Discover the value of tablets with this ROI calculator

We’ve been told that tablets are consumer toys and laptops are boring, bog-standard tech. Everyone wants a tablet; everyone needs a laptop. Right? Maybe that was true in 2010, but a lot has changed since then. Now the market is full of powerful devices that offer the flexibility of a tablet alongside the productivity of a laptop. The result: Tablets have gone from being a nice addition for certain employees to being a viable bedrock for your IT estate. As this return on investment calculator shows, when businesses deploy Windows tablets, the Windows Tablet ROI is often substantial. 

Tablets are about more than slick touch controls and playing Angry Birds on your lunch break. Tablets change how employees work and those changes have real, measurable effects on an organisation. A 2014 ROI calculation study from Forrester Research found a composite organisation stands to see a return on investment of 128% when investing in modern Windows 8.1 tablet devices for their business or organisation. Participants in Forrester’s study described three big benefits of tablet ownership.

• Higher productivity: When you give your employee a flexible device, you’re empowering them to work flexibly. Now your salesmen can take orders wherever they are, your managers can take notes during site visits and your executives can be productive on the go. When estate agents at Foxton’s began using tablets, they didn’t need to go back to the office in between client meetings since all their files and settings were available on their tablets. Doing away with the extra travel time meant they could meet with more clients each day. According to Forrester, mobile workers saw their productivity increase by 46% when they were equipped with tablets.
• Greater accuracy: When employees can take notes or enter data directly into their device, they dramatically reduce the risk of introducing typos. Now, instead of taking a note on paper or transcribing a note from one device to another, everything can stay in one secure digital location. Paperwork was a major drain on officers’ time at the Hampshire Police, until the officers got tablets. Now officers can take crime scene photos and capture case notes on the go. Those notes are locked into a single digital platform with multi-layer data protection and recovery options that protect that data even when it leaves the tablet. According to Forrester, a composite organisation stands to reduce errors by 51% after deploying tablets.
• Controlled costs: Modern tablets keep costs low because they replace laptops, rather than augmenting them. Windows 8.1 tablets don’t require special security software or mobile device management programs, which means you avoid incurring additional operating costs. The Scottish Government found that when they equipped staff with tablet devices that were secure and easy to use, they were able to rethink how staff worked and look for opportunities to innovate. Forrester found that a composite organisation was able to offset their tablet investment in less than 6 months.

Forrester Research designed a simple ROI calculator that makes it easy to find out how much tablets could save your organisation. Just answer four easy questions and you’ll have a simple return on investment calculation you can use to plan your business’ next Windows tablet deployment.

Interested in learning more about how technology will shape the future of business? AtFuture Decodedon 10th November. at ExCel London, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and a host of other thought leaders will share bold visions of the challenges and opportunities ahead. Act fast to secure a place at this event.