What some telecom managers see as a threat, others may see as an opportunity. Telecom managers think that IP Telephony is mostly an opportunity. Many consider outsourcing and managed services as threats. I learned this from an article in Voice Report, "2009 National Salary Survey" December 17, 2009 issue. The Voice Report an information service for telecom professionals.Although the thrust of this issue was salary questions and a survey, the Voice Report also investigated other concerns of the telecom manager. A total of 395 communications professionals took part in the survey. Of these respondents, 157 were classified as telecom managers.
One of the many questions in the survey was the following:
The results of this part of the survey are:
So let's look at some of the survey results.
* Outsourcing/managed services are a threat since these would reduce the telecom manager's responsibilities. Some of the telecom staff could be eliminated. The telecom manager would be partly relegated to managing the outsourcing/ managed services contracts, mostly for performance. If the outsourcing/managed services are not successful, then it is very difficult to rebuild the telecom staff to assume the responsibilities. There can also be an issue with reacquiring the technologies outsourced.
* The economic downturn is the other threat. This will be discussed with the next table.
* Telecom expense management vendors and folding telecom under IT are considered to be somewhat positive. Becoming part of IT for most telecom managers means that they will still have jobs.
* All the other trends are generally considered modest or major opportunities.
Another part of the survey dealt specifically with how enterprises are coping with the economic downturn. The survey question was "What initiatives are in place in your telecom department to combat the effects of the recent economic downturn? (Select all that apply)". See the next table for a summary of the responses. The responses fall into two categories, effect on the telecom staff and effect on the enterprise.
Staff impacts include:
* A pay freeze with the staff keeping their jobs.
* A hiring freeze which means that unfilled positions will be left vacant, requiring the existing staff to assume these responsibilities. The danger here is that if the work is performed effectively, then the enterprise management may decide to never fill the empty positions.
* Cutting travel expenses will probably reduce or eliminate travel for conference attendance, user meetings and training, all of which may slow down the enterprise projects and could lead to poor decisions and possible project failures.
* Reducing the staff by layoffs will increase the workload for existing employees and will probably postpone or eliminate projects. The layoff could also be a means to force the adoption of outsourcing/ managed services.
* Training almost always suffers during restricted budgets. Training helps ensure that knowledge is acquired quickly and efficiently. Training can also be viewed as a perk and career advancer. Lack of training opportunities can have a detrimental effect on staff morale. The survey points out that getting more training is highly unlikely.
The enterprise will be affected two ways
* Postponing capital investment and making the existing technologies last longer is a common reaction. This assumes that the reliability of the equipment will continue and that the maintenance can be acquired at reasonable rates. Eventually, the vendor will force the acquisition of new technology by eliminating support for the older technologies. Using older technologies may also make the enterprise less competitive.
* A less likely outcome is for the enterprise to acquire technologies that increase productivity. The cost of the technology can be offset by reduced costs in the enterprise departments that benefit from the new technologies. Unified communications is an example. This effort will make the enterprise more competitive compared to those enterprises that opt for postponing the technology acquisitions. The difficult part of this approach is that the enteprise management will aggressively question the validity of the new technology ROI.
