Refunds and savings from telecom expense management (TEM) programs can be used to create a return on investment (ROI) business case to cost justify the expenses for a TEM program. Most organizations have a formal process that must be followed to evaluate and approve the business case for significant financial expenditures.

The functional groups that get involved in developing a business case for TEM often include: IT, Sourcing, Finance, Global Technology Infrastructure Management, and line of business managers. The business case typically includes a detailed review of technology, projected productivity gains, and savings for each project.

Some of the top criteria used in evaluating telecom cost management initiatives include:

A return on investment is computed from the following calculation.

ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment)

Cost of Investment

Savings categories include:

TEM savings opportunities are likely to always be present because telecom is the most complex of all bills that an enterprise will receive. Billing includes time-sensitive (peak/off-peak) elements, volume-sensitive discounts, metered and fixed charges. Telecom carriers have highly complex applications that are used to manage billing, and most carriers use different systems for processing service orders, provisioning, and billing. These systems must continually be reconciled and updated. Finally, new technology means that communications services and billing are always changing. In turn, there are new contracts and addendums that need to be updated to ensure that billing reviews are accurate. This means that it is impossible to capture all of the refunds and savings and ensure that billing will be accurate in the future without an ongoing dedicated TEM program.

In closing, organizations should consider the cost of “no action” or delayed action. Each month, enterprises may be forfeiting opportunities to optimize its telecom expenses and save money. Refunds for billing issues are subject to the statute of limitations. It can be difficult to provide documentation needed to secure claims so enterprises should recognize that there are real costs if they fail to act.

Tony Bodetti is Chief Operation Officer at TnT Expense Management (www.tntem.com). For inquiries about this article, please email clientservices@tntem.com.

Marrying the Demands of Green IT with On-Demand Financial Systems

Two current trends appear dominant – green IT and the move toward platforms that can ramp up and ramp down rapidly according to the dictates of market forces.

In such a world, IT tends to suffer from two major challenges – under-provisioning and over-provisioning. They can be addressed, however, via automated capacity planning and performance management software that contains enough flexibility to accurately predict traffic patterns and growth trends while being able to detect unexpected peaks and troughs, and make the necessary adjustments.

Right-Sizing Capacity

Capacity planning makes it possible to know if the current infrastructure is adequate to cope with the addition of new applications or a greatly increased transaction volume. If more resources are called for, capacity planning highlights how much extra equipment needs to be deployed. And with so much top management attention on green initiatives, such automated tools enable IT to load up existing systems with more virtual machines (VM) or greater workloads without causing a bottleneck. By doing more with less, power and cooling requirements are kept under control while maximizing the ability of systems to respond to market volatility.

Capacity planning also reaps big rewards by revealing what IT assets are already in place. There is hardly a financial institution on Wall Street that can honestly say it knows the location and role of every server or every virtual machine in its midst. By conducting such an inventory automatically, capacity planning software permits optimization of what is currently in place. In many cases, this action reveals large pockets of unharnessed resources that can be corralled to cope with ongoing expansion.

Performance Management

While capacity planning could be characterized as a crystal ball, performance management is the troubleshooter. Despite the most meticulous planning, unforeseen circumstances sometimes result. Whether due to massive spikes in trading, a blackout of the entire east coast or the impact of uncontrolled roll-out of VMs, IT departments must occasionally deal with performance degradation. The challenge is to quickly isolate the source so the proper remedial actions can be executed. With the right tools in place, financial players can stay one step ahead of trouble.

It is advisable, for instance, to always monitor metrics such as CPU utilization, hard disk read/writes per second, CPU queue lengths, free memory, network packets per second, and memory paging requests. Thus when an issue shows up, it is relatively easy to drill down into the affected workload to discover the application, server or VM responsible. This directly correlates to the bottom line. Instead of throwing more servers, more disk capacity, more bandwidth or more powerful processors at the issue, performance management often reveals specific areas of bottleneck that can be reorganized for optimum throughput and availability.

