Most FAQs listed below also appear in their respective sections:
1. What is Teleconvergence?
Teleconvergence is an independent management consulting firm with expertise in telecommunications, technology, and Full Cycle Business Development, a competency that draws from all areas of marketing and sales to create unique value propositions and to develop new revenue streams. We have a business rather than a technical orientation.
2. Does Teleconvergence sell any equipment? Are you an Internet provider? Do you provide software as a service?
No. No. And No.
3. Why do companies use your services?
Our Telecommunications consulting services result in lowered costs, increased revenue, enhanced productivity, and improved communications between clients and their constituencies.
Our Strategic Telecommunications Planning (STP) services help clients leverage telecommunications to reach corporate objectives. Our STP competencies include Telecommunications Business Continuity and Disaster Planning, Bridging the IT-Business Unit Divide, Outsourcing Your telecommunications, and Procedural Strip Mining, Teleconvergence’s version of business analysis.
Finally, Full Cycle Business Development helps companies differentiate their products and services from their competition while developing new revenue stream to meet organizational objectives.
Our clients appreciate the fact that we're there with them for the long term, that we learn their business and their style, and they can either use us whenever they need us, or on a more formal retainer basis. They view Teleconvergence as integral to their success as their other professional advisors.
4. What types of consulting work do you do?
Our consulting work falls into two areas:
On a Project basis, we perform specific tasks and provide advice and recommendations to help a client reach a particular objective.
On a Retainer basis, we become part of a client's management team, identifying objectives, mapping out appropriate strategies, and working with various departments to bring achieve objectives. We can also perform the telecommunications management function virtually for our retainer clients, although not day-to-day administration.
Because over time we gain insight into our clients' future plans, and acquire significant understanding of their business practices and procedures, we are able to ensure that we can continue to leverage our expertise for our clients’ best short and long term interests..
5. How much does it cost to speak with you?
We will speak with you without charge or time limit to answer your initial questions, to let us both determine if:
− Teleconvergence can understand your situation and objectives
− It seems that Teleconvergence can satisfy your needs, and
− It makes sense for us to consider a formal relationship.
There are two reasons why we hold nothing back during these conversations.
6. What is it like having Teleconvergence as a consultant?
We're very direct, both before and after we've been retained. Our clients value our no-nonsense, honest approach. This is especially true when a prospective client knows he or she needs help, but is not even sure where or how to start.
It may seem unusual, but Teleconvergence is frequently retained initially just to determine what it is that needs to be done, in what order, and even whether Teleconvergence is the best entity to do the work. If we decide we're not, we'll do our best to steer you in the right direction. Even the best doctors refer certain patients to other specialists.
Since we're consultants and not vendors, if you basically just want to buy something and be done with it, you might as well stop reading now. Why? Because if you are looking for a firm that will say "yes" to whatever you tell them, then you want to speak with someone who gets paid for saying "yes" to a customer, and that's a salesperson, not a consultant. Or at least not a true consulting firm like us. Also, if you're not comfortable with straight talk, that's another indication we might not be a good fit for each other.
7. Once we speak, do you send us a proposal?
No, not exactly. We will not spend time generating a proposal just to see if you like it. We will spend the time necessary with you beforehand to determine if have the basis for a fruitful relationship. Over one or more sessions, we discuss the scope of what we can do, the objectives and some details, how much time we would spend on your behalf, and how long it would take us to satisfy your objectives. We'll discuss work stages and milestones and fees and the other elements of a successful relationship. We do that together.
However, If and only if we agree to a relationship, including first payment and starting date, then with your approval, we will gladly spend a considerable amount of time to prepare and send you a detailed confirmation of everything we've agreed to, including a reasonable kill fee should we not proceed. But we will not just send out a proposal solely in the hope it will be accepted; someone has to pay for the time we spend preparing it, and it's not fair to charge other clients for it, however indirectly. Don't you agree?
8. One last question. If we decide to use your services, how do you charge?
We have a variety of options available, ranging from hourly or flat fees to a monthly or annual retainer. We always try to offer clients multiple fee alternatives, each of which is revenue neutral to us. That way, a prospective client can retain us on the basis with which he or she feels most comfortable
Q1: Is it always better to work with a local consultant?
A: We’ve always thought so, all things being equal. However, over time, things have become less and less equal.
Q4: What other ways do you have of both minimizing our cost and our risk?
A: As we explain in The Teleconvergence Approach to System Selection, the first step in the Teleconvergence process is to ignore market alternatives while we obtain an understanding of your objectives, needs, and operating and financial parameters. After that, we create a Request For Proposal (RFP), and send it to prospective vendors, evaluate their responses, etc. In short, we do the entire process.
As we discuss in The Teleconvergence System Selection Process in Detail, there are inevitable rounds of clarification that take place and we still conduct those to ensure that the results of all bids become as comparable as possible.
