July 2009 Archives

If there is one word that is the key to getting through this current economic climate and to enable taking advantage of opportunities when conditions turn brighter and that is flexibility.

Call it the 'Flexible Revolution' if you like. With a recovery that promises to be slow and painful firms that are encumbered by expensive fixed objects: buildings or hardware, processes, and thinking are unlikely to make it and if they do they will struggle. Companies that have embraced flexibility: opex not capex, leasing and hosting software, hardware, and hardware only if necessary, video/web conferencing not travel, and telework not bricks-and-mortar, are more likely to shine through.

Why? Flexible solutions and techniques are less expensive, more adaptable to changing conditions, and provide greater disaster survivability than hardware/infrastructure-intensive products and methods.

The past boom and the milder miasma preceding it but punctuated by tragic events set the stage for the Flexible Revolution. The dot-com blowout followed by the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks began waking up organizations to the harsh reality that rigid assets and approaches sometimes literally crumble in a world of rapid change, upheavals, and disasters.

In the rebound that followed smart entrepreneurs, firms, and management began developing and implementing flexible tools and methods that are now becoming popular. Witness the hosted/software-as-a-service (SaaS) boom as exemplified and evangelized in the CRM space by Salesforce.com and which has attracted me-tooers. This heightened awareness opened customers' eyes to other on-demand offerings such as IVR and routing platforms. A similar evangelism by Cisco with telepresence is doing likewise for videoconferencing where the major stumbling block is less technical and cost but that everyone wants to use these tools rather than travel.

At the same time teleworking, led by adoption in contact centers is finally reaching critical mass to where it is now setting off a chain reaction throughout corporations. There are more teleservices companies that offer home working and more companies that are enabling it for their internal staff than ever before.

Yes the percentages of telecommuters are small--10 percent to 15 percent at best--compared to those who must squeeze themselves into tax-subsidized environment-killing cars and lesser-evil mass transit to accomplish the same tasks in organization-subsidized offices that they can done at home. Yet as any revolutionary will tell you, such numbers are sufficient to build momentum. That also goes for software and videoconferencing.

None of these flexibility-enabling products and techniques is exactly new. Phone companies have long offered hosting switching i.e. Centrex. Journalists like me have teleworked for years. My first computer was ahead-of-its-time Tandy TRS-80/T200 fully loaded (with built-in modem) clamshell laptop supplied to me in 1988 by my newspaper so I could work remotely. And videoconferencing has long been touted as a tomorrow technology that never seems to have arrived.

Making the difference for hosting, conferencing, and teleworking have been a coming together of technology, experience, and awareness. The rapid evolution of voice over IP/SIP and the commercial and residential broadband boom have given employees and managers access to the same capabilities, processes, and internal compliance via hosting and teleworking as they had enjoyed with premises-based products and in offices. These include app-sharing, instant messaging, monitoring, staffing/training, presence/unified communications, and workforce management. Fewer tasks therefore need to be done by having people physically present.

These solutions also give firms, customers, and users peace of mind. Broadband-enabled remote control tools such as West's Locked-Down Desktop that is used by its home agents prevent access to non-work applications, thereby providing greater security.

In turn experience with hosting, conferencing, and telework leads to more of it deployed and more effectively. And as others see what those who have used them have achieved in way of greater results the smart ones will likely adopt these methods.

The case for joining the Flexible Revolution is there, in your bottom line now and going forward. The question that remains: for organizations and suppliers alike is this: are you going to climb aboard or do you want risk being left behind?

Yes, I am a Canadian, having been born and having a spent most of my adulthood in my 'Home and Native Land'. I admit it, which is how Canadians tend to look at their nationality rather than the chest-beating of Americans at theirs. Which I also am, and a Brit too through as the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado put it "a set of curious chances."

So it is with the viewpoint as a Canadian as well as biz/tech journalist that I have been following and writing about the Nortel corporate tragedy: of engineering genius destroyed by criminal-bordering senior management corporate greed, incompetence, and stupidity right down to the final acts.

