Secure text messaging can save businesses money.
How?
As the use of text messaging and chat apps become more popular in the workplace, businesses across industries are turning to secure text messaging solutions to protect their sensitive and confidential information. There is a growing concern about the potential damage to brand reputation, class-action lawsuits and costly downtime that is motivating executives to pay greater attention to the security practices of their organizations. Data breaches can cost on average $3.79 million per breach, a 23 percent increase in the past two years.
Beyond the cost of a data breach in and of itself, businesses in the health and financial sectors that must adhere to federal regulations such as HIPAA or SOX, would be hit with hefty fines, and even jail time in the event that their organization was found to be non-compliant.
We all know that time is money. Secure text messaging solutions can save time by improving coordination and communication, which can directly translate into improved ROI. This is especially relevant for those businesses in healthcare. The Ponemon Institute found that nearly $1 million could be saved per hospital per year by replacing pagers with secure text messaging for clinical communications during three critical workflows: patient admissions, coordinating emergency response teams and patient transfers.
Those who participated in the Ponemon study agree that significant time is wasted during the three workflows studied, leading to decreased productivity and economic loss. Providers also agree that using secure text messaging can improve efficiency and minimize the economic impact. Key findings of the Ponemon study include:
- About 54 percent of the time it takes to complete patient admissions, coordinating emergency response teams and patient transfers is wasted due to inefficient communication
- The annual value of this wasted time is more than $1.7 million per hospital and more than $11 billion across the industry
- Providers estimate that about half of this wasted time could be reclaimed if they were allowed to use secure text messaging
- The time savings would result in an estimated cost savings of nearly $1 million per hospital, per year, equating to an industry-wide savings of more than $5.8 billion annually
In the case of hospitals, the implementation of a secure text messaging solution can improve the clinical workflow, and better streamline the coordination and communication concerning patient care. Similarly, across industries, the communication of employees and teams across one secure platform can improve productivity and collaboration by promoting transparent communication in real-time, which positively affects ROI.
Texting in the workplace, for most industries, is now a given. Therefore, the question that businesses need to ask themselves, is not whether they should be implementing a secure texting solution, but rather, which one? Successfully striking a balance between utilizing modern and efficient communications technologies, while maintaining security and compliance needs, could boost productivity, reduce costly waste and contribute to an overall higher ROI.