WiFi Workplace ROI This article in Fortune magazine highlights WiFi installations at Novell and talks about the value of WiFi at work [original pointer from: Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog].
"Today, you don't sell technology--you sell ROI," says Paul Fulton, former general manager of 3Com's wireless-LAN business and now executive-in-residence at venture capital firm Mayfield [no relation to Ross]. "You have to say this is going to raise revenue or lower cost."
Here are the ROI highlights from the article:
Hard Cost Substitute Benefits -- ...a wireless LAN deployment for a new office of between 50 and 100 people costs $20,000, vs. $250,000 to get a wired LAN up and running. What's more, he says, "you never know when you're going to move an office, so all the cabling you put in could be wasted."
Increased Productivity -- Employees spend an average of 3 hours a day in meetings, and some users claim increased meeting productivity. An Intel study of its own 800-person deployment found that WLANs deliver 23 minutes of additional productivity per day. Most employees interviewed for this story said that Wi-Fi "saved" them between a half-hour and 90 minutes per day.
Decreased IT Administration Costs -- Mostly through elimination of LAN administration tasks.
Employee Satisfaction -- In a Cisco-commissioned study of more than 300 organizations, 87% of WLAN users said their overall quality of life had improved. Improving employee satisfaction is the cornerstone of the service-profit chain: employee satisfaction --> quality & service --> customer satisfaction --> loyalty & profit.
New Potential Costs -- "We have parallel conversations running at my meetings, and I'm hoping that they are finding solutions, but they are probably complaining about how unreasonable I am," quips Intel CIO Doug Busch. "When there are laptops everywhere, culturally it can create a whole lot of problems," says Novell CIO Debra Anderson. "We're finding the balance between Wi-Fi as an intrusion and as a powerful, productive tool."
Intangibles -- The article doesn't touch on this too much except to highlight the concept of convenience. An opportunity exists to measure benefits according to opportunity costs.
10:13:47 AM 
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