For example, one company had a frequently used transaction that encompassed a million reads and took about 3 seconds to complete. By tuning the database call, performance management reduced this transaction to only a couple of thousand reads. Response time went down to less than half a second. That directly led to a Sun server being slimmed down from 32 processors to 12.

Ongoing Process

Once conducted, capacity plans should be repeated annually to take into account growth rates and changes in the environment. Further, in an organization that has to deal with huge transaction volumes or rapidly fluctuating loads, interim capacity plans should be done at least every three months. Ad-hoc reports should also be carried out to verify all is well and to investigate unusual occurrences or to follow up on unusual patterns. This should be carried out in tandem with ongoing performance management to detect and prevent bottlenecks from materially affecting system performance

Ron Potter is manager of best practices at TeamQuest Corp. For more information call 641-357- 2700 or visit www.teamquest.com.

Automating the control of equipment and lighting is one of the best ways to reduce energy consumption and make a facility more environmentally friendly. Often with a control system your carbon footprint can be reduced while at the same time the office environment is improved, equipment becomes easier to use and costs are reduced.

What is meant by Control System

A control system is a device or set of devices and software used to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or systems. Once linked by a control system, this equipment can be controlled manually via a centralized interface – typically either a touch panel or web-based system, or automatically by control system software based on predefined parameters.

Saving Energy

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) has created the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system. LEED encourages global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices, and LEED certification helps a building qualify for tax rebates, zoning allowances. Control systems can help contribute points needed for LEED certification.

By using a control system, IT managers can schedule, monitor, and receive alert notifications of all of the devices in a building via a single piece of software. This makes it simple and efficient to manage a wide variety of systems, including lighting, shades, HVAC, projectors, TVs/video displays, music, digital signage, and video conferencing equipment. In addition to basic scheduling of these devices for day/evening settings, a control system allows the integration of more sophisticated capabilities. Examples of these capabilities include adjusting meeting room lights and activating conferencing equipment or HVAC systems based on when the room is scheduled for use. Another application is to manage these resources based on an RSS feed from a local weather channel. With such an arrangement, opening/closing of shades, dimming/brightening of lights, and sprinkler activation can be based on weather conditions.

Green is More than Energy Savings

A green facility and LEED certification is about a lot more than energy efficiency. To earn LEED points facilities must show the ability to effectively manage light pollution, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and other aspects of system control. A control system can act as the glue to connect and coordinate these different systems, allowing them to work together at peak efficiency. For this reason, it is important that a control system works well with equipment from multiple manufacturers.

In addition, by centralizing and automating control of devices, IT organizations can improve service levels and reduce costs. This is accomplished by simplifying use, as well as increasing uptime, through proactive monitoring and by providing alerts when there are system problems or maintenance is required. This is typically done via enterprise software. In fact, ROI analyses show control systems can save tens of thousands of dollars annually - paying for themselves in theft prevention, improved room uptime, increased help desk efficiency, and lower maintenance costs. And this is all in addition to energy savings and other green benefits.

Michael Kleiman is Director of Product Marketing at AMX, 469-624-7673; email: michael.kleiman@amx.com; web: www.amx.com.

Before going green with an on-demand infrastructure,

companies need to revisit their manual business processes.

The concepts associated with green IT have been around a lot longer than the term itself. Being "green" isn't so much an IT best practice as it is a result of sound operating principles. Within many industries, such as the insurance industry, the result of green IT is often good for both the environment and the bottom line.

The Paper and Process Burden

The insurance industry, perhaps more than any other, is burdened with paper -- product information and brochures, application forms, policies, marketing materials, policyholder statements, adjuster reports, bills and all manner of correspondence -- so it's no surprise that most green initiatives by insurance carriers involve reducing printing loads. Moving all of these documents off of paper and into an electronic format was an industry focus long before green IT became popular. For insurers, it's not just about reducing printing and mailing costs; it's also about creating easier, less error-prone ways of interacting with customers, distributors and partners.

