The Total Economic Impact™ Of Verizon’s Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams

Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Verizon’s Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams

A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study Commissioned By Verizon, October 2023

Whether used for external communication with customers or internal communication between employees and departments, making sure calls run smoothly and easily is vital to organizations. High-quality, reliable calls backed by cellular data ensure information is passed along without being dropped, which in turn allows internal initiatives and customer communications to flourish. Without a reliable calling solution, organizations risk poor quality calls, bungled management of clients, and failing compliance.

Verizon’s calling solutions for Microsoft Teams provide an extended mobile-first Teams experience by joining the Teams experience with a single business-provided phone number and coverage network. Verizon offers three Microsoft Teams calling solutions that enable Teams users to make and receive calls outside the organization to virtually anyone anywhere, including customers, partners, and other employees on both wireline and wireless/cellular solutions. Companies can mix and match the three solutions to choose the right solution for each individual employee, whether they are onsite, remote, hybrid, or mobile. This centralizes the workforce communications experience, creates consistency of business policies, and provides an optimal calling experience for all employees, regardless of where they are physically located.

Verizon commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Verizon’s calling solutions for Microsoft Teams.  The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Verizon’s Teams calling solutions on their organizations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed the IT director of a healthcare management company with experience using both Verizon Calling with Microsoft Teams (VCMT) and Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams (VMMT). Forrester used the interviewee’s experiences to project a three-year financial analysis for their organization. To keep the interviewee and their company anonymous, Forrester refers to the organization as “Dermex.”

The IT director noted that prior to using two of Verizon’s three Teams calling solutions, Dermex struggled with call consistency issues and poor call quality, which hurt the organization’s operations, branding, and bottom line. It also lacked the ability to comply with regulation-based reporting requirements and had to frequently work with its call center to resolve technical issues.

After the investment in VCMT and VMMT, the IT director was able to finally centralize the organization’s calling and collaboration with Teams and support its hybrid employee base (e.g., mobile workers, desk workers, etc.) with both a landline and mobile calling solution that is best suited for each persona. The IT director shared that regardless of location, Verizon’s network improved call quality and said its technology helped Dermex employees consolidate voicemails, further centralizing communication channels and reducing management costs. This ultimately improved communications with patients and customers.

Key Findings

Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for Dermex include:

  • Hundreds of hours and more than $1.2 million saved annually in managing legacy solutions. Switching to Verizon’s Teams calling solutions enables Dermex to retire its legacy outbound calling solution. This not only saves Dermex $1.2 million in fees annually, but it also allows the organization to avoid 280 hours of labor its IT director previously spent troubleshooting each year. This benefit has worth a risk-adjusted, three-year PV of $2.5 million for Dermex.
  • 99% reduction in individual clinic landline spend. Dermex runs a total of eight clinics, and each spends $50,000 maintaining its landline phone systems. With Verizon Teams calling solutions in place, the clinics reduce this spend to $500, which is approximately a 99% reduction. Over three years, this benefit has a risk-adjusted PV of $1.3 million for Dermex.
  • 30% increase in patient appointments. Verizon’s Teams calling solutions help Dermex better manage its brand by controlling and providing consistent caller ID names and numbers. This ensures the end customer’s spam filters handle the calls correctly. Because of Verizon’s better caller ID branding, when Dermex employees call patients to confirm their appointments, the patients recognize the phone number and answer the calls. Better patient outreach leads Dermex to a 30% improvement in the number of patients that complete their appointments compared with the prior process. This directly improves profits and yields a risk-adjusted three-year PV of $1.2 million.
  • Nearly 90% time savings realized in setting up new-employee mobile lines. With Verizon’s calling solutions for Microsoft Teams, Dermex decreases the time required to set up and assign Microsoft Teams numbers from 67% in Year 1 to almost 90% in Year 3. This saves system administrators significant time and yields a risk-adjusted, three-year PV of $13,000.
  • Significant time savings on training for new hires and IT directors. With Verizon’s Teams calling solutions, Dermex also saves time on training new employees with training time decreasing by 75%. These savings impact both new hires as well as those in charge of the training. Over three years, Dermex saves a risk-adjusted total PV of $21,000.
  • Verizon Calling with Microsoft Teams implementation efficiencies. The Verizon team deploys VCMT lines at 20 sites on behalf of Dermex. This leads to time efficiencies for the IT director because Verizon performs the tasks associated with the project. However, because some organizations may be hesitant to share secure information with a third party, Forrester considers this an avoided cost and did not include this benefit in the financial model and ROI calculation. However, a sample calculation is provided in Table F.

