What’s the Hype about VoIP?

Why the excitement about voice over Internet Protocol? Should I care? How will it affect me, my business, my costs?

These are just a few questions the man in the street is asking since February 2005 when VoIP burst onto our newspapers, TVs and radios. To many the answers are immaterial. If you don’t already have a fast, broadband Internet connection at work or at home, VoIP is currently not within your reach. But for those who have broadband, understand there may be some cost savings, quality improvements and access improvements, VoIP is already being quickly snapped up as a very preferable service to existing fixed-line telephones. Let’s look at some basics:

What is VoIP/Internet Voice?

VoIP allows you to make telephone calls using a computer network, over a data network like the Internet. VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the internet then converts it back at the other end so you can speak to anyone with a regular phone number. When placing a VoIP call using a phone with an adapter, you'll hear a dial tone and dial just as you always have. VoIP may also allow you to make a call directly from a computer using a conventional telephone or a microphone.

How Can I Place a VoIP Call?

Depending on the service, one way to place a VoIP call is to pick up your phone and dial the number, using an adaptor that connects to your existing high-speed (broadband) Internet connection. The call goes through your local telephone exchange to a VoIP provider. The phone call goes over the Internet to the person you called for the completion of the call. Another way is to utilize a microphone headset plugged into your computer. The number is placed using the keyboard and is routed through your modem.

What Kind of Equipment Do I Need?

A broadband (high speed Internet) connection is required. This can be through a modem, or high speed services such as ADSL or a local area network. You can hook up an inexpensive microphone to your computer and send your voice through a modem or connect a phone directly to a telephone adaptor.

Is there a difference between making a Local Call and a Long Distance Call?

Some VoIP providers offer their services for free, normally only for calls to other subscribers to the service. Your VoIP provider may permit you to select an area code different from the area in which you live. This means you may not incur long distance charges if you call a number in your area code regardless of geography. It also means that people who call you may incur long distance charges depending on their area code and service.

Some VoIP providers charge for a long distance call to a number outside your calling area, similar to an existing, traditional fixed-line telephone service. Other VoIP providers permit you to call anywhere at a flat rate for a fixed number of minutes.

If I have VoIP service, who can I call?

Depending upon your service, you might be limited only to other subscribers to the service, or you may be able to call any phone number, anywhere in the world. The call can be made to a local number, a mobile phone, to a long distance number, or an international number. You may even utilize the service to speak with more than one person at a time. The person you are calling does not need any special equipment, just a phone.

What Are Some Advantages of Internet Voice?

Because VoIP is digital, it may offer features and services that are not available with a traditional phone. If you have a broadband internet connection, you need not maintain and pay the additional cost for a line just to make telephone calls.

With many VoIP plans you can talk for as long as you want with any person in the world (the requirement is that the other person has an Internet connection). You can also talk with many people at the same time without any additional cost.

What Are Some disadvantages of Internet Voice?

If you're considering replacing your traditional telephone service with VoIP, there are some possible differences:

• Some VoIP services don't work during power failures
• Not all VoIP services connect directly to emergency services
• VoIP providers may or may not offer directory assistance/white page listings.

Can I use my Computer While I talk on the Phone?

Yes

Can I Take My Phone Adapter with me When I Travel?

You may be able to use your VoIP service wherever you travel as long as you have a high speed Internet connection available. In that case it would work the same as from your home or business.

Does my Computer Have to be Turned on?

Not if you are making calls with a phone and adaptor or special VoIP phone, but your broadband Internet connection needs to be active. You can also use your computer while talking on the phone.

How Do I Know If I have a VoIP phone Call?

It will ring like any other call.

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by Greg Hatfield, General Manager, VoIS Solutions, Internet Solutions [www.is.co.za]

Case Study—Logistics company controls expenditure between their fleet of trucks and operations using LCR call back

Description of business need

A national logistics company had a requirement to ensure that their fleet of 130 trucks was cost effectively communicating and making use of the most efficient technology available within their existing telecoms environment.

The company was highly dependent on telecoms for day to day business needs and was running 2 branches in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Their telecoms costs were escalating year on year due to the following:

· An expanding business
· A dependency on telecoms as a critical business tool
· Increases in the size of the fleet
· Annual supplier increases

Managing the drivers and their costs was proving problematic and confrontational. Management required a solution that was reliable, manageable and cost effective to use for daily communications within their fleet

Situation

There were 3 incumbent suppliers; namely Telkom, a LCR supplier and a cell phone service provider. The costs of telecoms were escalating month on month and cell phone usage in the trucks was proving difficult to manage.