If one were to apply The Mikado's creed of "making the punishment fit the crime" I would ship/export the usual and known suspects in the barred-windowed buses to Federal Prison Industries a.k.a. UNICOR sites to handle telemarketing calls, recycle e-waste, and make electrical goods for the rest of their miserable lives.

Yes, I know Americans don't like receiving Canadian trash and I don't blame them (having once lived on Staten Island, home of the now closed infamous Fresh Kills Landfill) but hey some of this was chucked on American soil harming American Nortel employees and families so justice is fitting.

That's neither here nor there. Once the guilty parties have been duly punished now what?

Yes Ericsson says it is likely to keep many of the jobs in Canada. Yet the hard reality is that despite so-called 'globalization' the good stuff goes and stays home. Only when the labor arbitrage is such that it pays to go outside i.e. India does any of it really stay abroad.

I happen to like RIM co-chair Jim Balsillie's play for Nortel. I can understand why he didn't want to go along with the wireless auction because it would shut RIM from getting its paws on Nortel's other assets, namely its enterprise division.

Imagine a RIM with integrated business communications/UC/wireless offerings and you have seen the future realizable around the corner. IOW RIM would quickly become what Microsoft rapidly became 25 years ago.

Wireless is the future now in business/customer interactions. More homes are pulling out their landlines and going wire-free. And RIM would corner the market, doing to Apple now what Microsoft had done to it a generation ago.

In most any other countries: the U.S., U.K., and France (and probably Sweden), the home teams like RIM and its co-chief a national hero would be applauded and politicians leaping backward to make its squeeze play happen. But not in the polite, cloistered small town clubby business/government world of Canada, whose culture is reflected in the National Hockey League that Balsillie also attempted equally unsuccessfully to stickhandle to bring the Coyotes back home.

Indeed the reaction, other than recession-kicked Ontario that is the country's man/tech/services heartland has been muted slaps on RIM's hands for not playing by the rules.

For in Canada the dominant mindset is Main Street, not Wall Street (or Bay Street): a country that had started to be and had always thinks itself as resource-based, from furs and fish to rocks, logs, and oil and gas. 'Somebody else' preferably foreigners invested, took risks, and manufactured, while the good burghers made money in safe--and ensured it that way--financial services and real estate.

Which was why there has been hand-wringing--even seeming applause from the economists and the business community let alone no decisive action--over the rising Canadian dollar from rising, which has been hurting exports from manufacturing to contact center services. And why Nortel was allowed to destroy itself instead of staging an intervention.

Much like this club yawned when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker abruptly cancelled the CF-105 Avro Arrow--a jet fighter so advanced it took years for the Americans and Russians to catch up--and which decimated the Canadian aerotech industry. Some of those engineers went to work for NASA, and helped put a man--an American--on the moon 40 years ago.

(I was at a dinner on Parliament Hill in 1978 with Mr. Diefenbaker as guest of honor when someone asked him about the Arrow. As his handlers and other guests groaned and prayed to be teleported he replied in an undecipherable shakes of his jowls so violently I thought he was going to go out like an afterburner bang).

Pity. Canada has, and has had more than its share of brilliant thinkers, doers, achievers, and yes entrepreneurs. It needs Nortels (the best of breed) and RIMs, and yes other firms like Mitels and Maximizers.

Yet until Canada's business/government culture changes, encouraging and supporting entrepreneurship and innovation and making the country more competitive there will be more sad stories like Nortel, and the Arrow--and more leaders who have and can make a difference shut out--resulting in fewer, highly-trained and paid workers that should be the bedrock of its economy. Workers who can devise and deliver products and services that can be world-beaters than in turn benefits businesses and consumers worldwide.

