Assuming the value of the phone.

Wired has a story today about a university experiment that provided students with iPhones, and integrated their use in many elements of campus life — most importantly, in the classroom. It’s an update of the ongoing experiment (also covered by Networking World).

An interesting quote in the report reveals:

Rankin declined to disclose exact figures for money invested in the iPhone program, but he said the initiative only takes up about 1 percent of the university’s annual budget. To offset costs, the university discontinued in-dorm computer labs, since the vast majority of students already own notebooks. Students who opted for iPhones are responsible for paying their own monthly plans with AT&T. (Emphasis mine)

Fascinating.  The university realizes that the value of the computer lab has decreased, since most students already have computers.  Moreover, many students already have iPhones, or want them.  Yes, I think we are getting a glimpse of the future here.

This reminded me of some conversations I had with a client of mine.  I have been working on an intranet redesign project for a healthcare company, and it involves the introduction of some new and updated technology.  This client has a workplace technology set up that is, I’ll say, traditional.  And by this I mean, not a lot of new technology.  The Office 2003 / IE6 / FrontPage 98 /  fax machine – type set up.  And by the way, for those of you reading this from Silicon Valley — this is not as uncommon as you might think.

Anyway, as usual, the engagement started to focus on workplace productivity and ROI measures.  And indeed the questions — what is the value of collaboration?  What is the ROI of a better intranet search?  How do we measure the value of a blog?  – and as much as these are important questions — they mask the more direct questions — like:  How much should we spend on an E2.0 platform?  Is this really a priority?  And the big one:  Who in senior management is going to stand behind this?  Tell me the ROI of that risk!

The “ROI” question is very deep and I’m not going to cover it in this blog post.  (But I will write about it soon.)  The money story is the story, and getting to it very important.  But getting to it also requires us to check our assumptions.

Companies assume that workers need a phone and therefore they provide one on every desk.  Most companies have the fancy types with all type of features to enable people calling each other in the office by using fewer digits.  But these days most people already have a personal cell phone (voice mail, speed dial, conference calling, texting, and much more, already included).  Could your workplace simply provide you with a couple of conference room phones and a few private (shared) phones, but assume that you use your cell phone?

Most people I asked react with a fairly clear “No”.  Workplaces should provide a phone.  After all, what number would you put on the business card?”

Let’s check our assumptions.  We assume that we want to have business cards, that we want to put our numbers on them, and that we want people to call us.  In many workplace environments, this is a waste.  This is especially true for workers who don’t interact with external people — since they just use the cards at industry conferences to enter those silly contests — and thereby get on annoying mailing lists.  But more than the business card, we assume that the company phone is better, and therefore we want it.  We assume that people don’t make personal calls from work phones, or work calls from personal phones.

When you ask the question a different way, you get a bit more information.  Would you be OK with your workers just using their personal cell phones, and just unplugging their phones (assuming they publish their cell phone number in the corporate directory)?  Um, this one usually gets some hesitation.  It’s not a clear cut answer  (or they don’t want to admit that they record your conversations).

I recently spoke with the IT intranet director of a very large retail company.  They discovered that their younger workers preferred to use their personal cell phones for work-related calls (and texts).  And this posed a bit of a concern to the IT department.  They really don’t want workers using their personal cell phones.  (They had specific issues that made a lot of sense to me, but I don’t want to share the details here.)  Financial services companies have issue with this too (they admit that they record the conversations, and I think that SEC rules require it).  But many companies are more than glad to free up the resources and let people use the technology that works for them.  Think back to the university computer lab — if everyone has a laptop, then you save money by simply letting them use it.  So it’s not such a clear-cut question.

Isn’t it interesting that some workers prefer their cell phones over their corporate phones?  Ask them if they want their company to give them a phone.  They might say “we’d rather they split the monthly bill on a regular cell+data plan.”  Now what about their laptop?  Why not just give every worker a $1000 budget to buy the laptop they want?  It’s worth an experiment. (And it’s been done with favorable results — I just cannot find the link.)

I’m not suggesting IT anarchy, but I am suggesting that it’s worth testing assumptions that all workers want the same thing, and that it is the same as the thing you want to have too.  This kind of thinking can open the ROI question in a profound way.

What do you think?

BTW, you can read the Wired article here.

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Tagged as: mobile, roi, workplace