Reducing paper loads may seem tangential to an “On-Demand Infrastructure” but the two are directly connected. Often proponents of green IT and on-demand infrastructures are thinking about how a company reduces its own data center footprint through virtualization, SaaS (software as a solution), or other means. But interactions with the client base (whether by phone or mail or in person) need to go through a similar revolution. Especially complex are industries that rely on extensive distribution networks -- such as agency channels for insurers -- as this adds what is essentially another layer of “clients”. Moving to a SaaS model for some applications means one thing when it’s for internal users only, but means something different when it includes internal users, agents, and clients such as policy holders or corporate HR.

A Predisposition to SaaS

In a sense, the insurance industry and its agents -- and any industry that has provided web applications to a distribution network -- has been familiar with software as a service for a long time. The web portals that 90% of insurers make available to their agents are SaaS initiatives, though it’s an example of the insurer as SaaS provider rather than SaaS consumer. In some advanced cases the insurers have even provided Web-based tools for agents to build their own policyholder portals for their clients. It’s exactly the tools like this which SaaS vendors to the insurance industry need to make available to the home office. And this is the good news: insurers understand the value of SaaS and many are eager to embrace it.

Barriers to SaaS

The problem with the SaaS model is the paper. Or, rather, the inefficiencies in existing processes. While it may be possible or even straightforward to move some systems into a service model, especially systems that a company already deals with in an SaaS-like fashion, this is little comfort if the bulk of the expense (both in terms of dollars and the environment) lies in the manual processes surrounding the systems.

A company saddled with multiple systems for dealing with different core processing functions (in the insurance industry this includes items such as policy administration, billing, claims, underwriting, and agent portals for business submission) struggles -- and often fails -- to keep end-to-end integration. Manual processes are often required between each system, such as printing and mailing in forms or rekeying information to green screens. If a vendor pulls one system out of this chain and provides it as a service, this will not help the manual processes. In fact, it is likely to increase the pain. Even if a company can reduce some servers in the data center, the overall “greenness” may go down if an additional printing step is added.

Rethinking Existing Processes

Modern technology approaches such as web services and a service-oriented architecture have helped make it easier to integrate an SaaS application into the rest of an infrastructure without creating new process burdens. But vendors have to realize that even if SaaS doesn’t add to the issues, it won’t be a priority for companies if it’s only one drop in the sea of process and infrastructure costs. These solutions have to not only prevent the creation of new manual processes but help reduce the existing burdens. For example, this means not just providing electronic submission of business, but understanding the entire lifecycle of the business so that other internal systems can be more easily made to accept those electronic submissions.

Many important green initiatives exist to reduce the data center footprint and energy consumption while increasing load capacities, but it is not enough to focus on hardware. Many other important green initiatives exist to simplify software distribution and web-enable individual systems, but it is not enough to focus on software. Companies must deal with both, and deal with the business processes that connect these systems, in order to get the most expense reduction and the most environmental improvement. Companies leading the way will not just be making better use of technology, but will have rethought the way they handle their business.

Jeff Goldberg is a senior analyst at Celent, 617-262-3120: email: jgoldberg@celent.com. For more information, please visit www.celent.com or email info@celent.com.

Networking only when you need a job, and only with people in your field

Don't wait until you're thirsty to dig the well. If you're an introvert, try reaching out to online social networks to meet real-world contacts. That's what Tina, a young woman downsized from Bear Stearns' back office did, Navis says. She posted messages on www.craigslist.org and www.meetup.com, asking if anyone wanted to meet for coffee to talk about careers.

"She wound up networking into a much better position with someone whose brother was a hiring manager for tech people," Navis says. "She continues to meet with people once a month because she knows networking is about giving."

Posting your resume online and labeling it 'anonymous'

Some unscrupulous headhunters will do anything to get a client or a candidate. "They post bogus resumes on the job boards and label them anonymous," Navis explains. "If I'm a recruiter and JPMorgan wants me to hire a senior IT person, I'll access the competing recruiter's anonymous resume and tell him about the position. The competing recruiter then tries to steal that client and fill the position. Most recruiters will not respond to an anonymous resumes because they're worried you're really a recruiter."