"For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot"--Rudyard Kipling

"What can you do with a general? When he stops being a general?
Oh what can you do with a general who retires? Who's got a job for a general?
When he stops being a general?"--written by Irving Berlin, sung by Bing Crosby in 'White Christmas'

Anyone who has served or who has had family and friends serve their country through the military can relate to these famous poems and songs. My grandfather was a Tommy: a British soldier who underwent the horrors of The Somme in World War I, fighting the Kaiser. My father was in the Royal Air Force, 'National Service' or conscription after World War II, maintaining ultramodern jet fighter planes in the Cold War.

Of all the veterans those who fought in Vietnam had it the worst. I grew up in that era: too young to be called up (instant 4-F even if I was thanks to flat feet) but old enough to know what's going on, with teachers having served but won't talk about it and with classmates' older brothers contemplating going to Canada. Not only were there no parades as in past wars but many were greeted with hostility (Korean War vets were simply ignored) when they returned home, to an economy riddled with few opportunities due to a recession and wind-downs in the war and the space program, then thrown for a loop with the energy crisis of 1973.

So wretched were the experiences of many Vietnam vets both in the war and afterwards that they became stereotyped: unemployed, underemployed, and to varying degrees messed up. So much so they became staple of '70s and '80s dramas captured well so recently in 'Life on Mars' that was set in 1973, whose U.S. version was located in New York City as the eery CGI-ed glimpse of the Twin Towers showed in the first episode. Unfortunately there is a lot of sad truth in that stereotype. Ask anyone who has been close to a vet and the chances are what will come out, if anything, will be painful to tell and to hear.

So it is with the deepest respect that I salute our veterans. And that I salute the U.S. Army for devising and InfoCision for becoming one of the latest participants in the Army PaYS (Partnership for Youth Success) program for taking proactive action to ensure a future for them in civilian life.

PaYS, says the Army "is a recruiting initiative developed by the United States Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) to appeal to young people interested in obtaining a quality civilian job after serving in the Army. This unique program is part of the Army's effort to partner with America's business community and re-connect America with the Army. The intent of the PaYS program is to provide an additional recruiting incentive to increase the Army's ability to man the force. Having a job with a leading employer using a skill learned in the Army makes the PaYS program attractive to young people."

In short PaYS honorably and effectively does what the military, and employers, should have been doing all along: looking after those who served their country by enabling employment opportunities for them when they re-enter civilian life. Forget the sign up bonus. A job counts for far more.

And in turn I salute InfoCision for signing up for this excellent program. And to West, which is also there for our service personnel and their families. Both companies also offer work-at-home programs, which are lifesavers for mobility-disabled vets.

(For the value of home work just ask Major (ret.) Jack Heacock, a service-disabled vet who was awarded the bronze star in Vietnam when he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corp. He developed and has taken his passion for distributed work to become a leading telework expert. He is co-founder and senior vice president of telework education and advocacy organization The Telework Coalition . )

The benefits for employers like InfoCision and West are considerable. PaYS partners will, says the Army, "gain employees who have developed professional work habits and have been held to the highest standards. These future employees will be professionally trained and experienced in their specific job skill. Employers will save precious training and human resource recruitment dollars."

Most importantly, there is that well-being of doing what is right for one's country and for those who made that commitment to lay down their lives to protect our freedoms. Those who serve deserve to be served.

After months of well-deserved criticism over slack enforcement of Canada's new Do Not Call (DNC) regulations the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has finally shown some courage actually issued violation notices to two telemarketers. That is out of some 700 firms that are under some form of investigation. Some nearly 7 million Canadian numbers are on the DNC list. CRTC has also refused to make public the amount of fines these outfits face.

Yet as reported by The Toronto Star July 13, the CRTC refuses to name them. In contrast, the story points out, "to the practices of other regulations such as the Competition Bureau, which investigates complaints and monitors businesses for fair practices, publicize the names of companies charged under the Competition Act, while other agencies do so upon conviction."

The CRTC's reasoning--or in the view of critics, excuse,--according to vice-chairman of telecommunications Leonard Katz is that the "'intent here is to promote compliance,' not punish the companies by publicizing their names right away."

