November 2008 Archives

'To take a walk in the snow' is a Canadian expression meaning stepping down or that a deal is dead. It dates back to when former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau stepped out into a typical winter day in Ottawa, the nation's capital, and when he came back decided to resign.

The phrase is appropriate today as there are published stories swirling amidst falling snow throughout Ontario and Quebec that a leveraged buyout (LBO) of Montreal-based Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), the country's largest communications carrier, scheduled to close Dec.11, 2008 may be doomed.

The Globe and Mail reported an announcement by Bell that it had obtained a 'preliminary view' from KPMG that the accounting firm does not expect to deliver opinion by the close whether the deal would meet the solvency tests. It cited 'current market conditions, its analysis to date and the amount of indebtedness involved'.

The newspaper said that '"Unless this changes by that [the closing] date, BCE warned, the transaction is unlikely to proceed.'"

LBOs are excellent tools to make companies lean and efficient because the added debt burden and the need to reduce it forces firms to cut costs and grow revenues.

Unfortunately for BCE, the completion of this LBO could not come at a worse though in fairness unpredictable time as far the markets are concerned. The tightening economy is already pushing Bell to cut costs; it recently laid off staff at its Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Hamilton offices.

The added debt may strain Bell's ability to compete with competitors in the wireless 4G or Next-Gen and other hot markets by limiting its resources. Bell, like other ILECs haven't quite figured out what to do with its legacy PSTN/TDM network regarding IP. It is losing residential landline customers to cable firms like Cogeco. Fewer dollars means less money to go all IP over copper wires (VoDSL).

Whether the LBO proceeds or not, Bell, even though it is fairly good shape, will be under pressure to merge, and so will its competitors, to expand markets and cut costs arguably truly only possible by becoming integrated coast-to-coast-to-coast 4G wireless/IP landline carriers. Expect rumors and even delivery of M&As such as Bell+Telus and Rogers+Cogeco+Shaw, but only after Bell bleeds more and becomes much less expensive to acquire.

Responding to requests for proposals (RFPs) and requests for information (RFIs) can be a time-consuming pain in the netherparts.

I know; I helped the team at the teleservices firm that I had worked with on a few of them. One cannot help thinking how many more leads, sales, and revenues via other channels could have been received, followed up on, and brought to profitable fruition during the same period for an equal amount of effort.

So when I came across a report on the latest version of Proposal Software's PMAPS ® 2008 RFP/RFI management application I smiled: there is help at last for firms like my old teleservices company.

Proposal Software's PMAPS 2008 (PMAPS stands for Proposal Management And Production System) provides a proprietary web-based technology that works with CRM systems. For example it tracks all information about RFPs/RFIs like due dates; it also stores and retrieves multiple answers to the same or similar sets of questions

Among the new features in PMAPS 2008 is a web-based Search Accelerator module functionally that greatly expands the existing PMAPS web-based 'read only' Document Portal. The application also includes 'Pitch Book' capabilities in the Assembly module and the ability to "search anywhere" and index Word, PowerPoint, Excel, HTML and PDF file content. All told PMAPS 2008 includes over 100 additions and improvements designed to increase business efficiencies and cost savings.

Proposal Software says its solution can provide a 50% savings in productivity in the RFP process which translates into savings of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This figure may well be an understatement; it doesn't include the copious amounts of java consumed and demand for future hair implants when figuring out the responses.

In today's economic climate we all have to work smarter, to achieve more results with fewer resources: both time and investments. Solutions like PMAPS 2008 may be just the ticket to help enterprises, yes including teleservices companies, win more business and sales for less.

Contact centers have always to do more with less, and not surprisingly they have been on the practical edge of technology solutions and practices including e-learning, IP telephony, IVR/speech rec, monitoring, telework, and workforce management. Tools and techniques spearheaded by contact centers, such as the shift to home-based workers, are according to the Telework Coalition being watched and adopted by other sectors.

It is a welcome sign that the Obama Administration is tech savvy, which will encourage development of new technologies and methods that will help contact centers, and all other business functions and sectors, become even more productive and efficient. As noted in Rich Tehrani's recent blog "you begin to realize there could be a massive shot in the arm for the tech sector next year."

Our sector has to do our part, instead of relying totally on government. Fortunately the business cases for adopting IP, telework and speech rec especially are powerful, and if deployed on a widespread basis could lower costs across the board while improving productivity sufficiently to pull us out of the doldrums.

An excellent TMC webinar sponsored by IEX, a NICE systems company last week revealed that the potential US employer annual savings through telework from reduced absenteeism, recruiting costs, and from increased productivity could be as high as $441 billion. A webinar earlier this year by Aumtech, Microsoft, and JetBlue demonstrated that you can successfully deploy speech rec at the fraction of typical costs.

There are open-source, hosted, and outsourced solutions for these applications that can enable their adoption with low up-front outlays. The individual and nationwide ROI is there.

So what are we waiting for?

