Members in the News:

Byron Battles, Principal of The Battles Group, LLC and current President of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants (STC) will be moderating the Government Vertical Market Focus session at VoiceCon 2008 being held in Orlando, FL, March 17-20, 2008.  Panel speakers include STC member Garrett Myers, Principal from the Gateway Group based in Detroit, MI and London, UK and Craig Bowser, Information Assurance Manager for Chenega Advanced Solutions & Engineering, LLC.

Janet Smith, Principal of Janet L. F. Smith & Associates will be moderating the Health Care Vertical Market Focus session at VoiceCon 2008 being held in Orlando,  FL, March 17-20, 2008.  Panel speakers include Kathryn Burek, of Froedert Community Health in Wisconsin, Randy Cleghorne, of Visiting Nurse Service of New York and Marvin Reece of Health First, Inc.

I spoke to my friend Marty Parker of Communication Perspectives -- a consultant with UC experience and a member of the Society of Telecommunications Consultants (STC), a not-for-profit organization representing independent telecommunications and information technology consultants.
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Anyone can call themselves a consultant. Finding the right consultant for telecommunications can be difficult. Definitely not all consultants are equal. Even issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for consulting services may not find the best consultant for the task. I have been offered compensation by both vendors and VARs if I were to steer the customer to their products or services. This is not ethical in my opinion and would eventually catch up to the consultant and harm the consultant’s reputation. You want expertise, but you also want individual attention, not a cut and paste effort that tries to fit you into a template.

I had a recent conversation with Janet Smith, an independent consultant who is on the Board of the Society of telecommunications Consultants (STC), a professional association. Janet also chairs the STC's Marketing and Public Relations Committee.

We discussed what makes a good consultant. One of the conclusions was that the consultant should not be aligned with or compensated by a vendor. Vendor independence is crucial to unbiased recommendation to the customer.

http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2008/02/finding_the_con.html

…what Mssrs. Durr & Schultz fail to realize is the rest of their customers are watching, too. Rather than be grateful that the 1-800 call center they dial can handle their call with less wait time (customers want zero wait time, in fact they wish they didn’t need to call at all) …customers worry when they too will be next to be “offed” by their supplier…”

In particular, Mr. McCormick cited the recent bad example of Sprint wireless who, effective July 30, canceled the service contracts of a number of customers for too frequent calls to Sprint customer service.  Mr. McCormick noted the humanity of Sprint in not imposing an early termination fee on those customers, as stated in its termination letter to its customers on June 29.  (Technology Decisions, Inc. currently uses at&t mobility, becoming a customer when it was Cingular.)

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Samantha Kane of Kane-MacKay & Associates has been nominated for the 2007 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award. This is Samantha’s 5^th year to be nominated. The purpose of the award is to recognize nationally Canadian Women entrepreneurs, whose successful business and achievements contribute so much to the Canadian and global economies as well as their communities.

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