We love our competitors. They keep us on our toes when it comes to innovation and progress. Lately, we have noticed that one question keeps popping up when we discuss Joan with our customers and partners: “How do you differ from the others?“
Well, there are many differentiators – we develop our own hardware for the best possible experience, and we are huge fans of ePaper. However, we believe that next to usability, ownership costs are something every business should consider.
What is “total cost of ownership”?
Simply put, they are all the expenses associated with owning an asset – initial investment and life-time operating costs. Keeping operating costs on the low side helps your business run efficiently and enables you to allocate resources for strategic tasks.
Operating costs are also associated with your meeting room booking solutions and they attribute to the total sum. The meeting room booking system of your choice must not only fit your workplace needs, but also your budgets in the long term.
The TOC equation
How to calculate the TCO of meeting room booking systems?
Here’s how we have defined the different parameters of the equation above.
Initial costs
Initial costs are your hardware solution and the additional costs of installing the device. At Visionect we offer two proprietary hardware solutions, Joan 6 and Joan 13. Additionally, you can feature our software on your own device (tablets or TV).
Solutions from Robin and Teem can only be featured on third party tablets.
You’re probably wondering how come Joan on displays doesn’t have initial costs? We still believe that Joan 6 and Joan 13 are the perfect solutions for your office when you’re considering purchasing a solution. However, if you already have screens, we would like to see them used to their optimum.
Since we are assuming you have office screens with free capacity (tablets with no real use or TVs that run your logo for the majority of the time), a hardware solution is, in this case, your sunk cost. A sunk cost is any cost that has already occurred and has no real impact on your business decision. It cannot be recovered and thus, should not be counted into your future decision making.
Displays that are already in your office, are those sunk costs. Whether or not you decide to use them as a meeting room booking solution, it won’t increase or decrease your initial investment. You can’t return them and you don’t need to purchase new ones.
On the other hand, with Teem and Robin, those costs aren’t sunk since you absolutely need to buy a device for featuring their software. For the following calculations, we’ve assumed that the life-time of a tablet and Joan is 4 years.
Installation costs
Joan 6 and Joan 13 come together with a magnetic mount. It can be stuck to any smooth surface. The long battery life and wi-fi connection ensure, no extra cables and cords are needed.
Joan total installation costs = 0 $
However, tablets need to be mounted on a dry-wall. This creates additional costs of USD 150.
Operating expenses
Here are the categories we’ll compare:
- Subscription
- Maintainance
- Electricity use
Subscription costs
All three companies offer subscription-based solutions. Joan is the only one offering a life-time free track.
Since it’s nearly impossible to assume which subscription plan most suits you, we’ve decided to take the average price of all the plans. That way we’ll get the average cost of subscription for each of the company.
The average 4-years* subscription cost per device. Since Teem offers three different tracks for meeting rooms, reception areas and desks, we only took the solution cost for meeting rooms.
*Assumption: the lifetime of devices is 4 years
Maintainance
Joan comes with a free one-year warranty, and you can additionally purchase 3 years of extended warranty. So instead of risking any damage and searching for the repair guy, you can simply purchase a warranty for your device.
Other tablets also come with a standard warranty, but the duration is not clear. Since tablets weren’t perfected for the meeting room booking system use, their battery tends to overheat. Thus, it’s realistic to expect at least a one time repair.
Electricity use
Joan uses patented, ultra-low energy architecture. It uses only 1% of the power used by LCD. With its extremely long battery life, you only need to charge Joan once every 3 or 12 months, depends on the model. The cost of electricity based on Eurostat data is EUR 0.1149 per kWh.
The total cost of ownership of Joan, Robin, and Teem
Let’s sum-up every category we have calculated above.
Whose solution is the most affordable and why?
Based on our calculations, Joan takes this round. Especially with our own hardware. The highest costs arise from the recurring subscription installments. Those are on average the lowest with Joan since we are the only ones offering a free subscription plan.
Joan’s energy consumption is also extremely low, due to the energy efficiency of ePaper. Joan 13 needs to be charged only once per year, while Joan 6 is charged quarterly.
We know costs are not everything when it comes to choosing the perfect meeting room booking system. Hop on a call with us and let’s discuss the amazing features Joan offers.