Whilst LCR was being used from the offices to the trucks, drivers were calling the offices from company owned handsets and costs were difficult to manage. Furthermore deducting costs from wages every month was causing friction between management and the employees, whilst being difficult to administrate.

Driving down costs, monthly reporting and financial budgeting / forecasting was problematic at best.

Solution

The customer selected DataRoom as its supplier independent advisor with a clearly defined set of objectives:

· Ensure all calls were at all times at the cheapest rate for their business need
· Ensure reliable infrastructure with seamless usage
· Take away the “pain” of managing the costs and reporting

DataRoom performed an analysis on call pattern and infrastructure. The reporting revealed that the opportunity lay with the optimisation of the existing LCR suppliers and managing the call patterns and packages of the cell phone handsets.

DataRoom recommended installing cell phone call back [to the offices] for the drivers and each drivers cell phone number was to call the LCR instead of the Telkom line. The LCR then called the driver back automatically. Furthermore, the cell phones were programmed to limited phone numbers and locked to avoid abuse issues.

The company chose a supplier with digital LCR equipment and a strong track record of good service to support their 24x7x365 requirement. Once the LCR call back was in place the next step was to optimise driver cell phone packages for their low call volumes.

Benefits

No more disgruntled drivers. All the drivers could still phone family, clients and company offices, but the onus on cost reduction was no longer their problem. No more deductions from wage bills either. As a added benefit the monthly fixed costs of subscriptions dropped dramatically.

Cell phone costs and LCR costs reduced significantly and management were confident in their ability to communicate efficiently. Management are now empowered through DataRoom’s “single view” into their telecoms costs and in a position to effectively validate and justify CAPEX and OPEX relating to all telecommunication needs.

Communications between their fleet and the operations were at the lowest possible rate and operating smoothly 24x7x365.

Case Study— Sharp Electronics reduces their Monthly telecoms by R 960 000.00 per annum

Description of business need

You do not know what you do not know. Without the correct guidance, monitoring, support, infrastructure and ongoing management, the typical organisation would almost certainly fail to achieve its strategic objectives. The same applies to the cost and infrastructure management of a customer’s telecommunications environment.

Technology in all segments of the market, does and will continue to advance at a rapid rate and as it does, so suppliers attempt to position themselves in such a way that they are most favourably aligned to on sell their solutions to their customers [often with no real business case that clearly and accurately defines the customer need].

The reality is that the majority of suppliers, however competent they may be in the marketing and selling of their products, falls short in the implementation, measurement and ongoing management of the customer’s infrastructure and telecoms expenses once the products are in place.

Sharp Electronics required a business partner who understood their unique business need, could identify the opportunities, would enable the company and its suppliers to manage costs and infrastructure efficiently and report on the objectives and results into the future on a national basis.

DataRoom provided Sharp and their suppliers with -

· An automated set of “Telecoms Report Suites” using a web based reporting engine
· The methodology, best practices and intelligent reporting required to reach their objective of optimal telecoms expenditure

DataRoom empowers its customers with the knowledge to make business decisions.

DataRoom ensures that all the roles players at both the vendor and the customer gain access to accurate reporting that ensures the objective of optimal telecoms costs and infrastructure is achieved.

Situation

In November 2005, Sharp was spending an average of R 220 000.00 per month on voice calls nationally. There were 3 incumbent suppliers of voice in the area of fixed line, Cell phones and LCR [least cost routing of cell phone calls].

Sharp was represented nationally by 14 branches with Johannesburg by far the biggest branch and a Cape Town head office.

Sharp had no single view into their call patterns nationally and apart from understanding that LCR was an option, they were unsure of the best option for their unique business need and wanted complete control of their costs, infrastructure and suppliers.

Furthermore Sharp had a requirement for a single view into their monthly telecoms environs.

Solution

Sharp chose DataRoom to deliver supplier independent telecoms reporting, the methodology and the best practices; to bring down monthly telecoms costs. More importantly the DataRoom offering was seen as a way to reduce time and resources required to deliver optimal telecoms.

Using supplier billing and call detailed records; a thorough analysis of all voice expenditure by supplier, branch and geographical region was undertaken using DataRoom’s Telecom Report Suite was performed. Once management had a thorough understanding of the current call patterns for total voice and infrastructure requirements; with DataRoom input suppliers were chosen who firstly could address their unique business requirement and secondly could deliver quality of service at the right price.

