February 24th, 2010 by admin
Don’t waste your scarce telecom management resources by spreading them across too many wireless service providers. Using support resources efficiently has become increasingly important as departments across the enterprise are asked to do more with less. Consolidating your wireless service providers down to one or two providers can dramatically increase the efficiency of the organization.
Today’s businesses rely upon wireless communications. Cell phones and wireless access devices are table stakes for mobile or knowledge workers. In most cases, the IT department has at least initial responsibility in supporting the end-users, managing the vendor and auditing the bill. The IT organization must determine how to provide the highest level of service for the lowest cost.
Wireless, by its nature, is variable and subject to frequent change. Employees enter and exit the organization, resulting in new activations, suspensions or deactivations of existing devices. Features and plans are adjusted as usage warrants. These transactions must be tracked, creating complex inventory support issues.
The billing from wireless service providers, while better than their wireline counterparts, remains complex and the nature of wireless charges requires individual review of each account to determine compliance to corporate policy.
So, with all the complexities surrounding wireless service and support, why to companies maintain multiple accounts with different service providers? With the considerable incremental cost to support an incremental provider, there must be a valid reason, right?
Well, not really. Comparing the service from today’s top four wireless service providers (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile), there is very little coverage difference. They all provide nationwide and international coverage.
Their phones and data cards will work in the same areas, save some discrete locations where line of sight or signal strength is compromised for a particular provider. The primary difference between the wireless service providers today are their rate plans and the devices they offer.
Rate plan differences among wireless service providers are narrowing each year. The differences that remain, however, do not warrant you to spread your services across many different providers to optimize rate plans. Two carriers can typically achieve an optimum structure.
The real reason we find for maintaining multiple carrier relationships is the device offered by the respective carriers. The IT department is frequently pressured to provide the latest wireless gadget as a standard option within their wireless framework.
The requests for the latest toy frequently come from senior management, making resistance a losing proposition. Fortunately, the market has narrowed our choices in that area over the last two years.
Most wireless experts agree that AT&T and Verizon Wireless will continue their device leadership into the future. Their market position makes them the first choice for exclusive distribution targets for device manufacturers. The applications being developed on the exclusive operating systems should prove to be very sticky and result in better customer retention.
Standardizing on AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the New Year will make your management efforts considerably more efficient. Narrowing your support infrastructure to two service providers and a limited number of devices and service plans will streamline your acquisition process, enable a consolidated review of billing information and provide for the easy re-purposing of wireless devices as employees return used equipment.
This writer’s telecom management clients who have consolidated their wireless accounts report efficiency savings in the 20% range. Hard dollar service provider charge savings are also common through the process of realigning the service provider relationship.
Consider implementing a telecom management system to support the migration and track its conclusion. The management system will provide value after the migration by helping you unify and consolidate your reduced wireless accounts into a single view for easier reporting and analysis.
Posted in Information Technology
December 30th, 2009 by admin
The details of all web development projects are mostly different, but the issues are mostly same. Every one claims to have professional skills in web development with strong portfolio. Then what is the reason that projects fail all the time there are often plenty of people to point fingers at Stemming from this project’s failure
According to our research and analysis, here are some steps to a successful project.
Prepare Project Road Map Carefully
Imagine proper road map by planning what you’re going to do. Make sure that you have a good idea of how you’re going to do it before you’re too far down the road.
Implementation and Controlling
expose your plan and road map to provide guidance to developers. You’ll need development team to describe why things are done through this way. Don’t leave it up to your technical folks to make the call.
Where is the Bottleneck
Sometimes utilizing more resources at a single problem is useful, but other times PM needs the help of certain people. That time it doesn’t matter how many people you have ready for coding. Make sure you identify these bottlenecks before you run in to them head-on.
Do Not Cut Corners on Testing
missing pilot tests is a big mistake. Never forget to do end-to-end testing. While it will feel like a good way to fix schedule overrun, you’re actually just delaying and magnifying the project’s problems.
Develop a Backup System
project manager will always want to do everything in his power to make the new system a success. However, that doesn’t mean you skip a backup plan. A perfect backup plan is just being able to go back to a legacy system if the new system doesn’t work as expected.
Prepare Alternate Plans
Alternate plan allows a project manager and his team to fall back on if needed isn’t sufficient. Development team should know what their options are when things go wrong before things go wrong.
Training, Training and Training
Make sure your development team, designing crew and Quality Assurance staff, are sufficiently equipped to work with the alternate system. There should be necessary preparation before the switch is flipped. Anything less and the chances that the threat of failure will increase
Honesty is the Best Policy
when the things go wrong, be honest to your staff and users. Avoid providing guarantees that you don’t know for sure you’ll be able to keep.
Problem Fixes
When problems arise with a newly launched system, it is important to deal with them according to priority. You’ll need to prioritize the items and tackle the big ones first. Avoid the bells and whistles until the important items are addressed.
Posted in Project Management
December 1st, 2009 by admin
Rdio, the upcoming music streaming and download service backed by the founders of Skype, Kazaa and Joost, may not be taking public beta registrations just yet, but it already has a free iPhone application live on the App Store that you can download right now (iTunes link).
The app, which apparently went live yesterday, was first spotted by the folks over at Music Ally.
Since it requires a login, only private beta testers are able to give the app a whirl for the time being, but Music Ally took some screenshots from the iTunes detail page which we embedded below.
The description reads:
Rdio is like carrying a giant MP3 player in your pocket – you have unlimited and unrestricted access to all the music, and you get to select exactly the song, album or artist you want to hear. And you can skip, pause fast forward as much as you want.
Build your collection and compose your playlists on rdio.com and listen to them all on the go. Or search for just the right song when you’re out and it will start playing instantly.
- Carry your collection in your pocket
- Build unlimited playlists
- Search the entire Rdio catalog
- Notification when your collaborative playlists are updated
We still haven’t been able to persuade any of the members of the killer team behind the soon-to-launch music subscription service to grant us access to the private beta, so we couldn’t tell you if it’s any good.
If any readers are in the private beta elite club, do let us know how it stacks up against the likes of Spotify, MOG and Pandora. And get some screenshots of the web/desktop version over to TechCrunch HQ please. Pronto.
Update: someone who would know informs us that the application is not in the App Store because the startup wanted private beta testers to try it out, and that it’s in fact pretty crippled at the moment. The real reason why it’s available for download: the company wanted to test the waters of the App Store approval process sooner rather than later.
Posted in iPhone Applications
December 1st, 2009 by admin
It is time to take your idea or business to a social networking level. Developing a Facebook application is no easy task and should be considered with the same depth as a new website (or more).
- Search the internet to find what social media means to your business.
- Conceptualize what you want to achieve with your Facebook application.
- Brainstorm what aspects of the application will achieve a viral effect.
- Ensure you have high quality media and images to incorporate into the application.
- Decide how you will communicate with users who install the application.
- What should users see in the application box on their profile page?
- Why should users visit their Canvas page regularly?
- What incentives will their be for users to invite their friends?
Search the internet for a facebook application developer to create the application, or visit www.netrasofttech.com
Posted in Facebook Applications