Using an off-the-rack resume to land a custom job

Resumes are like suits. Who would wear something off the rack if the custom suit cost the same? Rewrite your resume each and every time you send it out, tailoring it each particular job.

Skip writing a job objective and instead use a career summary that explains exactly how your prior experience fits the current opening. "I already know that your objective is to get the job, otherwise you wouldn't have sent me the resume," Navis says.

Use bullets in your summary. When you list your jobs, expand on what you said in those bullets. "If (the employer is) looking for someone to do XYZ, put in a summary that says how and where you did XYZ," Navis instructs.

For example, if a job requires managerial skills, say: "I have seven years of managing a multitude of sales teams with as many as 26 members. "Saying "I am a great motivator" isn't enough.

Navis cites a colleague who was a C# programmer in the back office of Lehman Brothers. The colleague's idea of customizing was to change his resume's objective. "When he changed it to a professional summary with bullet points on what the client was looking for, he started getting interviews," Navis recounts. "And now, he's an IT manager for a small hedge fund in New York."

Applying for jobs for which you're not qualified

"If you have to make up or over-inflate your experience to meet my needs, please don't apply for the job, because you're not qualified," Navis says. "I'm looking for someone who's done it." Recently, Navis ran an ad for a client needing a vice president of sales with 10 years of experience as manager/director, and an MBA. "I'm getting resumes from people who took a course called You Can Sell Anything," Navis says. "You wonder why you send in a resume and never hear back? Because I'm too busy reading garbage. If you've ever sent out a resume for something you're not qualified for, you're the reason why."

Believing that people expect you to lie on a resume

Navis recently worked with a former JP Morgan IT help desk professional who'd been lying on her resumes for the past 15 years. She inflated the number of calls she handled each day, inflated her title to say she was director of the help desk, and said she worked on projects that no help desk person would be called upon to do.

"Human resources people talk to each other and we have our own networking," Navis warns. "Someone will say, 'I just hired Mary Smith, she was a director of your help desk at Bear Sterns. And the Bear Sterns person will say, 'Mary was never director.' And, HR people know that help desk directors don't take calls."

At Navis' urging, the woman created an accurate resume. "Three weeks ago she started sending out a truthful resume and she's gotten four solid interviews, and she'll be able to choose the best offer," Navis believes.

If you got arrested for drunk and disorderly in college, confess, briefly explain and then change the subject. Don't lie, because you're going to get caught when the company runs a background check. "If you got arrested 10 years ago for a stupid mistake, I can live with that," says Navis. "If you said you had no convictions, that's a lie you told today and I can't live with that."

Giving vague responses when asked about previous experience

A company needs an experienced SOX accountant. They ask you how you set up controls at your last company and you start telling them you're great with SOX, rather than getting into specifics. Or, you're an IT professional who lists every program you've ever seen in your entire life on your resume. Either way, you just flunked the employment test.

"I want to know when you used the skill and what obstacles you ran into when you used it," Navis says. "If the interviewer says to you: 'Are you good managing people?' say to them: 'Let me tell you about a time I managed five people on this project. I had this personality and that personality and here's how I handled it.' If someone asks you how are you at selling to institutional clients, tell them about specific clients. If you can't provide that level of detail, you shouldn't be applying for the job."

eFinancialCareers (www.efinancialcareers.com), a Dice Holdings company, serves the global financial community as the leading network of career sites for professionals working in banking and the financial markets and those firms seeking to employ them.

You can read more articles like this and search for jobs at the WSTA Career Center: http://wsta.efinancialcareers.com/

What do your network and IT service contracts (those obtuse documents that you hated haggling over and swore you would never look at) have to say?

