Anyone who has tried to set up a home office in order to telecommute knows what an ordeal that can be. And for any company--large or small--managing those remote workers is a challenge that requires incredible organization and coordination from a network access--as well as human resources--perspective.
For the telecommuter, there's the ordering of phone and fax lines, as well as high-speed Internet access if it's available. Then it all has to be installed. Plus there's equipment to purchase: PCs, fax machines, telephone handsets and office furniture. Don't forget there's also software to install, essentially leaving the teleworker to become his or her own IT department.
For the company, the human resources department must have policies in place in order to protect the company and establish ground rules for who can and cannot participate in the telework program. Managers must be trained to know how to handle dealing with remote workers and measure productivity when they don't see the person physically in the office each day. And for the IT department, the challenge is coordinating the provisioning of services, such as Internet access, telephone and fax lines, as well as configuring the software on the home desktop computer or laptop, and providing 24/7 support for teleworkers who may run into technical difficulties.
"There's a lot of interest and demand for telecommuting. But there are a lot of operational barriers," says Mary Porter, an analyst with IDC (www.idc.com) who follows the telework market. "To make it work, it's difficult."
What companies need is help understanding how having teleworking employees will help the bottom line, as well as help developing the human resources and IT policies to make the program truly a success.
Ideal providers of these solutions to businesses are telecom service providers who offer the majority of communications services a telecommuter needs, and have a direct relationship with the business or teleworker him or herself.
But a service provider, such as an ILEC or ICP, may not be able to provide consulting services necessary for helping a company develop all the facets of a telework program.
That's where companies such as TManage Inc. (www.tmanage.com), Netifice Communications Inc. (www.netifice.com) and Nortel Networks Ltd. (www.nortelnetworks.com) come in. These companies help businesses and telecommunications service providers with all the necessary aspects of developing a telework program, even providing outsourced solutions for those enterprises that don't have the resources or scale to keep up with a growing telecommuter population.
With faster processing computers and high-speed Internet access to the home or telework centers designed to shorten the commute of employees in traffic-laden metropolitan areas, technology has advanced in ways necessary to make telecommuting possible and cost-effective. However, there are interpersonal issues to resolve.
"It usually saves companies money when people telecommute--but that's not usually the issue," says Porter. "The issue is how to manage [teleworking employees] and get work done."
TManage, for instance, consults with businesses to develop the requisite human resources policies and provides methods for management to measure the productivity of their telecommuting workers.
Getting work done is typically not the issue, according to many telecommuters. In fact, in anecdotal research, teleworkers say that they are significantly more productive when they work from outside the office.
TManage's vice president of sales, Michael A. Marrett, cites one study done by Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. (www.ml.com) after it implemented a formal telework program. The brokerage tracked the productivity of its processors in the office vs. the ones who were working from home. Those who were telecommuting were actually about 10 to 20 percent more productive.
Productivity gains aren't the only profit-enhancing benefits of telework programs. There are also real estate savings realized by not having to house those employees at corporate headquarters or branch offices. In the Merrill Lynch example, the company reportedly saved $5,000 to $7,000 in real estate costs alone per teleworking employee each year.
With those productivity gains and cost savings in mind, it's a no-brainer that businesses should strive to implement these types of programs. "We see employers looking at it as a tool for increasing the bottom line. At the end of the day, that's what it's about. It's not about benevolence [such as decreasing pollution or relieving traffic congestion]," says Marrett. "If [companies] don't address [telework programs], study it and make a business decision they're almost being negligent of their fiduciary duty."
For these reasons, telework programs have gained tremendous popularity. In fact, full-time telecommuters are expected to grow from 6.6 million last year to more than 17.6 million by 2004, according to a study released in February by Cahners In-Stat Group (www.instat.com).
"Clearly the Fortune 500 companies are looking at it because of pressure on the bottom line. They're looking at ways to get out of fixed costs of real estate, and there's the challenge of getting good employees," says Marrett. "Many companies [that are] not progressive are forced to address it because they're losing good people. Most large companies are engaged, but most woke up and realized that they had 1,000 teleworkers" in an informal program that was testing the limits of the company's IT staff.
For that reason, TManage created a holistic approach to developing and maintaining telework programs. The solution is aimed at helping businesses directly, or helping telecom service providers that want to offer added value to the communications solutions they offer.
"We have an end-to-end view of teleworking services from how do you select the people who should be teleworkers to the back-end reporting on how well it's working," says Marrett of his company, which was founded by Glenn Lovelace, the former director of Nortel's award-winning internal telecommuting program.
TManage's solution includes initial consulting services, which encompass a telework business case and technology assessment; coordination of service provisioning with the telco; management of installation; and the software and systems necessary to provide continued support of the program.