DataRoom recommended per second billing for all suppliers, low cost [free] interbranch calls, cheaper national calls, single supplier for national / GSM and inter-branch calls as a minimum requirement in choosing their supplier.

Benefits

Management at all branches and head office have a single view into their total voice expenditure every month. All regions and branches are held accountable for their own costs.

Expenditure reduced from a November 2005 high of R 223 000.00 to R 143 000.00 in June 2007. This reduction equates to an average reduction of 36% or R 80 000.00 per month less.

This equates to annual savings of 36% or R 960 000.00 per annum. Sharp now makes all their voice calls at the lowest possible rate for their specific business need and can effectively monitor these costs using the DataRoom Effective Rate report. Sharp has also integrated DataRoom's monthly reporting into their monthly business processes and sustained the savings to date [updated June 2008].

Peak and Off Peak rates for local / national / cell phone / national and interbranch calls are all down significantly in June 2007.

Sharp can now expect to reduce monthly costs further through the efficient configuration of infrastructure with service providers in conjunction with the “DataRoom Best Practices for optimal expenditure” guideline.

Case Study— Nashua Mobile tender to customer for VOIP services

Description of business need

You do not know what you do not know. Many VOIP service providers do not have an accurate picture of their customers [or potential customers] monthly call patterns.

For a service provider of VOIP services to put together a proposal on VOIP, the service provider must understand the customers business need 100%. This includes all TYPE’s of expenditure [Telkom/cell phones/inter branch] per branch, including

· Cost implications of inter branch calls
· Validating the business need for VOIP
· Monthly call patterns in Talktime, Billed Minutes and Rands.
· Number of concurrent calls per branch
· Effective Rates for Peak and Off Peak times

DataRoom provided Nashua Mobile and their customer with -

· A complete set of reports highlighting the precise business need across the group of companies and all its branches. The DataRoom “Telecoms Report Suite” was used.
· An accurate analysis of call pattern information that allowed
· the configuration of infrastructure per branch
· An understanding of call patterns per branch
· A detailed proposal to their customer for a nationwide VOIP solution over multiple companies and branches, over a large geographical area

Situation

In May 2007, Nashua Mobile approached DataRoom for assistance in tendering for a VOIP solution to an existing LCR client. The service provider was the incumbent supplier of LCR [least cost routing of cell phone calls] and cell phones.

Other service providers were offering their customer VOIP and Nashua Mobile wished to differentiate them against their competition, understand the business need accurately and ensure that they retained the customer. They ran a very real risk of losing their customer and the LCR revenue to a competitor if they did not address the VOIP requirement.

The service provider and their sales team did not have the capacity to perform the required call analysis and understood the importance of coming to grips with the customers business need. Furthermore, they did not have the skill set / tools to professionally analyse and understand the existing environment.

Solution

Using supplier billing and call detailed records, a thorough analysis of all call patterns by company, branch, region and all TYPE’s of expenditure was completed using DataRoom’s Telecom Report Suite.

Benefits

On completion of the analysis performed by DataRoom, the Nashua Mobile sales teams had a thorough understanding of the current call patterns for total voice and infrastructure requirements. The tender was put together based on the understanding of their customers business need.

There was no guess work involved in understanding the infrastructure requirements.

The sales team and the product manager understood exactly how many concurrent calls needed to be catered for each company, branch and TYPE of spend based on historical call patterns over the last 3 months.

Furthermore, by re-rating each call made over the last 3 months on the new VOIP rate, the service provider could accurately predict the RAND savings going forward and the resultant return on investment for his client.

Through the skills/tool set provided by the DataRoom reporting, this service provider was able to be viewed by the customer as specialist in voice communication [including VOIP] and no longer just a LCR / PBX supplier.

The customer knows uses Nashua Mobile for all their voice requirements and are expanding the initiative to other companies in the group.

The weird and wonderful world of South African telecoms

South Africa is a strangely unique place when it comes to telecommunications and the high price thereof.

We have first world technology in a developing nation; alongwith a monopoly on fixed line [Neotel, our SNO, cannot yet be considered as competition / but hopefully that will change soon], 3 GSM network service providers, ISP's that have to buy bandwidth from the incumbent foxed line operator "Telkom" and a host of virtual GSM Networks.

