice management solutions. While we are dazzling you with our features, capabilities and reference customers. When it comes time to talk turkey, make sure you ask about ROI and what your return should be, and can be, if you implement a next gen interconnect voice management Solution.!