Once the results are ready for comparative discussion, we send them to you and work with you to arrive at a decision, again, as explained in detail in the articles mentioned above.
By sharing the work, the cost is reduced and you still achieve your objectives in a timely manner.
With non-local clients, however, we take a more balanced and shared approach. We still spend time identifying and incorporating your requirements into an RFP. However, you (perhaps along with us) determine to which local vendors to submit it. You field their calls, arrange for premises visits, if appropriate, and your staff discusses such items as space requirements for equipment, etc. When the vendors respond electronically -- as you insist -- they simply copy us on everything they send you. We have a Letter of Authorization you sign that allows us to negotiate with them on your behalf, and we copy you on all communications.
Many systems and services are now available over the Internet as hosted services or SaaS (Software as a Service). Frequently, the system isn’t physical or nearby, and neither is support. The very concept of local in many instances has simply evaporated.
Technology enables us to deal and minimize time differences. We compensate for distance issues through audio, video, and web conferencing. In short physical proximity remains desirable, but it’s no longer necessary.
Our consulting time is increasingly spent in our own office doing research, engaged in live or telephone conversations, or writing RFPs (Requests for proposals) or in creating worksheets and presentations for our clients. Most of the time, it honestly makes no difference if we’re in the next office, the next state, or the next country.
We’ve been for consulting for more than 25 years. We know more industries, more systems, and more alternatives than most. Experience is frequently more valuable than proximity.
The principal at Teleconvergence has lived in medium-sized towns and some of the biggest cities in the country. He’s multicultural, bilingual, and speaks technology (including telephony, data, and IP), marketing, and finance. Sometimes, that’s hard to find locally, too.
Q2: Do we ever get to meet each other?
A: That’s always an option; it's generally desirable, and sometimes it’s necessary. But equally or even far more important is the question, do we ever get to know each other? Physically meeting a client who reveals little of himself or herself is better than nothing, but it may not be enough. We've established superb relationships over the phone, sharing perspectives and opinions, that years later turned into true friendships.
Retaining a consultant necessarily creates a relationship of trust, of openness and frankness. It’s up to us to go first and so the material on this site deliberately reveals what you should know about us: Our experience and areas of competence; our ethics and values; our perspective and methodology. It you met us and didn’t find that out, how valuable would our getting together really be?
Sometimes, it makes more sense for us to get started over the telephone and then spend some time on your behalf before meeting face-to-face to discuss our findings and lists of issues that warrant further exploration, plan next steps, etc. At other times, the situation requires that we get together to meet key players, establish personal relationships, view premises and plans, etc. It’s largely a function of your situation, your preferences, your priorities, and your budget. In this economic environment, it’s prudent to evaluate trading travel time and airfare for more working time from afar.
Q3: How do either of us know in advance whether a (largely or completely) long distance relationship will work for us?
A: We don’t. To minimize the risk, however, especially where a client is unsure about a remote relationship, we try to create stages so that a client’s initial financial exposure is limited. That way, the client can gauge the probability of long-term success and benefit as we progress toward the client’s goals.
Q: Briefly, what is PSM?
A: Procedural Strip Mining (PSM) uncovers and analyzes existing processes and procedures within the client's environment that, unknown to the client, reflect either (a) workarounds or (b) undocumented requirements being met outside published work descriptions. PSM is a process that results in increased productivity and reduced operating costs. It can also result in increased employee satisfaction.
Q: Why do companies change systems?
A: Generally, because management views them as obsolete, inefficient and outgrown, or at risk of becoming so. Unfortunately, the same management frequently fails to reassess the real work that must be done by the new system. It bases the system decision on past processes, past performance, and historical objectives, on efficiency, rather than effectiveness.
It emphasizes performing tasks correctly, but faster, rather than validating that they are the right tasks to begin with, and completely failing to ask which tasks will (still) be worth doing at all.
Q: Does management or IT make these decisions on its own?
A:Not completely. This perspective is fueled by vendors who tout their newest systems as being (substitute your preferred adjectives) lighter, heavier, faster, bigger, smaller, more physical, more virtual, etc.
Most Consultants (and IT staff) will typically agree that the proposed systems indeed have more desirable specifications, should certainly offer superior performance, and solemnly note that, naturally, they will need to be “professionally” integrated. Note: Most technical consultants interface and integrate and install systems and services. Like many managements, they don’t ask if the work is necessary in the first place.
So the new system gets purchased, programmed, interfaced, integrated, and installed. Usually it does work better, especially at first. Then, after a while, sometimes after only a little while, performance or productivity or whatever the metric was, seems to lag once more, and the process begins anew.
Q: But was everyone wrong? Why couldn’t management or the consultant-integrators make sure that this time the problem with the system was fixed?
A: Quite possibly because the system wasn’t the problem.
Over the years, we’ve often come to realize that systems that management thought were operating poorly and stretched beyond capacity were in fact being underutilized.
