Return on Investment

The cost of owning a phone system is only one piece of the Return on Investment (ROI) puzzle. ROI attempts to quantify an expenditure's effect on the bottom line, usually used to justify a large capital outlay.

Just as an example, one phone system that I installed went into an existing business. Its existing phone system had an automated attendant that had the unfortunate habit of hanging up on customers if they pressed the 0 key, or if they didn't press any key for 5 seconds.

What was the ROI for moving to a new phone system? Not having angry customers who got hung up is a hard value to calculate. According to one of the owners of the business, that value was infinite. That made the cost of Asterisk very easy to justify!

ROI is basically the TCO subtracted from the quantification of the benefit (in money) to the business. Therefore, if we calculated that a new phone system would save $5000 and cost $4000, the ROI would be $1000.

Another interesting calculation to make, which is also categorized as ROI, is the time for the cost to be recouped. This calculation is the one that I find helpful in making a business case for Asterisk.

Suppose a phone system costs $5000 to install. Using toll bypass, you can save a net $500 per month. In 10 months, the cost of installing the system will be swallowed up in the savings.

These are simple examples, but ROI can help to justify replacing an existing phone system. By having these numbers prepared before proposing to replace the phone system, we can have a more professional appearance and be more likely to succeed in starting our Asterisk project.