Assessing the impact of communication technologies

Jožek Gruškovnjak (2011) Assessing the impact of communication technologies. EngD thesis.

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Abstract

Modern communications technologies and technologies associated with Web 2.0 hold great promise in the area of collaboration, which represents the next wave in the drive to increase productivity and efficiency. However, most organizations make decisions to introduce collaboration and related technologies without proper investment analysis and justification and without mechanisms to measure actual impact. The objective of the thesis is to shed some light into this area by building a model that is trying to capture the investments and operational costs of building a modern communications infrastructure on one side and define and evaluate potential business benefits on the other. The model is developed in a form of a spreadsheet that captures: - Technology solutions that are used to support collaboration with associated costs of investments and ongoing operations. - Potential business benefits that are coming from three sources: reduced operating costs, increased employee productivity and increased effectiveness and efficiency from changes made to business processes that are enabled by deployed solutions. Results of the model are presented through financial impact during observation period. Analysis of a representative international organization has shown that the benefits are indeed coming from three areas mentioned above: - Reduced costs of communications infrastructure is caused primarily by convergence to unified infrastructure and consequentially lower capital and operational expenditures. - Increased employee productivity is driven in the first place by time savings that are consequence of implemented modern communications tools, which allow better collaboration and information management. - Business process transformation enables increased efficiency of organization.

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