AT&T announced in an 8-K filing on Thursday, December 4, 2008 that it is cutting 12,000 jobs or 4% of its workforce. It cited a combination of factors led to the decison including economic pressure, a desire to streamline the organization, and its changing mix of business.
It is sad to hear that people will be losing their jobs, but there are lessons to be learned by enterprises and TEM programs. In this announcement of job cuts there is some news on where AT&T will not be cutting. AT&T plans to add employees in its wireless, video, and broadband businesses. Managers of TEM programs can take this information and apply it to their efforts to manage the telecom supply chain.
Many enterprises are going through right-sizing and organizational restructuring similar to AT&T. While it is painful to individuals it is part of our dynamic economy. Perhaps bandwidth that was purchased for a facility is no longer needed. Closed sites are also rich targets for validating your network inventory against billing. This is the time when you must invest more resources to ensure the processes are in place to request service disconnects and ensure the items are removed from billing.
Managers that are seeking to cut their telecom and network budget can learn from Wayne Gretsky one of the greatest hockey player's of all time. He said " A good hockey player skates to where the puck is. A great hockey player skates to where the puck will be." TEM programs should proactively evaluate broadband, wireless, and video conferencing. The first place to start is to look at the contracts for these services. In many cases, there will be no contracts, or the contracts will not reflect competitive rates for your increased volume or new features that have been added. New contract terms may be available that can dramatically reduce costs. One firm was able to get replacement devices added to their contract for lost and broken handsets. They were also able to get savings from cutting the time for technology refreshes on their devices. Also look to insert technology ramp-up and ramp down clauses as obsolete replace items that are obsolete (frame relay, and ATM with MPLS). Ask suppliers if there are more efficient offerings available. It may even be worthwhile to meet with some of those sales people from new companies that want to show you their cutting edge technology. For example, think of how far video conferencing has advanced in the last year.
A good TEM program will give you knowledge of your current expenses. A great TEM program will help you to manage your supply chain for telecom services and help you control your fastest rising expenses. The Wayne Gretsky quote is analogous to TEM. Good TEM managers control their current expenses, great TEM managers control the expenses that are rising the fastest.
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