ICT Management > Budgeting and Funding
Internet, Email & Telephones > Getting Connected

A Business Case for Telephony

By Mark McLean

This article provides tips and guidance on making the case to funders for telephony in your organisation.

It should be clear to funders that inadequate telephony will frustrate you and compromise your relationship with stakeholders – including funders and service users. But it can still be a challenge to afford telephony products or services.

If you can identify the ‘hot topics’ on your funder’s agenda, then you may be able to convince them to invest in telephony products or services which bring benefits in relation to those topics. This may include:

• Systems that allow staff or volunteers to work from home, and can therefore engage a potentially more diverse workforce including people with disabilities, as well as cutting down on travel time and costs, and reducing your organisation’s carbon footprint.
• Telephony used as a cheaper alternative to a face-to-face enquiry service. Setting up a dedicated telephone line as a first point of contact with your VCO can allow you to screen enquiries. People with straightforward enquiries, or with a higher capacity for helping themselves, can be provided with information or advice straight away without the need for a more time-consuming personal appointment. People with more complex enquiries, or with a lower capacity for helping themselves, can be prioritised for face-to-face work, making the most cost-effective use of staff resources. This model of deflecting demand was a factor behind the introduction of NHS Direct.
• Non-geographic numbers (such as those starting 0845) that allow incoming calls to be routed across different sites in accordance with criteria including time of day and origin of call. They can also support business continuity, allowing calls to be diverted to a secondary site in the event of a critical incident affecting the primary site.
• Use of three-way conferencing to make interpreting services such as Language Line accessible to those who are unable to speak English.
• A textphone service, which extends choice of access for people with speech or hearing impairments and sends out a message that your organisation is serious about its responsibilities under the Disability Discrimination Act.

For more information on meeting your telephony needs please read the Good Telephony Guide (8.2 MB PDF file. Requires Adobe Reader. If you don't already have this, download it from Adobe).