They were also underperforming because employees were caught in a quagmire of cumulative workarounds that reflected neither their job descriptions nor the work they were supposed to be doing. Instead, actual work flow required continual, time-consuming sidesteps of catch 22s that had to be overcome to get any real work done at all.
Q: Why does management allow workarounds to happen?
A: Management doesn’t permit them and is usually unaware of them. Process anomalies such as workarounds, redundancies, and procedural gaps are generally invisible to managements that operate solely by numbers and outcomes. Sometimes, management attitude can be summed up as either:
1.If I don’t think it’s broken, don't waste time fixing it.
2.I'm comfortable with things exactly as they are. (Just don't ask me if I know how things actually are.)
However, sometimes management is involved and concerned and the problems occur anyway. So, it’s worth asking again:
Q: Why don’t new systems solve the problems the older ones couldn’t?
A: Because new systems usually resemble current systems, only somehow they’re “better.” Similarly, new systems are not purchased to replace existing processes, but instead to generally increase “productivity.” In most cases, such lack of specificity dooms the effort from the beginning.
Q: Can you be more specific?
A: Here’s why history unfortunately often repeats itself.
Q: That’s a good theory. Can you provide some examples?
A: Sure. Consider accounting systems. Older companies began with individual ledger cards and paper copies of transactions, records, etc. When specific events happened, say, an unusually large order, or a special discount, certain managers would ask for copies, which they received, and which became part of the procedure.
When companies first computerized, in order to minimize disruption, they merely automated their manual procedures, displaying screen shots of ledger cards, for example. Employees met their bosses’ demands for copies by duplicating the desired pages and then hand delivered them to the managers.
Over time, the physical copies or photocopies that originally went to Joe in sales and Mary in credit for their signatures were recreated as printed or e-mailed copies that also went to Joe and Mary, or later, to their successors. The new recipients didn’t necessarily acknowledge receipt, didn’t even know why they had to look at the documents, now dramatically increased in number, but since their predecessors had received them, there must be a reason they that they now got them, too. No one asked any questions since the corporate culture was to go along if you wanted to get along. They might not even know that some orders or payments were being held up pending their acknowledgment.
Q: But that was then. How about now?
A: Newer generations of accounting systems use integrated charts of accounts, which cause employees to spend additional effort each time a new system is installed, figuring out anew how to create special reports to generate the desired information– more workarounds, of course – to print out and deliver or forward by e-mail to their bosses and others. Each subsequent system inevitably places different demands on employees, but they always devise additional workarounds to handle these while naturally preserving the accumulated workarounds that have already become part of the process.
Here's another way to view the phenomenon. On a formal level, vendors, IT departments, and systems consultants replace and/or integrate existing systems and processes with new systems and processes. At the same time, on an informal level, employees pretty much do the same, except the old workarounds must be modified by new workarounds that must preserve enough of the old workarounds to ensure that the company can still function.
Q: And you’re saying that’s really the reason new systems don’t work out? Because of workarounds? That’s the answer?
A: Of course not. The real answer is that the right questions frequently aren’t asked, and when that happens, any answer will do.
PSM, as we’ve said, is the most superficial form of business analysis. PSM uncovers flaws in processes and procedures and allows us to get a handle on the work that must be done, the work that is being done, and the functions currently left largely undone
Q: And so, the answer is?
A: As Socrates reportedly admonished, “Know Thyself.” Management should thoroughly understand its real needs before it tries to satisfy them. Sometimes, management needs some help. And some of those times, Teleconvergence is that help
Q: Why does Teleconvergence do PSM at all? How does it fit in with your other telecom, technology, marketing, and business development activities?
A: Business Analysis is part of our basic perspective and approach to project management and system evaluation. Systems don't just do things. They exist to perform processes that lead to the satisfaction of business objectives. That’s why Teleconvergence can't articulate your system requirements until we first understand your business needs, strategic objectives, operating priorities, etc.
Q: How does PSM fit in with your other work? Is it very expensive or extensive? Doesn’t it take a lot of time and disrupt employees’ activities?
A: Since Teleconvergence normally performs PSM along with our other functions, incremental cost is minimized, and there's no obligation to keep digging and digging until something is discovered. There's far less functional disruption and staff resentment as a result, since if nothing procedurally redundant or superfluous turns up during our usual fact finding and interviews, we simply quickly move on.
Moreover, management will be far more willing to take steps to correct deficiencies when newly-determined procedural efficiencies and insights can be implemented either in conjunction with a new system, or by modifying existing systems and procedures to eliminate unnecessary workarounds.
Note: This is how Teleconvergence can create both the differentiators that facilitate optimal system selection and how we establish the requirements for the platform upon which much of an organization's future productivity can be predicated.
For more information about PSM, see the Procedural Strip Mining (PSM) section.
You might also want to look at the section The Teleconvergence Process. Read as much as you wish, but please begin with Selecting a System --- And Getting it Backward.