Which collaboration metrics determine the business value of an application?

The criteria for evaluating the business value of collaboration tools are not well defined because these tools are marketed for the cloud and purchasing decisions are based on operating costs rather than capital expenditures. As consumable services, products such as Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) do not need to be reviewed for return on investment (ROI) like investments in hardware. Cost savings is a common metric for measuring business value, but it is not a realistic driver of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and collaboration purchasing decisions.

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As a result, performance metrics for UCaaS and collaboration are primarily actionable, reflecting usage and adoption. These metrics help IT departments assess how UCaaS and collaboration tools are being used in the organization, but they don’t truly measure business-level impact, such as whether collaboration efforts are leading to better decisions or measurable outcomes.

The value of these metrics should be self-evident, but has not yet been apparent because they are difficult to quantify. Currently, operational metrics are the best standard for judging the value of collaboration tools. Organizations need to consider two sets of collaboration metrics.

IT metrics measure resource usage

The first set of collaboration metrics is IT technology-related as it relates to resource usage. These metrics include a broad set of network diagnostics that track factors such as how collaboration applications affect bandwidth usage, application traffic on the enterprise network, and quality of service (QoS).

Quality of Service (QoS) helps show how the audio and video quality of the collaboration applications deployed by an organization outperforms the consumer-grade applications chosen by end users. Another important resource for tracking usage is conference rooms. Collaboration applications provide valuable metrics to measure which conference rooms are being used, how long they are likely to be used, how many participants, and at what time of day.

Collaboration metrics for employee use and adoption

The second set of metrics looks at both end-user activity and adoption of each collaboration application. At the end-user level, IT can track who is using the applications and how they are being used. Key examples include the number of end users participating in meetings, how long the meetings were, where they were held, and with whom.

The metrics also provide insights into the modes employees use to collaborate (such as voice, video and messaging) and the features used for team work, such as file sharing, co-browsing, screen sharing and content creation.

IT departments have never had this much detailed information before, so it takes time to determine which metrics provide the most value. This is undoubtedly a better starting point than the organization has today with legacy standalone applications, and the effort in making this decision is certainly worth it.