In last month’s column, I began laying out one view of a successful VoIP implementation roadmap. This roadmap is based upon the Eastern Management Group observing and documenting the experiences of several early adopters. Last month, I thought this roadmap was unique in that there wasn’t the normal 12^th step to the program. If you promise not to peek ahead, based upon discussions with readers and industry players, I can tell you that there is now a 12^th step.

Let’s begin by reviewing the first five steps, described last month.

Step 1. Create and educate a cross-organization project team (telecom, datacom, financial, planning, business, marketing, sales, customer support, maybe include customers, business partners and suppliers, etc.)

Step 2. Survey capabilities and applications

Step 3.  Determine how to apply VoIP within in your enterprise

Step 4. Audit data network (LAN and WAN)

Step 5. Find the business hook(s)

And now, the rest of the rest of the roadmap…

Step 6. Develop the business case(s) for your enterprise: Now, equipped with an understanding of the technologies and the applications that VoIP can offer today and in the near future and, most importantly, having identified how they can play within your organization, the next step is to develop an analysis based upon a quantification of the benefits that your organization can achieve by implementing VoIP and each of the VoIP-enabled applications your team identified as having business value. This evaluation of business value begins to point up the true value of having an interdisciplinary team charged with the overall VoIP analysis. All of the key organizations are represented, and they can apply their organizational knowledge towards making the analyses “real” and have a higher likelihood of obtaining executive buy-in than a plan drawn only by the telecom or IT organizations.

Step 7. Develop a detailed functional and implementation plan: While the business case(s) are being developed, a plan to implement the solution(s) needs to be developed. A good idea might be to develop the implementation plans in parallel with the business case(s). These detailed implementation plans will identify the key dependencies and major work programs that will be needed for your organization to obtain the benefits proposed by the applications posed in the business cases. They are two sides of the same sheet of paper--what can be achieved, and the steps to get there. The implementation plan serves two additional purposes:

• It develops a prioritization of what can be accomplished over what time frames

• It develops a view of the resources required to implement the solutions

Both of these plan elements are critical to the success of obtaining executive buy-in to the plan and identifying and receiving the required budgetary commitments.

Step 8. Obtain internal commitments and budget: Because we have already evaluated the overall impacts on the organization--the costs, benefits and financial implications (investment dollars over time and the returns on those investments)--budgetary approvals, while certainly never easy for a major technology investment, are certainly more likely to be obtained if the team making the recommendations represents all of the involved and affected organizations, has identified both the benefits and costs and proposes a timeframe that the decision makers are likely to view as both reasonable and prudent. 

It is likely that only the first few elements of the overall project may be approved in the initial request, and that the full plan may require several budget cycles to be fully approved. Because of the focus on infrastructure upgrades, it is also likely that the early approval elements may not have the best return on investment. This also shows the value of having undertaken a full, multi-year plan. Your organization will be making an investment with returns that become realized only after several phases are implemented--when the high-value producing applications can finally be overlaid onto the secure, reliable infrastructure that has been put in place.

Step 9.  Implement your plan, and be prepared to adjust: Having obtained the approvals to proceed, implement the plan developed earlier. This should include making the technology choices and vendor acquisition decisions, business process and systems re-design, as required. Since it may have been some time since the earlier network assessment (Step 4) was conducted and changes may have been made to applications or volumes, etc., an update assessment should be included as an early part of the implementation.

Step 10.  Make feedback loops built into your roadmap, and adjust appropriately: Frequently overlooked is the ability to monitor progress and adjust the roadmap as things progress--due to additional opportunities discovered, new technology improvements or application availability accelerated by the vendors. We all know from experience that major projects generally take more time than estimated, cost more than budgeted and often return less than expected. Having appropriate feedback embedded into your process makes the required adjustments less dramatic and more manageable than when not anticipated and folded back into the implementation program. Such additional forced communication across the organization can only serve to improve the quality of the result.

Step 11.  Determine how well the benefits track the expectations: Certainly your organization wants to know how the new VoIP system is working and how well it is performing versus the plan. Taking the time to do this evaluation is an important step that should not be overlooked. This is especially true if the project was broken into several phases for implementation. The next-phase results need to be based upon a good understanding of the results of the prior implantation phases.

Now, having successfully brought VoIP into your enterprise, take a little time to celebrate your successes--our 12^th step. But be careful to not celebrate too much...or you may need to enroll in another kind of 12-step program.

David H. Yedwab is Executive Vice President of The Eastern Management Group, Bedminster, NJ. He can be reached at dyedwab@easternmanagement.com.

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