Johannesburg, 13 Jan 2004
Networking technology is one of the most enduring technologies for delivering on a consistent basis the business value required to justify the expense. Measuring the return on the investment in networking has become a standard practice that highlights both quantitative results (ie cost savings) and qualitative results (ie improved customer service).
What is the network doing to help the business - or school or hospital - to achieve its goals? This question should be asked on an ongoing basis because applications change, factors of success change and relationships change - all with ramifications.
With this in mind, effective networks are designed to be dynamic, flexibly able to adapt and help people overcome more business issues than they may have suspected.
Yet, network managers and business managers, who are involved in purchase decisions of networking solutions, often settle for tactical "band-aid" answers, rather than the more promising, strategic improvements that grasp new opportunities.
The following are five pieces of advice on how to tell the difference between strategic and tactical decisions for the good of your organisation - and to reap more benefits, even with limited budgets:
1. Compare each networking decision with the overall business objectives of the company.
Does the network help the people be productive, connect with customers and do the things necessary for success?
If customer service is continually rated as poor, yet one of the company`s objectives is to have excellent customer service to ensure repeat business, the tactical approach would be to add complexity to the network so that more paperwork is generated.
However, the strategic decision would be to use the network as a foundation to implement new customer interaction applications that improve response time by factors of 10 and cut the expenses considerably.
2. Avoid the pitfalls of associating high cost with high quality or low price with lower total cost of ownership.
A strategic decision is not only to lower costs in the present time, but to lower costs in the long-term. This involves lower maintenance costs and longer duration of product performance.
A tactical decision would be to pay more up front for the promise of sophisticated quality, when in fact the company is unknowingly taking on unwanted complexity, which will invariably cost the company more money in the future.
On the other hand, the lowest price in initial cost could be just as deceiving when the products lack features and would result in significant problems in the future. Don`t sell out the long-term success for short-term tactics. The right mix of affordability, rich functionality and ease of use is needed. Don`t settle for less!
3. Anticipate the needs of the future and plan ahead.
As best as possible with the relevant information available, anticipating future business needs and relating them to networking changes will help you make more strategic decisions.
If the company is growing fast or has aggressive plans to expand, decisions need to be made about how to scale the network as the organisation grows.
You need the flexibility to grow the network with the business, as opposed to having over-capacity in the network while waiting for the business to grow.
In an increasingly competitive environment with constrained resources, any business needs to use resources carefully to plan for the future and start laying the groundwork for growth and change without disrupting present operations. A pay-as-you-grow strategy can work best for the business.
4. Don`t settle for less than real competitive advantages.
A tactical move to try to gain an advantage would be to buy more computers and put them in conference rooms and hallways to give people more access to information.
However, the strategic move would be to deploy wireless solutions across the enterprise, enabling employees to work more freely.
Wireless access would give them faster access to information for faster decisions that are good for the business. It also enhances collaboration, which continues to result in developing new competitive advantages.
When an enterprise can support a large mobile workforce when a competitor has its employees shackled to desktops in a "low collaborative" environment, the enterprise with wireless gets the sustainable advantage because their employees go to opportunities faster.
If your business is not gaining new competitive advantages through the network, then it`s probably because you are using the network tactically, not strategically.
5. Pay less for more calls.
As companies try to reduce telecommunications bills while the number of devices in any enterprise continues to increase, it has become clear that only a strategic solution to telecommunications will work.
Sure, a company could try to reduce telephone costs by requiring their employees to reduce the number of calls per day or use e-mail more than the phone, but the reality is that the speed of business still requires an abundance of phone calls, especially among employees at different locations. Why should a business have to pay more with each phone call?
Also, new computer applications using voice have emerged. Companies, schools and other organisations have an alternative to the traditional phone system.
The strategic system is IP telephony, which combines the voice and data network for lower costs and new applications. IP telephony is a proven technology for significant business value.
The basics of business remain the same - produce high quality products for a target market; sell the products at a profit; gain advantages over the competition, find new efficiencies for running the business, offer superior service to customers and change as the market demand changes.
As executives who approve budgets constantly evaluate these fundamentals of business, opportunities for networking to support and advance every aspect of the business model exist.
Whether speeding up the processes to support manufacturing, reaching out to more customers faster, beating the competition with more agile customer service or rapidly changing the enterprise with the network that can adequately adapt, networking technology proves time and again that it can offer both tactical and strategic answers.
The smart managers, who put themselves on a track to get ahead with success, choose the strategic because of the greater benefits to the business.
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