In the industry, we joke about small- and medium-sized businesses' inability to deal with technology issues almost as much as my kids joke about my inability to reset the clock on our microwave oven. But there are ways for channel partners to overcome SMBs' largest technology-related concerns for IP telephony deployment.

Some channel partners find that their SMB customers lack the skills to deal with IP technology and may be left wondering what they should focus on to convince these potential customers to adopt their offerings. SMBs are notoriously weak on IT (and IP) skills. They focus on their top business challenges, such as making happy customers who spend more, and they tend to ignore or repress all the techie stuff that excites vendors and service providers. IP telephony still is a scary thing for the majority of SMBs. Based on Yankee Group SMB survey data below, no more than 25% of SMBs feel fully capable of supporting IP telephony.

We wondered which particular skills were needed for SMB decision-makers to feel more comfortable with IP telephony. If we could identify those skills, we could advise channel partners on areas of concentration — from both marketing and training/certification perspectives — to help SMB decision-makers be less reticent about IP telephony.

Planning and design of the IP telephony network and security-related issues are the top skills lacking among SMBs with 20-499 employees. Security almost always ranks as a top IT-related concern for SMBs, but rarely does it hit the radar for communications-related services. This focus on security for IP communications makes it very clear that SMBs view IP telephony as part of their IT, not communications, departments. Channel partners need to highlight their security credentials/certifications and address these security-related issues up front with SMBs. They shouldn't minimize the potential decision-making paralysis created by SMB security-related concerns. Planning and design also should be two of the core skills possessed by phone system partners; otherwise, SMB decision-makers wouldn't have turned to them in the first place. Phone system partners should focus on past implementations and sound networking implementation processes to overcome SMB concerns related to planning and design.

SMBs that have not deployed IP telephony also believe they lack the skills for end-user training. But once SMBs deploy IP telephony, they seem less concerned about this point. Fear of the unknown is often more stress-inducing than the actual unknown. End-user training is something channel partners must address early in the pre-sales process. In actuality, use of voice-related features in an IP phone system is very similar to a TDM phone system; the bigger end-user worries should be related to unified communications (UC) offerings. Either way, channel partners should provide simple “train-the-trainer” programs to address SMB concerns over voice-related and UC solutions.

SKILLS LACKING

Top skill gaps for SMBs that have or are planning to deploy IP telephony.

Steve Hilton is the vice president of Yankee Group's enterprise research group with expertise in converged solutions. Ask him a question at asksteve@yankeegroup.com.