Next Generation Services Now Telescope

Weathering the Storm

By Gurol Akman, CTO, Telenity, Inc.

There is no doubt we are going through one of the worst global economic downturns. For quite some time now, we have been witnessing a large number of companies steadily trying to reduce cost/expenses as well as re-structure/strategize in an effort to cope with the adverse changes taking place. Many credible sources predict that the current economic and market adversities are here to stay for an extended period, well into 2010.

These unfavorable conditions seem to present unique challenges and opportunities for the executive leadership/management teams as well as employees of all businesses and Telenity is no exception to this. The mainstream challenge is being what specific measures should be taken to weather this storm with the least amount of damage when one cannot even predict how long it will last. A more aggressive challenge involves whether and how a company can emerge stronger from this storm. Commonly known remedies include cost control, cost reduction, increased productivity and efficiency. While these measures may be quite effective and necessary, they are likely to fall short of addressing all the above needs; hence, necessitate additional (custom-tailored) ones. Also, the way a particular measure gets applied may make a huge difference in its effectiveness.

In our opinion, one key measure involves striving for increased customer satisfaction and nurturing of existing customer relations during these times. This includes providing them with premium support services, regardless of the severity of the trouble tickets or other queries issued by them and/or the service level agreements currently in place. Also, there is no better time to pay closer attention to enhancement requests filed by our customers, as each one of these requests carry the potential of generating new purchase orders. While much of the credit in the above fronts goes to our dedicated employees, our brand new issue tracking and knowledge management system (KMS) plays an integral role in coordinating their efforts and optimizing our internal/external support systems. Investing into a state-of-the-art KMS was a choice on the side of the executive leadership of the company whereas making it work in record time was a result of our talented staff. As of this writing, there is hardly any doubt in our minds that this investment will go a long way in ensuring increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Another highly effective measure involves cost effective and efficient delivery of our products/solutions to our customers. Some of the major recent initiatives we put in place on this front include better prioritization of our customer needs (facilitated via business and technology consultancy services), staged delivery of product releases to site (employing agile development methodologies), exhaustive testing and validation of products in our labs (using automated test frameworks), and advanced training of our local partners (by our subject matter experts) for more effective and timely product delivery and post-installation support.

Speaking of cost-effectiveness, there is no better time for us to take a harder look at all third-party hardware/software costs incurred and try to squeeze every bit of performance out of them in an attempt to optimize our overall CoGS. Similarly, comprehensive benchmarking and performance optimization of company products/technology are likely to pay off dearly. For the past six months or so, we have been spending a good chunk of our time and resources in measuring, analyzing, and fine-tuning all third-party components that we rely upon. We further have been working diligently to create cost-effective alternatives to avoid potential vendor lock-in.

As stated earlier, while sound measures like the ones mentioned above may prove to be sufficient for survival, they may fall short of ensuring that we emerge from these difficult times as a clear winner. That is because growth in business requires a never-ending quest for new business models whereas growth in technology requires constant investment in R&D. Let me be the first one to hint you that despite all the bad weather we continue to invest in both areas by evaluating applicability of latest business models (such as revenue sharing, managed services, SaaS) to our business and expanding our canvas family of products (in messaging, SDP, VAS, and LBS domains) for further competitive differentiation. Stay tuned for more news…

To sum it all up, our core strategy for these tough times relies on trying harder to improve our current ways of doing business by delivering higher quality products and supporting them at premium levels, and continuing to raise the technology bar for ourselves and our partners. Our next wave of growth largely depends on our ongoing exploration and experimentation with emerging business models and continued investment in new product design.

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