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for Dermex but are not quantified for this study include:

  • Enriched customer experience. Verizon’s calling solutions for Microsoft Teams enables Dermex to provide higher-quality customer service to its patients and connect them quickly and easily to frontline workers, thus improving customer loyalty.
  • Improved employee experience. Dermex employees find Verizon’s Teams calling solutions to be easier to implement and use than other solutions.
  • Enhanced call quality. The higher quality and reliability of each call positively impacts customer loyalty and the overall quality of service offered by Dermex.
  • Increased understanding of technology due to Verizon customer service and support. The IT director said Verizon provides exceptional customer service and support that helps with deployment and regularly troubleshoots tasks.

Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for Dermex include:

  • $817,000 in licensing costs. Dermex deploys both VCMT and VMMT to support its in-office and mobile workforce. Annual costs include the cost per user for VMMT and VCMT, Verizon mobile phone plans and devices, Microsoft Teams E3 licenses, and Microsoft Teams Phone Standard licenses.
  • $327,000 in internal preparation and implementation costs for VCMT. These costs include the time required to prepare account information, labor time on the implementation itself, and the fully loaded salaries of system administrators, directors, and CIOs involved in the process.
  • $51,000 in the internal preparation and implementation labor costs for VMMT. Dermex has 1,800 employees use VMMT on their devices in Year 1. As the organization grows and hires new employees, its system administrators and IT director need less time to set up devices. By Year 3, they only require 10 minutes per device.
  • $445,000 in ongoing management and training costs for VCMT and VMMT. Dermex has an IT director, system administrators, and its CIO help maintain Verizon’s Teams calling solutions and requires additional time and effort for designing training.

The interview and financial analysis found that the representative’s organization experiences benefits of $5.01 million over three years versus costs of 1.64 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $3.37 million and an ROI of 205%.

99%

Reduction in individual clinic landline spend

“With Microsoft Teams, you’re able to forward your calls to another employee or external number. …But with Verizon Calling with Microsoft Teams, you have control [of] where your incoming calls go. …That’s the benefit for us.”

IT director, healthcare management

Key Statistics

  • icon icon

    Return on investment (ROI):

    <205%>
  • icon icon

    Benefits PV:

    <$5.01 MILLION>
  • icon icon

    Net present value (NPV):

    <$3.37 MILLION>
  • icon icon

    Payback:

    <6 MONTHS>

Benefits (Three-Year)

Benefit 1 sentence case Benefit 2 sentence case Benefit 3 sentence case Benefit 4 sentence case Benefit 5 sentence case

TEI Framework And Methodology

From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment Verizon’s calling solutions for Microsoft Teams.

The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the investment decision. Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact that Verizon’s calling solutions for Microsoft Teams can have on an organization.

  1. Due Diligence

    Interviewed Verizon’s stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to Verizon Calling with Microsoft Teams and Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams.

  2. Interviews

    Interviewed the representative of an organization using Verizon Calling with Microsoft Teams and Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams to obtain data with respect to costs, benefits, and risks.

  3. Financial Model Framework

    Constructed a financial model representative of the interview using the TEI methodology and risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns of the interviewees.

  4. Case Study

    Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology provides a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.

Disclosures

Readers should be aware of the following:

This study is commissioned by Verizon’s and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.

Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Verizon Calling with Microsoft Teams and Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams.

Verizon’s reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.

Verizon’s provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.

Consulting Team:

Stephanie Slate

Sarah Lervold

Cookie Preferences

Accept Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions (data inputs, website navigation), so you don’t have to re-enter data when you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.

Behavioral information collected by our web analytics vendor is used to analyze data pertaining to visitor trends, plan website enhancements, and measure overall website effectiveness. We may also use cookies or web beacons to help us offer you products, programs, or services that may be of interest to you and to deliver relevant advertising. We may use third-party advertising companies to help tailor website content to users or to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may also employ cookies and web beacons to measure advertising effectiveness.

Please accept cookies and the collection of behavioral information to receive full functionality and enhance your experience. If you decline cookies, some features of the website may not function normally.

Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.