These are tough times for many people in the contact center, communications, and technology industries in this difficult economy: those who have just been laid off and for those who are fearful that they are next.

I don't have to imagine the anguish and fear being felt by individuals and families. I've been laid off three times in my career, juggling with keeping my family fed and a roof over our heads. My father, an engineer working in the electronics industry, was downsized just months after moving to another community to take a new job and buying a house, and my mother was pregnant. We came within two weeks of losing everything.

My employer, TMC, is a great family of people, and it is out of concern for individuals and families in these trying times that my boss, Group Publisher Rich Tehrani, is inviting those who wish to get their name and skills out there to blog for TMCnet.com, a leading communications/telecom site according to Alexa, Quantcast, and other ranking services.

Here is the excerpt:

"Today, TMC launches its Blog Aid program to help people out of work stay in the public eye - in order to improve their hiring prospects in a tough economy. In the last few months, many good marketers, PR people, engineers and others who have been laid off. These potential Blog Aid bloggers have a good deal of quality commentary and information to share which could be very useful to the TMC community of online readers.

TMC is offering these new bloggers - especially those working in the communications and technology industries, a venue to voice their thoughts on the spaces where they have expertise so as to allow them access to the 2-3 million global visitors who come to TMCnet on a monthly basis. In this way, these people who need assistance will not be forgotten and moreover will potentially develop a following which will lead to new freelance or permanent positions."

Getting out there, being known, and visible is the best way to attract potential employers and clients. For despite the doom-and-gloom there are many companies that are in business, and which will need people because the economy will turn around. And of all the sectors that will bounce back it will be communications, technology, and contact center/CRM customer service that will lead the way.

I wish all of you facing this crisis success in getting through and in obtaining opportunities for better days are indeed ahead.

Nortel is a proud company with an excellent reputation for innovative products, especially in the contact center and wireless spaces. Unfortunately the firm has for some years been in rough straits, with what seems to be a sadly neverending stream of cutbacks and downsizings. I live in a town where Nortel has a plant whose size, say longtime residents, is just a fraction of what it used to be.

In what seems to be an insulting blow, an analyst from RBC Dominion Securities in Canada, where Nortel is HQed, has cut its stock target to $0, reported the Globe and Mail. The story says that bankruptcy 'is a distinct possibility'.

Nortel can't keep attriting itself, and spinning or attempt to spin off its assets. At some point it has to step outside of its skin, look at it as others see it (which few companies do, lest they see some unwelcome truths, which is why this exercise is invaluable), assess its strengths and weaknesses in current and future market, and radically refocus itself.

Here are some admittedly extreme options...though in crazed times when one's back is against the wall, crazy may be the only way out

1. Decide to become king of the mature universe of premise-bases switches. Aim to put Mitel etc. out of business, one which Siemens is exiting, and buy up these outfits, divisions, and customers by selling its other lines

2. Be the cloud, for routing and telepresence. Do the reverse of 1. and focus its considerable prowess in network/cloud based routing, and get rid of premised-based switches. Do what IBM did by becoming mainly services firm and leave the low/mid-end hardware making for countries with cheap labor

3. Be wireless solutions only. Dump solutions e.g. IVR, PBXes, that do not directly plug into mobile

4. Go totally virtual except for two showcase/research head and US offices: in Ottawa (in the Confederation Heights area) and in Wilmington, Del.

Why? Power. Ottawa is Canada's capital and Confederation Heights and adjoining areas sits on or just off the main road from Parliament Hill to the airport. Make it easy for decisionmakers, supplicants, and businesses to see you and they may want to stop in. Confederation Heights is a two-minute ride on the O-Train rapid transit from Carleton University, which has an engineering school i.e. interns, recruits, cheap labor etc.

And Wilmington? Just ask Vice President-elect Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. Wilmington is a quick ride on the Senator's (now VP's) favorite mode of transportation i.e. Amtrak's Acela from the Beltway, Congress, and Philly, NYC, and Boston. Great labor force, available property, and star preference.

The recent Forrester Research Customer Service Software Solution WAVE™ Q4 2008 study points to a strong need for a new customer service solution: one that bridges the three silos of interaction-, record-, and process-centric customer service products.

Forrester says that a complete customer service solution includes three key components to provide great customer experiences:

1) An interaction layer to manage all customer interaction channels and underlying knowledge management, workflow, and business rules engines

2) A customer record repository to aggregate customer information and manage more complex contract and entitlements

3) A business process automation to streamline common cross-departmental tasks

"Customer service app vendors are beginning to develop applications that deliver multichannel experiences, tap into multiple business processes, and access multiple data sources," says the report. "However, most have been developed from one of these three heritages and still deliver functionality that is skewed toward one of these three components. Until vendors provide a new type of cross-component architecture, Forrester will continue to divide customer service vendors into three categories to help businesses understand the current choices, their pros and their cons."

That's your challenge, solutions vendors. When you come up with a proven, reliable application to meet what Forrester is calling for, let me know, and in doing so we'll let the world know.