Graham Bunting -The Partner Catalyst

Telecoms – everyone’s an expert

I have worked in telecoms most of my working life and I have seen much change on one hand and yet paradoxically very little on the other.

Telecom to most people appears to mean telephony – I.e. a device for speech for use at home, in the office or whilst mobile, and from this perspective, apart from changes in phone set designs and disparate approaches from vendors on the layouts and labelling conventions (some use simple text whilst others use icons that I can’t for the life of me work out – so what hope is there for the uninitiated) there has been very little change. Even the newer entrants from the data World have taken a fairly conventional approach, which is probably understandable.

There is much change talked about more at the large enterprise end of the commercial market place, and this is at an infrastructure (plumbing) level. IP or Internet Protocol to give it its full name is a different approach to transmission of the voice signals that for most of us means very little. After all, who made a fuss over marketing the fact that the “old world” was TDM or Time Division Multiplexing? So what! Does it really matter? Perhaps not, but then again perhaps it does – the answer lies in the “what does it mean to my business if I change/don’t change”. The impact could be very little; however, it could deliver significant additional capability for your organisation and cost savings too – especially if you can share traffic on inter-office links, and use other low cost network carriers for some traffic. There is no simple answer to the conundrum, it just needs careful consideration from your perspective for your business, and weighing up the pros and cons – because there could well be some, for example, if your data infrastructure is already creaking at the seams, it could well require an investment to update before adding voice as well. A lot of this will depend on your organisations approach to return on investment and how you measure the benefits etc. Just get some independent advice before jumping in.

This particular saying, whilst in certain circumstances may hold true does NOT always hold true.

Having been involved for many years (more than 22 years in fact gosh) in the telecommunications market, I have seen many changes and lots of exciting technology that really enhances the way businesses can service and support their customers, and enable people to work flexibly. All of this carries a burden of cost – after all the vendor pays to develop the clever software and hardware to support it, plus lots of testing to ensure the deliverables are truly reliable and resilient so as not to let you down. It is therefore no surprise that this all requires customers to make an investment from their hard won revenues.

Refreshing then to learn that competitive pressures and other factors are bringing down the cost of communicating and new technologies are enabling greater choice – all of which results in opportunities to reduce telecom expenses. Savings of 40%-50% are not uncommon especially for companies who have a number of locations, and a lot of land line to mobile calls.

Is your company wasting money to the tune of an additional 60% over and above what it could be? I would be surprised if you couldn’t save money and there is no burden of cost for new equipment – How compelling is that?

Ernst & Young,  Slaughter and May and Rolls Royce all benefited from a free no obligation consultation and now enjoy the regular lower costs that you could.

Listen to language – its very enlightening. You can hear the self-limiting beliefs that people have “become attached to” and really own. People will argue for their weaknesses and guard them like a highly prized possession. And yet these are actions that hold us back ultimately from where we desire to be and certainly from where we could be. For example, I recently heard some of the following statements which I’m certain you’ll recognise.

I can’t do that because…
Well that’s me…
He makes me so mad…
I can’t help worrying…

Can you see the patterns here? These comments are firmly in the effect area and they are often caused by our belief systems and experiences. One of the best examples of this I heard was during a recent meeting where we were discussing our children. My friend (name withheld to protect identity) started to describe a series of conversations he had had with his son whom was described as a trifle lazy. In fact he had said to his son frequently “you are so lazy”. During a later encounter he had asked his son WHY he wasn’t doing something, to which his son casually replied “it’s because I’m lazy dad”! Talk about give a dog a bad name. I think this is a good illustration of language and it’s impact.

Long before I became a coach, I held a belief about coaching and what it was, and now realise that I actually hadn’t ever given it much more than a passing consideration. I certainly never considered the value coaches bring to people. Now I realise from the basic premise of coaching (the individual already has all of the resources necessary to move themselves forward) how valuable it can be. Often people find themselves “stuck” somewhere, hanging on to less than useful limiting beliefs and unable to move forward to where they want to be. A good coach can help with this movement – drawing on your own resources and enabling greater self belief – leaving behind the unhelpful and limiting beliefs. Having been coached myself, I found many moments that were EUREKA moments of realisation.

Gartner states that around 80% of telecoms bills have errors that are never found or reported, whilst up to 35% of all fixed telecoms assets are surplus to business requirements. In fact, according to research, more than 60% of firms do not have any kind of accurate inventory of their telecoms estate.
Which is quite scary when you think that analysts regularly report external communications costs as being a top-three, non-payroll expense in most large organisations. The good news is that this can simply be rectified and often without changing your service provider – http://www.peraconsulting.co.uk/save-money-on-telecoms/

If like me you are getting to grips with the latest trends in social media with the likes of twitter, facebook, linkedin, friendfeed etc, then you are probably familiar with the regularity of the updates and in the case of the micro blogging of twitter then you like me are probably wondering how on earth some people manage to send so many tweets every day as well as holding down a full time job. There is a whole industry grown up off the back of this new phenomenon, with applications galore to provide access whilst on the go (from your mobile) and to automate much of this. My thought here, is that with the increased use of automation – does this take away the personal touch and some of the very purpose of social media – being personal contact? I am comfortable with a degree of automation, but how much is too much – for example if everyone is just "sending" who is reading and responding?

How cool is this – wordpress enabling posting from any email address anywhere in the World. Outstanding! Check it out for yourself http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/post-by-email/

and remember “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to slide in sideways, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, screaming ‘Woo Hoo, what a ride!’ (anon)

Have a great bank holiday weekend everyone