Microsoft Office 365: How to Quantify the Quantifiable

By David Byrd

It is important for a business about to purchase Microsoft Office 365 to know what material benefits it will deliver to the company. It is also important for a salesperson or agent to know how to position O365 in terms of return on investment (ROI). Too often, each party is left with open-ended value proposition statements that neither can quantify. However, I still see each party – the seller and buyer – accepting these statements as fact.

Name one other area where that happens. Would you advise a customer to move its mobile accounts to a new carrier without seeing hard stats on coverage areas and satisfaction metrics?

For the last few years, I have campaigned for sales and buying processes to accept value-proposition statements in principle but insist on having enough hard information to quantify that value for the business.

Consider the following assertion regarding an employee productivity improvement: “Skype for Business improves collaboration and communications with presence and instant messaging.”

Sounds good to both parties, and in most presentations, sales teams think that’s enough. I disagree.

Do some digging and we discover that Sage Research and Chadwick, Martin Bailey determined that using presence and IM could save 22-40 minutes per employee, per day. Knowing if a team member is available, how to best communicate with that person and executing the communication quickly saves an employee time. And time is money.

Consider that an employee is budgeted to work 260 days per year. That translates to 124,800 minutes per year. Further, consider that the latest average wage for 2014 according to the Social Security Administration is $46,481.52.

$46,481.52 salary/124,800 minutes = $0.37 per minute

If Skype for Business with presence and IM can save 22-40 minutes per employee, per day, then the real value to the business per day is $8.19 to $14.90. An employee who uses presence and IM as a part of his or her daily activities can expect to save the company a minimum of $2,130 per year and up to $3,873 annually.

The cost of Office 365 with Business Premium that includes Skype for Business as well as Yammer, SharePoint, OneDrive and Office online is $15 per month, or $180 per year. Comparing $2,130 of benefit to a cost of $180 demonstrates that the benefit delivers a return that far exceeds the cost.

The primary value derived from Office 365 varies by customer and by feature adoption per employee; however, by examining which features apply to a given business, department or function, all of the stated benefits can be quantified using a little bit of research.

While I like analyzing numbers, I know that many of you like to see the results. In a subsequent blog, I’ll present the value of improved collaboration and access to documents and files by having the Office Suite Online, a mainstay of Office 365.

David Byrd leads marketing and operations for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, he was CMO at ANPI, and CMO & EVP of sales at Broadvox.