We’re all familiar with the infamous RFP (Request for Proposal), but what are the best practices for developing a “reasonable” TDM to VoIP transition plan? As much as we “implementors” like a rip-and-replace strategy – quickly installing the latest technology, things unfortunately move slower in the business world. It can be a daunting task to first evaluate the organization’s current situation and environment, their actual needs, and what the best strategy/vendor/plan is for achieving the resulting needs and goals. The planning process for any modification to a voice infrastructure can be extremely overwhelming. To any business or organization, even making small changes to the telephony infrastructure can cause large ripples downstream. I believe that it’s important to realize that telephony reaches
everybody
. It’s one of the few systems that IT/telecom managers maintain that does. Sure, email and collaboration systems are coming closer, but almost every enterprise user has a phone on their desk. In conducting several in-place upgrades of existing TDM environments, I’ve realized that the single largest hurdle is the lack of integration with the business plan. An upgrade or change of this stature is probably being considered for many reasons. It could be the literal cost savings, facilitation of MACs (moves-adds-changes), or simply allowing for easier systems management and the introduction of new features. Regardless, it is critical to begin any upgrade with the inclusion of representatives from all areas of the organization. Including IT and a few administrative assistants simply won’t cut it anymore. We should ask ourselves the often overlooked question: “Why are we doing this?” This ultimate question to be answered by the project planners, and ultimately the vendors, is related to the expected end-result. If users are promised intuitive features that never make it to the final deployment, then there will be some inherent disappointment. I too am guilty of overselling VoIP as the ultimate solution, when there are obvious transitory headaches that will arise. Users, especially end-users, do not like change. Even moving a few feature keys or lines around on their phones could cause an angry influx of calls into the helpdesk. Even a complex rip-and-replace upgrade can be smoothed-over by additional end-user training sessions and “open-house” forums on the technology. Implementing such a large change to a telephony infrastructure is a big deal, and it should be. Some deployments, especially in larger organizations, take years. Coming up with an organized transition plan, and sticking to it, seems to still be the best strategy. Even if you’re not able to roll out the latest features and hardware immediately, a methodical backoffice to front implementation will have long-term successes. So, what transition strategies have worked for you? What haven’t, and why? I think a discussion on rip-and-replace vs. a slow TDM-to-IP transition would also be interesting. Is it best just to start over, or try to maintain a previous vendor’s infrastructure and slowly replace, piece by piece?
