Best Practices for Managing Communications Services Phase 1: Baseline

By Mitchell Hershkowitz

Editors Note:
In this three-part series we explore best practices to assist organizations with lowering their total cost of ownership and realizing additional value from a holistic approach to managing their communication services.
In this first installment, we will explore the Baseline Phase, which focuses on an inventory rationalization that improves visibility into an organizations communication services. Subsequent installments will cover management and migration.

Many organizations struggle to consistently manage their telecommunications costs and lifecycles across services and geographies. In addition, most organizations have challenges because the commercial and technical aspects of telecommunications management are usually done separately. The reality is that they are interdependent both from a business process and a systems perspective.

Dimension Data recommends a three-phase approach to managing communication services: I – Communications Infrastructure Baseline, II – Communications Infrastructure Management and III – Communications Infrastructure Migration.

The Baseline Phase should provide organizations with a strategic roadmap for managing their communication services and an inventory rationalization of their communications infrastructure.

Due to reductions in staff dedicated to ongoing support and operation of enterprise communications, many organizations are looking to outsource the management of these services. Here are four tips on how solutions providers can help organizations gain better visibility into their communications costs:

1. Strategic road map. Organizations are encouraged to develop inventory establishment objectives that are in line with their goals, while also recognizing budget constraints. Unrealistic objectives cause some organizations to believe that their inventory projects have failed. Realistic objectives are an important part of, and can be the difference between a successful and failed project.

Most organizations have multiple inter-related teams within the Telecommunications and IT Organization,” each hold an important stake in the management of telecommunications services and inventory. These stakeholder groups normally will want to participate in defining the requirements for the enterprises telecom inventory repository. In fact, the success of the final result depends on buy-in from all of the inter-related teams. Common inventory requirements and workflow capabilities include:

Many organizations use informal systems, such as contract paper files or manually updated spreadsheets, to track their assets. These methods are notoriously inefficient and usually lead to less valuable data, especially when needed for optimization analysis. Automated inventory management systems provide more efficient and accurate data. This leads to less billing errors, faster detection of fraud, and confirmation that all services paid for are actually in use.

2. Telecom Expense Management (TEM) inventory baseline. Organizations can choose to engage in a telecommunications inventory project using internal resources or through a TEM provider. The best method of ensuring the highest percentage chance of success is by gathering three sources of data: client records, vendor records and billing records.

Another best practice is to keep research efforts aligned with cost objectives by performing matches of known inventory against vendor billing and CSR data first. This first round of verification helps to avoid unnecessary on-site validation efforts. Organizations should only use site surveys or vendor dispatches for circuit validation for mismatched services.

Key information sources for the inventory rationalization include:

This data is complied into a baseline of telecommunication services. The baseline should include and deliver initial cost savings, contract compliance and invoice to inventory rationalization. Including wireless services as part of the telecommunications inventory baseline increases opportunities to uncover savings and reduce errors.

3. Managed services needs assessment. Organizations considering managed services should have a solid understanding of their actual requirements and specifically the degree of automation they wish within their environment. Organizations should be able to create a basic needs assessment based on the goals in Phase II: ongoing visibility, improvement and optimization of their communications services. A detailed needs assessment is typically an outsourced engagement led by a principal consultant.

4. Voice Technology Life Cycle Management (V-TLM) assessment. V-TLM is an IT infrastructure assessment that discovers installed network and communication assets, identifies their lifecycle status and determines maintenance coverage. The assessment also ensures that organizations do not expose themselves to unnecessary risk, by assisting with the alignment of their network and communication services to configuration, security and patch management best practices.

The results of a V-TLM assessment provide organizations with:

The V-TLM assessment should combine findings with the TEM inventory baseline including equipment, circuit and service inventory, maintenance agreements, vendors, billing accounts, enterprise accounts payable, contracts, voice and data utilization and all relationships between them.

In the next installment of this series, we will explore Phase II Communications Infrastructure Management.” The Management Phase provides organizations with ongoing visibility, improvement and optimization of their communications services. Key areas discussed are the management of network, voice and visual communications environments as well as management of telecom expense, inventory and life cycle.

Mitchell Hershkowitz is the national solutions manager for converged communications at
  Dimension Data Americas, a specialist IT services and solutions provider that helps clients plan, build, support and manage their network and IT infrastructures. Dimension Data specializes in networking, security, operating environments, storage and contact center technologies.