Ever finished a five-day training course and thought, “I can’t remember 70% of that”? We’ve all been through that experience but don’t stress about it too much as it’s just nice to have some time out the office, right?
However, your organization has just invested in a new product, and now it’s time to figure out how to operate it. Your boss is fully aware that you probably won’t learn a lot as you probably had no interest in the course in the first place. They also know that your absence is going to impact the rest of the team as resources are already stretched. Even the person who signs off the budget acknowledges that the money maybe could have been spent more wisely elsewhere, but it’s unavoidable.
You return the following week and all is well again. But what about the moment when someone in your organization calls on your new expertise to help them with a problem they may be having, and you're left with two options:
- Wing it and hope nobody notices with a risk that you could make things worse
- Frantically dig out the 500-page manual and course notes to find the answer
Both options result in reduced productivity for the user, and stress for the IT team, but that’s the chaos in which we're all used to operating.
When choosing a product or solution, we like to consider elements such as CapEx and support etc, but some key items are often neglected in the decision making process. Did you factor in the training for example? That’s an item that may be forgotten, however there are also some considerations which can be more difficult to quantify such as lost productivity due to a period of downtime through a non-redundant solution, or the time it takes someone to troubleshoot the problem of a more complex product that doesn’t have remote access for instance.
Nobody likes hidden costs, whether CapEx or operationally impactful, which is where Economic Value Validation (EVV) analysis tools can help, as they are designed to provide organizations with a comprehensive picture of the direct and indirect costs and benefits that should be considered when evaluating vendors' solutions.
Wireless LAN vendors offer several options today, and it’s important to make sure that you choose the right solution for your needs, both technically and financially. EVV can help your organization understand the bigger picture when it comes to the savings and benefits of the various vendors' proposals today, and allow you to spend time and money when you want to, not where you have to.
