For multi-locations, best practices leverage strengths and weaknesses of multiple carriers and products. If your telecommunications needs require the use of multiple carriers and products, you may want to consider using an application to help reduce the time and resources spent keeping track of your telecom network.
“For most companies, managing their telecommunications leads to an enormous amount of chaos,” says Elan Crane, vice president of systems and virtual solutions for Simplify Inc. “A properly integrated application containing every detail of your inventory by location can manage requests, track the progress of installations or repairs and more — basically give you a window into the entire network to let you know what’s happening.”
Smart Business spoke with Crane about how having the right telecom applications can be a real game-changer for your business.
How can businesses benefit from using an application to monitor their telecommunications?
Most companies that have hundreds or thousands of locations are going to have multiple telecom carriers and products. This creates a lot of chaos, because you need to keep track of a lot of data. Plus there is the daily coordination of installs, disconnects and project deadlines, not to mention cleanup and maintenance.
Typically, there are three different scenarios. First, a company has multiple systems from which they pull data. They usually have people whose full-time job is gathering data from the different systems and reporting it.
Second, the company bought some supposedly flexible software, but didn’t use it. Either everyone gives up on it, or someone new comes in who doesn’t want to use it.
Third, the company uses separate e-mails and spreadsheets for individuals, depending on the carrier, the department and the region.
You can see the web of chaos that is created when you’re talking about hundreds or thousands of locations with many products across many carriers.
What can businesses do to manage the chaos?
Once you realize why you need an application, you need to have a complete audit performed to understand exactly what you have, down to every phone line and feature. An auditing team like ours can walk into a company and gather information out of the chaos. Once you have that information, it sets the stage for the application. Then you have a starting point toward being able to sit back and see the big picture.
You can’t just throw an application at a company and solve their problems. If they don’t have a true account of what they’re doing and what they have, you need to do the audit first.
What should you look for in an application?
Telecom is constantly changing; technology is constantly changing. You need a platform that doesn’t look at specific carriers, but allows you to have a window into your telecommunications over your entire business. And you need to be able to integrate with your different departments and carriers. Every department has different needs.
Many applications just keep track of requests — they essentially throw your request over the fence to the carrier along with every other order that the carrier receives. There is no integration; there is no funneling of your order to make sure it gets into the right hands and, in most cases, no liaison translating between the customer and the carrier.
You need to have an application that provides integration in a simple format for each department. Integration with each carrier is just as important, but commonly overlooked. Every unique carrier has its unique processes and motives. When you understand the different carriers and their processes, what makes orders go smoothly or get held up, that is a key ingredient. You must be able to integrate with the carriers through your application to achieve the best output.
How can you tell if an application will integrate well?
That comes down to a very difficult piece to perfect: the process. The process takes your order — depending on what type of request or trouble ticket it is — and makes sure it is set up in such a way that it goes through the proper carrier and channels, yet hits the milestones needed. It allows the customer to be updated properly and allows accountability, so the customer can leverage the carrier instead of the other way around.
The best applications, whether in software or service, are more of a solution than an application because you have the right people behind the scenes who take those orders, follow up on those requests and ensure those requests take place.
As carriers downsize, they lay off support staff, not salespeople. Often, you’re working with someone one week and someone different the next. The missing link with many applications is having people who are accountable to ensure that every order is being documented. Sometimes that is through integration, but sometimes it is an additional layer of actual people who are accountable and bridge the gap between the carrier and the customer.
What else should the application do?
Another component is having the proper dashboards and reports. An application with a dashboard allows you to have a window into what is happening, whenever you need it.
Being able to equip everyone in the organization with the ability to know in real time about savings to date, implementation issues, problem trends, etc. — that is a major missing component with most applications. Many companies are blindsided by their customers saying, ‘What’s going on?’ Then they have to send a bunch of e-mails and make a bunch of phone calls to put the story together, instead of using their application’s dashboard to quickly assess the issue so each department can make quick, wise decisions. That wouldn’t be possible without having that data at your fingertips.
Elan Crane is a vice president of systems and virtual solutions at Simplify Inc. Reach him at [email protected] or (281) 465-6007.
