The July 11, 2007 edition of Microsoft’s TechNet Flash newsletter, featured a new tool to help IT pros create a business case for deploying Microsoft mobile technology-the Windows Mobile Business Value Calculator. According to the tool’s description,

“Using a company’s unique information, such as number of mobile workers or types of applications to be mobilized, and summary data from IDC, the Business Value Calculator allows you to quantify the benefits and the direct and indirect costs of deploying mobile line-of-business applications, including measurable impact on revenue and income, operating expense savings, productivity enhancements, and other strategic business improvements.”

Windows Mobile Business Value Calculator

The tool is easy to use, but it requires you to provide several key pieces of information. You’ll need to specify your organization’s industry, geographic location, type and number of employees you want to supply with Windows Mobile technology, the annual revenue generated by these employees, and the number of customers these employees support per year. Once you enter all this information, the tool calculates annual direct and indirect cost savings for the next three years. Once the tool has finished processing the data, you can save the results or generate a PDF report.

The tool uses data from two, Microsoft-sponsored IDC reports to calculate the cost benefits. The first report, The Benefits of Microsoft Mobile Messaging, was published in September 2005. The second report, Quantifying the Return on Investment from Deploying Mobility Solutions in Midsize Businesses, was published in September 2006.