Who controls your telecom policies?
In a recent benchmark report done by the Aberdeen Group, we found that the biggest contributor on wireless telecom policies wasn't SARB/OX, security, or IRS pressures. Instead, it was... Human Resources.
I've got to admit that when I first found that out, I was stunned. Coming from an enterprise telecom background, I know from experience that employees practically never care or never get a choice in the type of desk phone they use. And even when they get an upgrade, it's to a model that the company typically has in stock and as designated for a specific type of business use. If an employee came in with a desk phone and asked to hook it up to a company PBX, he or she would get a lecture from a telecom manager who could go into great detail about the current telecom environment, whether it be mixed PBX vendors, IP telephony, unified communications, Voice over WiFi, or any number of circumstances that prevent the phone from being added to the enterprise network. This is part of the complexity that makes enterprise telecom expenses so difficult to track.
But somehow it makes no difference when cell phones are involved? You want to bring your Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone, Palm, BREW, Java, or whatever else have you? Go ahead! As long as it doesn't have a camera on it and you don't break any HR rules, you can use whatever you want! Security? Compliance? Who cares?
And the best part? There are a fair number of companies that have these lax policies that aren't in compliance with IRS listed assets or personal use rules. This doesn't even take into account the problems of data management and security related to cell phones. Or the problems of adding on applications and data streams that might threaten the entire company's network.
Suffice it to say that there are a lot of issues that need to be sufficiently thought out when a company is either developing or reworking its telecom policy on an annual basis. We're reaching a point where cell phones are going to start replacing desk phones as the contact point for enterprise extensions. Cell phones have already also started replacing computers as the contact point for the enterprise network. Without having an adequate policy for keeping track of the expenses and inventory that touch the company network on a regular basis, your company could be subject to a host of new risks that have never surfaced before.
