ROI with Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment

Scott Whitney: Welcome everybody to Polycom OnDemand. I'm your host, Scott Whitney and for today's show, we are going to take some time to figure out how to determine the return on investment associated with using Polycom video conferencing equipment.

Hello again everybody and welcome to Polycom OnDemand, the show that demonstrates how collaboration technology can make your life much, much easier.

I am guessing that it's not new news to anybody listening to this podcast, that in order to bring any new technology into the enterprise, a serious examination about return on investment or ROI is a critical step. For a discussion about how to determine whether or not a Polycom deployment can demonstrate its worth through a tough ROI analysis, I'm joined on the phone from his offices in San Diego, California, by Polycom VP of Industry Solutions, Bob Preston. Bob, welcome back to the show.

Bob Preston: Hey, Scott, nice to be back. Thanks.

Scott Whitney: Great to have you, Bob. Hey, Bob, before we jump into the whole ROI discussion thing, what are some of the reasons why this is becoming an even more important topic than ever before?

Bob Preston: Well, Scott, in today's economic environment, there is a lot of pressure on companies to do more with less. It's uncertain when the economy will turn around. They are being asked by managements and their Board of Directors to reduce their cost, in cases perhaps even reduce the number of people, the headcount, that are working at the organization. And the bottom line is companies are under a severe amount of pressure even in this type of economy to be (inaudible) the shareholders and show a good return. At the same time, companies want to achieve more, right? Whether there is a recession or not, they are wanting to work faster, smarter, more efficiently. They want to gain market share and like I mentioned, kind of already improve the bottom line.

So, in today's economy in this environment, it's all about ROI more than ever it's necessary for a company to be able to prove the ROI before they would invest in any kind of IT infrastructure and that includes Polycom.

So, it's not just about cool stuff or people can connect and be visual through communication, it's really in today's environment about ROI and being able to prove about inside any kind of organization.

Scott Whitney: Bob, just to clarify, what exactly do you mean by ROI?

Bob Preston: Well, technically ROI means the benefits of an expenditure that comes back to the organization offset by cost. But your calculation of ROI is the benefits or the amount of positive return to its company divided by the cost, which gives you an equation known as ROI. More generically though, it's really you know, what are you going to do for me? What is your technology going to do for my company and what -- how is it going to benefit me and what is it going to bring back to my company in terms of bottom line performance? So that's kind of the general topic.

Scott Whitney: Okay. Now how would you describe the types of companies and even the types of individuals for us to deal with these issues?

To be continued...