The goverment own shares in Telkom, Telkom owns 50% of Vodacom [GSM SP], Vodacom is getting into the fixed line business in competition to their parent company Telkom, there is talk in the marketplace that MTN and Telkom will merge and the goverment is supposed to ensure the people [thats us] get a fair deal. We have interconnect fees [costs charged by one network to terminate calls on another] that should make network shareholders blush, but instead are making them rich.

And we have so much "smoke and mirrors" [read marketing gumpf] around products and their pricing, that people [including me], make a living out of understanding and managing telecoms for businesses.

Hopefully, this blog will give you those who need it, some insight into how to come to grips with your costs in your business, and how we can help you if you need it.

Peter Walsh_3rd June 2007 / http://www.dataroom.co.za/

Is IP Telephony an option for your business?

There has been so much hype around the benefits, pitfalls and implementation of VOIP [Voice over IP] in South Africa in the last few years that anyone in business would be forgiven for struggling to know whether the costs involved would be worth the potential savings.

For the uninitiated, VOIP is the conversion of voice into “packets” of data, which are transported via a data network to reach the person you are trying to contact. And once they arrive, the “packets’ are converted back into voice, allowing a conversation to take place.

All this happens seamlessly for the people making and receiving the call – but it results in the call being far cheaper than, for example, a normal fixed line call via Telkom.

In the first world country where Internet is freely available and bandwidth is so cheap, VOIP is fast becoming the norm. But in South Africa, where Telkom’s monopoly keeps the cost of bandwidth high, cost reduction is not the norm when it comes to VOIP. Telkom’s monopoly allows them to high charges for connectivity [bandwidth]. Interconnect charges between service providers are high and VOIP service providers are always on the back foot when it comes to providing quality of service.

Another issue affecting the decision by a potential client of whether to convert to VOIP is the problem of poor delivery by the some suppliers and, too often, I hear scepticism from corporates in South Africa when it comes to successful implementation of VOIP.

Despite all this, it is inevitable that of most South Africa companies with high telephone costs will go the IP telephony route in the future – a case of not if but when, and it is only a matter of time before IP telephony becomes main stream in South Africa.

So what do you need to understand in order to make that decision?

Most importantly VOIP is not a status symbol, or a must have because it’s the latest tech trick and there should be a business need for you to make the switch.

And, as important, is how you do you decide whether you are ready to move to IP Telephony?
Below are a few indicators:

· Call costs are escalating because of high cell and national and international calls - indicate are such that you can benefit from a VOIP solution;
· You are moving into a new building and installing VOIP could save the cost of duplicate cabling requirements, as phone lines and data lines can be channelled one single point of connection;
· Making use of Centralised Contact Centers [Call Centers] nationally or globally make IP
Telephony attractive to your company;
· Redundancy (backup) may be required for your Contact Centers and or IP based PBX systems;
· Managing your voice infrastructure can be cheaper when using IP Telephony, as your IT department can access and manage change remotely on one single integrated voice platform.

Then there are other factors to take into account before signing off on a project or choosing a vendor and proceeding with implementation:

· Can you change your voice infrastructure using innovative Service Providers solutions and achieve the same result? In other words, if your SP supplies the bandwidth and cheaper rates along with carrier grade voice solutions, then why do it yourself if you can cut costs and hold your SP to a written Service Level Agreement
· You need to understand your requirements fully before making any decision and ask the right questions. Like:
o What infrastructure and bandwidth do I require to operate optimally?
o Who pays for what?
o Will I need to upgrade my own infrastructure – and, if so, what will it cost?
· Costs and ROI
o What hidden costs are there [if any] in managing the solution on an ongoing basis?
o Remember, the moment you move into the IT world, everyone wants you to pay for licenses on a per user basis. So, for example, you might need to pay for each employee who uses the phone;
o And, does my company have the knowledge – or capacity to manage this?
§ Is it cost effective to manage voice infrastructure ourselves?
§ Do we want to outsource the management of voice infrastructure?
o Will the move to VOIP require large capital expenditure and, if so, how much?
§ Is this a once off or a recurring cost?
§ Who will manage your WAN to ensure continuity of voice and data?
§ Can voice have priority over data?
§ Do you need to upgrade your WAN and what will it cost?

And then there is the most important decision on choosing a vendor with a strong track record. Without the right vendor and the correct support structure, your venture into VOIP will fast become an object lesson in frustration.

Your vendor should allow you to “try before your buy” as most reputable vendors are quite comfortable with this approach and will offer you a service level agreement outlining roles and responsibilities as well as response times in times of need.