TManage is providing outsourced service to a variety of companies, such as Hewlett-Packard Co. (www.hp.com) and Verizon Communications Inc. (www.verizon.com). "Outsourcing is becoming more popular," says Marrett. "Companies are taking a hard look at it. They want to use IT resources for their core business."
With Verizon, TManage is supporting the telco's Managed Virtual Office Solutions (MVOS). The MVOS is an extension of Verizon's Virtual Office Solution, which was initially designed to help telecommuters get better buying power for home-office needs, including data and voice services, call management features and equipment.
With MVOS, in addition to the services under the Virtual Office offering, Verizon "can offer enterprise customers web-based ordering and [the ability to] set parameters that enterprises want to manage" their telework programs, says Daron Young, director of managed network solutions at Verizon. TManage set up the web interface, and will help Verizon coordinate with end users and vendors for equipment purchases and installation. It will also provide online and telephone technical support, among other management and maintenance features.
The partnership with TManage also enables Verizon to expand its remote access program, and helps extend the business LAN beyond the telco's history service territory.
"It opens up our addressable market," says Young. "A lot of customers have locations that expand beyond our footprint. We can do this on a truly national scale. TManage can order services from other telecom providers, and we can provide our service over them."
TManage also has a relationship providing solutions for BellSouth Corp.'s (www.bellsouth.com) TeamTelework Connections, a telecommuting solutions program the telco launched for business customers and government agencies in 1999. BellSouth also has a separate offering that is designed for home- and small-office workers that might not have support from their corporate IT departments.
"This market is very important to the consumer division--they're one of the fastest growing segments," says Nancy Crocker, BellSouth's director of consumer marketing. "A majority of what we've seen so far is the customers that are more on their own and need advice from us. A lot of large companies have their own telecommuting support."
Consumers throughout all of BellSouth's telco territory can get their own personal telework advice by calling into the company's Jacksonville, Fla.-based call center. "They provide consulting kinds of services normally it has to do with technology and solutions that help them be more productive from a telecom standpoint," Crocker says.
Among the services offered by BellSouth for this group of customers is Fast Access DSL, voice mail, and mobility services such as cellular and paging. BellSouth even provides advice to home workers of large companies. For instance, the telco has an alliance with IBM Corp. (www.ibm.com) for their employees who telecommute and use BellSouth DSL services.
Another Approach
Netifice is another vendor providing outsourced solutions to service providers. The company, which is partially owned by WorldCom Inc. (www.worldcom.com) and was formed in 1996 as Telecommute Solutions, has a national IP network and ascribes to an access agnostic approach to reach end users.
The company has a direct sales group to sell to medium-sized and large businesses, and is working with other partners to package its outsourced services.
Among Netifice's product line is WorkForce Connect, which includes solutions for road warriors who need local connections to the corporate VPN and broadband access for teleworkers. Netifice also provides voice, extended PBX functionality and repair services in the home.
What's most unique about Netifice's offering, says Stephen Schilling, the company's president and CEO, is that the services are sold on a flat-rate basis, ranging from $30 to $300 per month per subscriber.
"We don't bill on a per-usage basis. We think that model is outdated," says Schilling, noting that Internet usage times are going up and companies don't want unexpected charges each month for their telecommuters. He believes that flat-rate pricing allows a telework program to scale more quickly because companies will be able to predict actual telework expenditures and budget accordingly as more employers work beyond the confines of the traditional office.
Unlike companies that were developed to specifically target the telework market, some companies are building off the successes of their internal telecommuting programs and turning those into commercial offerings they can sell to other businesses.
Nortel, for example, is doing just that. After many of the equipment vendor's customers inquired about how the company was implementing its own very successful telework program, Nortel decided to provide a telecommuter solution among the offerings available from its Global Professional Services organization.
According to Mary McClintock, product development manager for teleworking solutions at Nortel, the telecommuter offering consists of four pieces:
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Initial consulting--work force evaluation, network design, and advice for creating human resources policies, training and implementation plans;
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Program implementation--development of a web interface that allows for ordering of equipment and services, and training for management about dealing with a remote workforce;
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Setup--installation of lines and equipment. Nortel provides phone support for teleworkers as they set up their computers and get all the services in working order; and
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Ongoing support--troubleshooting for services and assistance for any problems with equipment or home-office furniture purchased through Nortel's program.
Nortel provides these services to large enterprises and government agencies, and says it is willing to partner with service providers interested in offering such benefits to its customers.
The Telework Index
Source: Telework America 2000 research survey, International Telework Association & Council (www.telecommute.org) and "Entering the Access Era: U.S. Telecommuter Demographics & the Impact of Fragmentation on IT Platforms," Feb. 2001, Cahners In-Stat Group (www.instat.com). |
