Cutting Costs
With deep budget cuts and increasing regulatory pressure, the Public Sector is now required to improve efficiency at all levels. As the Operational Efficiency Programme Final Report makes clear, Public Sector organisations have a particular need to improve efficiency at the Operational Level.
Cisco have recently made ten specific recommendations that they believe can help Public Sector organisations improve Operational Efficiency and cut costs.
The following highlight these ten recommendations:
1. Enable Location Independent Working - Cisco recommends remote-access VPN or virtual-office solutions for high priority deployment – in order to realise immediate reductions in expense costs and increases in productive time. In addition wireless networking for all offices will improve access to information and drive worker efficiency.
2. Unify Workforce Communications - Converge voice and data services over a common network infrastructure to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO.) Secondly, deploy UC to enrich communications and allow workers to communicate more effectively with one another and with citizens, regardless of location.
3. Implement Web-Based Collaboration Tools - Web collaboration should be at the heart of the modern, flexible workforce, Cisco recommend that organisations implement it as a cornerstone of their workforce strategy to benefit from; virtual project and team meetings, virtual training, instant messaging and collaborative workspaces.
4. Exploit Video - Video is proven to enrich business meetings; this is because the human voice provides just 10% of information exchange while video provides the remaining 90%. Implementation of desktop webcams, room-based systems and TelePresence systems will lead to a substantial saving. Cisco have saved an estimated $382million in travel costs after implementing video
5. Redesign and Relocate Office Space - Organisations should develop an estates strategy to help them adapt workforce changes that occur. The estates strategy must address; the design of offices, the number of offices and the location of offices
6. Implement Intelligent Building Solutions - A “Smart Connected Buildings” approach to building and estate management makes the building network essentially the “forth utility.” All building management information is network-based and so accessible in a location-independent manner to staff. Estate operations, therefore need no longer be run from a fixed physical location – affording greater flexibility and more efficient operational control.
7. Introduce Power Management - Cisco EnergyWise exploits the reach and range of a modern network to control and manage the power use by network-attached devices. This provides the opportunity for organisations to realise timely cost savings.
8. Consolidate and Virtualise Data Centres - Virtualisation and consolidation within the Data Centre are proven to substantially reduce capital and operational costs.
9. Build and Lifecycle-Manage the Network Foundation - A structured review and “spring clean” of existing network estates will show the true operational costs and allow actions to be taken to remove duplicate technologies, reduce complexity and replace out-of-date, inefficient equipment.
10. Develop a Virtual Desktop Environment - Cisco recommends that Public sector organisations carry out a “desktop review” this data can then be compared with cost projections for the adaptation of virtual desktop technology. The comparison will highlight the cost benefits of virtual desktop technology.