And lastly, we cannot emphasize enough the importance of understanding your own business need - before you go to market. Get contactable references on successful role outs from your vendors and call them.

All these investments should bear fruit when you finally roll out your VOIP solution.

Peter_Walsh_14thJune2007 / http://www.dataroom.co.za/

Where to now for the LCR industry?

Ever since the advent of cellular networks in South Africa, entrepreneurs have been using Least Cost Routers [LCR or Premi-Cells] to help businesses save money on cell phone calls originating from their PABX. So where to from here with the advent of change looming on the horizon?

And, in turn, the Industry has over the years flourished because of the “huge” recurring revenue streams that were created. And the foundation on which the industry was built was because of a few simple reasons:

• Firstly cell to cell calls, charged at a per second rate, are far cheaper than a Telkom to cell call, as Telkom charge a per minute rate. So where Telkom charge R1.65 per minute for a GSM terminating call irrespective of whether you talk for one second or one minute, a cell network charges approximately. R 0.02 cents per second, so you only pay for what you use.

• And, secondly, GSM networks are charged an inter-connect fee of 20-25 cents for calls terminating on Telkom’s network – while they charge Telkom R1.25 for calls terminating on the cell phone networks.

The cell phone business is the ultimate recurring revenue stream product and Least Cost Routing of cell phone calls off of a business PABX is no exception to this rule. Companies such as Orion, Storm, Telepassport, Vox, SmartCom, Telemasters [the latest AltX addition], Nashua, Autopage, Vodacom SP, MTN SP and many others have all been using this business opportunity to generate large recurring revenue streams for their shareholders.

Typically, these LCR companies do not want the overhead of large sales teams; so they have traditionally shared this ongoing revenue streams with dealers/resellers of telecoms products who enjoy existing relationships with their customers. It is not uncommon for individuals to have recurring revenue streams of R50 000 to R100 000.00 a month paid to them every month from the vendors in ongoing commissions. Commission can be anthing from 4% to 15% depending on your negotiation skills, the SP whose “minutes” you on-sell and the volumes that you manage to bring to the table.

Historically, the LCR business was quite easy: all you had to do was turn up onsite at business “XYZ”, install the SIM cards and some form of hardware to interface to the PBX and savings began for the customer, while the profits rolled in for the LCR vendor and their dealers.

Along the way the GSM networks got clever and implemented an array of new packages that basically protected their own revenue streams to a degree, by requiring a MTN SIM card for MTN calls and a Vodacom SIM card for Vodacom calls. By introducing these special packages for LCR cellular, the sophistication required to get the right mix of SIM cards connected to the PABX, as well as managing this requirement, overnight upped the ante considerably for LCR company and their dealers.

The fact is that many reputable LCR companies do not have the sophisticated billing analysis tools or operational capacity to deal with these changes, which we see in the reporting we do for our clients on a daily basis.

Some LCR companies do a good job and monitor the way these calls are routed through their PABX systems, but often they get it wrong and fail to find the cheapest routing.

Add to this number portability, where cell phone users can change networks but still keep their same numbers – and all of sudden a call to 082 from a Vodacom SIM means that a company could actually be dialing 083 or 084 and incurring a higher cost than if the call had gone via Telkom.

So, now it’s a whole new ball game and changes are happening that could adversely affect the LCR cellular industry.

These include:

• GSM calls are fast becoming the most popular way to make calls to reach your customers or suppliers quickly and in the most cost effective way. When we started our business we found most companies on a 70% Telkom / 30% GSM call pattern. These days it is not uncommon to find it the other way around, with an 80% GSM/20% Telkom split

• Telkom have already started offering Telkom per second billing packages, limited to a maximum of R 20 000 a month per account number. Telkom has also limited this option to one package per account number in order to protect revenue streams it receives from big corporate customers.

• Now with more PSTN [fixed line] operators coming to market – like Transtel, Eskom and Neotel - Corporate SA will soon have the option of carrier grade voice quality in per second billing at cheaper rates than Telkom’s. An added incentive for customers to switch to these companies is that they offer GSM rates lower than those of Telkom. This results in LCR Cellular becoming redundant at sites that no longer use Telkom as their main stream carrier.

• VANS [value added network service providers] in South Africa will soon be licensed to terminate minutes, meaning they will become virtual “telco’s”. Most have already entered into inter-connect agreements with GSM Networks and are merely waiting for the green light from Icasa.

