Tips for Telecom Professionals

Book highlights ways to make executives take notice Face it, telecom managers only get called when there’s a problem. Bosses in the executive wing never notice the good job that’s being done when they pick up the phone and make a call, so keeping the importance of telecom managers on their minds is often a daunting task. There are ways to make them notice—and not just when they get the monthly bill for their telecommunications services. This simple concept was the genesis behind What Great Telecom Managers Know by Roger K. Yang, which hit the bookshelves in early June. It’s the first Canadian book we’ve seen in many years on telecom management.Using a few case studies and other shorter examples throughout the book, What Great Telecom Managers Know is not a technical tips manual. Instead it tries to help telecom managers find ways to position their role and department more strategically within the company’s overall plan. Value AddedThe idea is to get telecom departments noticed for the value they bring rather than figuring on the radar screens of executives only because of its weight on the expense sheet. One huge problem to overcome on that front is the ongoing headache of problem billing by carriers. As we noted in Telemanagement #225 and #226, this is not a new problem nor is it one that’s unlikely to go away. Yang offers a handy set of tips—many familiar and some novel. For example, he notes that many of his clients’ billing problems occurred when services were transferred to a different carrier or after an existing deal was renegotiated. Taking extra care in such transitions may catch significant overbilling that can potentially go months or even years without being discovered. One of Yang’s clients recovered almost $700,000 in excess billing when its carrier failed to apply discounted long distance rates to its accounts after a move. Yang also suggests that a periodic review of the WAN and its design often reveals excessive circuits or bandwidth that eat up cash unnecessarily. Obtaining a rebate from the carrier when the blame for the overcharge lies at the feet of the telecom manager is a tough sell, so catching these oversights quickly remains critical. While the "Best Practices of Telecom Managers" chapter may feel a bit too basic for some, there are also some valuable nuggets here. For example, Yang suggests that telecom managers should be more vocal. When is the last time you bragged about achieving tremendous return on investment? Most people within a company don’t notice telecom until something goes wrong and are blind when things go right. So find ways to report on your successes, Yang suggests. Many of the concrete examples in the book come from Yang’s experiences as chief executive of Avema Corp., a 10-year-old Toronto-based telecom expense management firm that specializes in helping companies reduce costs and recover overpayments to service providers. The case studies are not detailed enough to be fully satisfying, and the book as a whole is quite compact. But its brief descriptions do get to the heart of each matter. And many of its overworked readers will be happy to be able to polish it off in an evening, rather than spending a day or two on a dense read. The book’s weak side is its failure to explore in detail avenues to increase ROI by utilizing telecom technology to generate new revenue, rather than relying simply on cost reduction. In the long run, as potential savings are realized, cost reduction can suffer from diminishing returns. While the cost focus of the book reflects the expertise of the author and is ably carried through, it is only half the equation when it comes to the future for telecom managers and their staffs. Variables and PossibilitiesYang does stress that telecom managers must stay on top of new technologies and emerging trends. He rightly singles out Voice over IP as an avenue for telecom managers to exploit, since it can brings both cost savings and enhanced functionality. Far from making voice managers obsolete, VoIP offers so many variables and possibilities for increasing efficiency with its rich features that it makes a knowledgeable telecom manager essential to appropriate adoption. Telecom managers who cut through the tangle of pretenders and hype will be a driving force of the disruptive change that promises to radically alter most enterprises in the next few years. And they will also then understand what great telecom managers know.

Tips for Telecom Professionals

News | June 28, 2005

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