Katz told the newspaper that the policy, "which the CRTC came up with after consulting other jurisdictions, states the offending telemarketers won't be named unless they refuse to pay the fine within 30 days, in which case they will be hauled up before a public hearing."

Nonsense and useless. The only way you get these characters to clean up their acts ASAP--and to protect and enhance the reputation and survivability of this industry that has been tarnished by such skels--is by shaming them now in front of the very people that they have been seeking as customers, but chose to violate their rights by breaking the rules designed to protect them. IOW hurt them where it counts in sales and reputation.

In fact both the CRTC and the FCC and the FTC in the U.S. should have online 'walls of shame' of firms that consumers can check out and whose names would stay up there and then removed after six months or a year of good behavior. The message from the regulators to consumers is that if you want firms to market lawfully, don't buy from violators until they clean up their acts. Make them feel the pain.

In Canada the CRTC should get the hint. It has been lambasted for its actions by critics from the two main Opposition parties that hold the balance of power; there could be an election this fall as one recent poll showed that the public is getting tired of minority governments like the present Conservative government.

The Star article cited comments from Liberal Member of Parliament Dan McTeague who said "the public has a right to know the identity of the telemarketers."

"'Something like this ought to be made public as a means of deterring others,'" he said, noting there have been a number of complaints about telemarketers trying to circumvent the no-call rules. "'Do not call means just that.'"

It also reported and quoted New Democratic Party Member of Parliament Pat Martin who said "few things unite Canadians more than their loathing of telemarketers, especially those who refuse to respect the no-call list launched in September 2008 and that "'They (telemarketers) really are the bottom of the food chain in terms of commercial marketing'"

"'We expected real vigilance on behalf of Canadian consumers, not shielding them (the telemarketers) under anonymity. Half the deterrence of a penalty is the bad publicity you get as being outed as a scofflaw,'' said Martin. ``This do-not-call list is useless if it does not expose the wrongdoers to public outcry. We want them called up on the carpet and read the riot act about pestering us at dinnertime.'"

The recent military coup in Honduras illustrates one of the risks of locating contact centers and other operations in other, and poorer countries where there are great income and other social disparities between classes, and that is political instability.

A firm that sets up centers in such nations must calculate the odds that its employees could be injured or killed and their buildings damaged, destroyed, or taken over, and business lost. Customer/client data could be endangered too if it is stored on computers.

It is truly unfortunate in Honduras's case that the political situation had deteriorated thought not well to begin with. The country, which has nearly 8 million people, could stand to benefit greatly from the nearshoring trend, and the many well-paying high-status BPO jobs it can bring, which has boosted the economy of next door Guatemala.

The CIA World Factbook reports that Honduras, "the second poorest country in Central America, has an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and high unemployment. The economy relies heavily on a narrow range of exports, notably bananas and coffee, making it vulnerable to natural disasters and shifts in commodity prices; however, investments in the maquila and non-traditional export sectors are slowly diversifying the economy."

Political instability and military coups have been all too common in this region and in other poorer areas, such as Africa. One reason is that the rulers and ruling classes have long relied on the natural resources and their willingness to be Cold War pawns to funnel in cash to keep their states and status going.

Those conditions are quickly changing, and one hopes that the powerful elites get the message. The Cold War has longed ended and U.S. Barack Obama has signaled that he will not support nor blind eye tolerate any such destructive instability.

Moreover, and more importantly the world's increasingly technology-based economy means that companies go to sources located in other countries, which for contact centers can be done at a flick of the switch. Savvy buyers have done just that by spreading out their suppliers. Taking their income, spending, taxes,--and bribes--with them.

The upside is if and hopefully when the situation in Honduras stabilizes to the point where investments and staff can be safe, that contact centers and back office processing, can quickly locate there and in doing so making the country better by giving its people and the nation a brighter future.