An added incentive for customers to switch to these companies is that they offer GSM rates lower than those currently offered by both Telkom and LCR vendors.

• Some LCR Cellular companies are already offering 3 year contracts that tie in customers in order to protect revenue streams as they no longer see as so rosy?

Then look at the recent listing of LCR companies on the South African AltX, and one wonders whether the “boys” are cashing in their chips before traditional cellular LCR loses its advantages.

Consider the fact that ICASA is under huge pressure to drop the interconnect rate between networks - including the cost of making calls from Telkom to cell phone networks - and I would say you have some industry players that will have to make major changes or face extinction.

The LCR companies that are morphing into converged voice and data solutions will live to fight another day, but those that rely solely on recurring income from routing calls off PABXs are in trouble unless they change their business models.

So as a business you need to ensure that you are looking very carefully at the manner in which you route your cell phone calls - and ensure that you do not tie yourself into any long-term contracts for the foreseeable future.

Peter Walsh_3rd June 2007 / http://www.dataroom.co.za/

Single view reporting for optimal telecoms reporting

After decades of a telecommunications monopoly, and despite deregulation, the price of telephony in South Africa has skyrocketed. The issue has even drawn fire from the presidency of South Africa, via Thabo Mbeki who at the time complained that the high costs of telephony was deterring investors.

But despite complaints, Telkom's monopoly remains entrenched and while government and ICASA contemplate 'policy reviews', Alec Erwin contemplates becoming a self appointed SCM [second communications minister / the first one has not been very successful] by starting a new broadband operator to compete in the marketplace; it is left up to individual companies to explore methods of reducing their telecoms spend - a real challenge as telecommunications costs in South Africa are among the highest in the world, and businesses typically overspend by anything from 15 to 50 percent.

Customers are looking for new and intelligent ways to analyse and streamline their telecommunications spend. Recent requests for solutions include the Cape Town Unicity and Parliament. These are typical examples of BIG business shouting for help.

One of the major problems in terms of escalating costs is that most companies use a complex mix of traditional landline phones, their own WAN for Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), different cellular networks and multiple cellular service providers, to deliver telecommunications to their branches nationwide. Furthermore, all these networks and SP's deliver invoices and itemised billing to the customers every month in disparate formats, to multiple postal addresses [or email inboxes] and no intelligence is applied to this billing data. So as time goes on, customers find it increasingly difficult to manage their costs as invoices and itemised billing become more and more unwieldy to consolidate.

The problem is that you cannot manage your costs if you cannot measure them. And even if you can measure these costs, with convergence of voice and data you need the skill set [and time] to implement change efficiently. There are companies in the market place charging small fortunes to perform telecoms audits for customers. Once complete, the customer then has to find a service provider to deliver the change required and then 12 months on, if the customer wishes to measure success, perform the whole complex costly exercise again.

The Nett result to customers is that more and more [customers] are asking for a single point of contact / or single view point into their telecoms expenditure.

Our belief is that customers need a solution that gives them a ‘Single View' into their telecoms spend, irrespective of supplier, and derived from source documents; ie the network or SP's monthly billing.

This ‘Single View' should provide insight into the opportunity available to them based on their actual business need and products in the marketplace. Examples would be existing call patterns / employees profiles / business processes and company strategy. Whilst defining the business need, the solution should take into account the customers geographical location, supplier invoices and supplier detailed billing, analyse the call patterns and then use this data to come up with an optimal telecoms plan.

Once the action plan is agreed, employees / consultants / service providers can then work together to implement the plan, manage the change and reporting will show the fruits of their labour. This is approach is very different to the current solution's out there, in that most solutions [TMS / Extension Reporting / Consultants] are able to provide reporting on a portion of their clients telecommunications needs, but not everything.

The results are that in nine times out of 10 opportunities will go begging. For example, a service provider of Least Cost Routing (LCR) services understands LCR, but generally they do not understand cellular handsets, PBX or VOIP. The same would be true for any service provider / solution / consultant who does not provide a complete offering to market.

So when choosing a solution to manage your costs, ensure that the solution reports on all TYPE's of expenditure [especially cell phones / 3G cards and wireless] and that all the role players in your company [Networks / SP's / Management / Employees / Suppliers] have instant access to data that is relevant to the role they play in your business, whether they are employees / management or suppliers. This ensures that everyone will know where to start, what to start with and what change to expect.

Peter Walsh_3rd June 2007 / http://www.dataroom.co.za/