The Unseen Costs of Traditional Provisioning

It’s easy to see the upfront costs of traditional moves, adds, changes in Cisco’s Unified Communication applications. Time X Salary, right? That’s how we measure cost.  But like the old story of the iceberg, where we only see 10% above water, 90% remains hidden underwater. There are always hidden costs that can surpass what we traditionally see as costs, and it’s these hidden costs that can sink ships.

Employee satisfaction

Many engineers end up leaving positions where they see themselves straddled with what they see as mundane, repeatable tasks they consider to be providing no real challenge or benefit to the overall organization. With the job market currently being tight, employee motivation and retention are paramount to a company’s future success.

Projects not delivered on time

One of the common complaints we hear from engineers when a deadline is missed is that their time was tied up by peripheral tasks. Often projects are rushed as the deadline approaches, and corners are cut to try to deliver on time. Both quality and service are affected by delays.

Unused licenses

While provisioning is always followed up on, deprovisioning tends to be less of a priority, whether it be because engineers weren’t notified by HR or they had other priorities. There’s no end-user there reminding anyone they need service. The result is many companies end up paying for licenses for vacant seats and licensing becomes a mess. 

Human Errors

The more mundane the task, the more likely an engineer will make an error. Even a slight error can lead to significant consequences. From small errors like overwritten extensions to larger mistakes like accidentally deleting a SIP trunk, errors can cause chaos and be difficult to assign a value to tangibly. 

Lost productivity

What is the cost of the help desk passing issues along to engineers to resolve? How much productivity is lost while employees are waiting for issues to be addressed? Cutting turnaround times provides a considerable boost in productivity.

This is just a shortlist of the gremlins that can be hiding in your processes to steal your time and money.   In the age of automation, there is no longer any reason for things to be done this way. Automation can free up your engineers, get your users the service they need, and standardize your processes in a predictable way.

For more information on automation and provisioning, we invite you also to read our article: “Automating Unified Communications“