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384 12 Implementation Issues: From Globalization to Justification, Privacy, and Regulation

management for paying for Telstra’s services without of equipment). Employees save travel time when they
detailed justification. work at home but they need to pay for the energy used at
Telstra was interested in promoting the following four home. Society enjoys reduced vehicle emissions when
lines of applications: people telecommute.

1. Fleet and field service management. This topic, involving Justifying Web Contact Centers
enterprise mobility applications, was described in Chapter 6.
2. Video conferencing. This application uses video confer- The above approach is used here, too: The calculator includes
encing in order to save on travel expenses to meeting savings, benefits, and costs to the company, employees, and
places, and helps expedite decision-making. Both fixed society. Both tangible and intangible variables are consid-
line and mobile services can support this initiative. ered in the calculations.
3. Web contact centers. This application is designed to
improve CRM as described in Chapter 8 and in Online Justifying Fleet and Field Force Management
Tutorial T1.
4. Teleworking. Allows employees to work off-site. Tele- The structure of this calculator is similar to those above:
working (also known as telecommuting) requires sophis- Savings, benefits, and costs to the company, employees, and
ticated technology to enable effective communication, society.
collaboration, and collaborative commerce activities. The white paper provides comprehensive calculations with
sample data for a hypothetical company.
Both the infrastructure and the software for the above Telstra offers other calculators including one for data
applications are expensive. Many Telstra customers were usage for mobile devices.
interested in learning about how to justify the investment, but
they did not know how to go about it.
The Results

The Solution Telstra believes that Australian companies have an opportu-
nity to develop a sustainability strategy using the above tech-
Telstra developed a white paper to illustrate the use of ROI nologies that need to be justified. Telstra provides proof of
calculators in each of the above four lines of applications. substantial cost–benefits. While the savings to companies are
The unique property of the calculators is that they compute substantial in many cases, the benefits to employees and
benefits to the users’ organizations, to the employees, and to society should not be ignored.
society. Telstra is known for its concerns for SMEs. In 2015, As far as Telstra itself, the introduction of the calculators
it took a majority ownership in Neto, an EC platform pro- helped the company increase its market share and profitabil-
vider for SMEs (Murtagh 2015). Here, we provide some of ity. Also the market value of Telstra stock doubled from 2010
the highlights. to 2015.
A note: Telstra is known for its EC and IT innovations. For
Justifying Video Conferencing how it is outpacing the USA in IoT adoption, see Barbaschow
(2016).
Benefits include reduction in travel expenses, work time lost by Sources: Based on and AIIA Report (2009), Murtagh
employees, and so forth. This calculator uses the Net Present (2015), and Barbaschow (2016).
Value (NPV) approach.
The cost–benefit analysis calculates the savings to a com-
pany (seven variables), some of which are intangible (such as
faster decision-making). The benefits are compared with both LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE CASE
the fixed and variable costs. The benefits to employees are
measured by five variables, some of which are intangible (e.g., The Telstra case demonstrates the need for organiza-
better job satisfaction). Finally, benefits to society include vari- tions to justify EC-related projects and the fact that this
ables such as reduced car emissions and traffic congestion. may not be easy to do. Telstra provided calculators to
their clients to help them with the justification of IT
Justifying Teleworking and EC investments. The case points to intangible ben-
efits, which are difficult to measure and quantify. It
The benefits to the companies range from reduced office also raises the issue of sharing costs among several proj-
footprints to higher employee retention. Again, some ects, and the need to consider the benefits to employees
benefits are intangible. The costs are detailed (e.g., cost