A service contract can and should play a critical role in a business’s risk mitigation thinking and efforts. Each service provider (“SP”) relationship creates a new actor in your network. A key point of defense against the risks associated with that relationship is (or should be) the SP contract. This article is a brief discussion of negotiating service contracts to serve an enterprise’s overall risk mitigation strategy.

The Contract: Obligations and Consequences

Broadly speaking, service contracts consist of two interrelated parts. The first part consists of the parties’ obligations to one another. SP-related clauses describe what services it will provide and how, when, and where it will provide them. Customer-related clauses usually focus on when and how much it will pay for the services. The second part consists of terms -- warranties, liability limits, indemnities, and termination rights -- that address the allocation of risk between the parties and what happens when a party fails to hold up its end of the bargain. Both parts play an important role in risk management.

The Obligations – What to Do and When, Where, and How to Do It

Obligations can limit risk by aligning the parties’ practices and expectations and prohibiting (or at least discouraging) risky behavior. For example, a business can limit disputes on scope -- what it is getting from the vendor -- by negotiating a detailed service description. It can set expectations around resilience and trouble response by including appropriate service levels and associated governance mechanisms. It can limit its exposure to service disruptions and repair delays by negotiating terms governing who may access its sites and requiring compliance with its change control procedures. And it can limit its exposure to security breaches by negotiating SP obligations to comply with site and remote access security policies. The greater the SP’s role in (and access to) the customer’s environment, the greater the need to negotiate terms that ensure it complies with the customer’s security policies.

Consequences – What Happens (and Who Pays) When Things Go Wrong

Risk allocation provisions are also part of the risk mitigation calculus. They specify what happens when a party fails to act as promised or causes the other party grief (e.g., by getting sued). These are the terms that make IT managers’ eyes glaze over, but these are also the provisions that give meaning to (or undermine) performance commitments. For example, the broad exceptions in most boilerplate SP indemnification clauses will likely leave the customer without a remedy if a third party sues it because its use of the SP’s products infringes a patent or copyright. In fact, such clauses may well provide that the customer is obligated to defend (and pay the damages of) the SP. Another example -- many liability limitations effectively limit the SP’s liability to pretty close to 0 if it does not perform, but put no limits on the customer’s responsibility to pay invoiced or other charges.

Some Thoughts on Form Contracts

We will close with a comment on the special concerns presented by form contracts. Almost without exception, such forms do an excellent job of protecting the party that drafted them but offer few protections for the other side. That does not make the party who wrote the form bad; it just means that its lawyers are doing their jobs by seeking to minimize the party’s business risks to the fullest extent possible. This is more of a problem for customers than providers, because most sourcing transactions start with the provider’s form. The good news is that reputable vendors will cooperate to negotiate changes to their standard forms to reasonably divide risks between the parties. The cautionary point is that it is a really bad idea from a risk point of view to accept an off-the-shelf standard form just because the account rep is a great guy and you are in a hurry to get the deal done. Instead, make sure the contract language reflects the good will and fairness pledged by the SP when it was trying to retain or win your business.

Hank Levine (WSTA’s General Counsel) and Mark Johnston are partners in the law firm of Levine, Blaszak, Block & Boothby, LLP, which specializes in the representation of enterprise customers negotiating network and IT agreements with major suppliers. This article is a general and hypothetical discussion, and is not the provision of legal advice on which a reader can rely in a specific fact situation. For further information please go to www.lb3law.com.

Know the Enemy

At the core of a functional enterprise risk management (ERM) program is the risk analysis process. Risk analysis is the identification of risks to which an organization is exposed and the assessment of the potential impact of those risks on the organization. In most ERM models, risk analysis is used to develop the organization’s risk profile. Its purpose is to inform business decision makers by identifying and measuring the risks associated with different courses of action. Common risk analysis techniques include sensitivity analysis, probability analysis, simulation, and modeling. The key to successful ERM is the analysis of risk before business and investment decisions are made. This is true regardless of a firm’s risk appetite. A firm’s risk appetite is based on the amount of risk they are willing to accept, which requires risk analysis to make informed decisions.

Metrics is the term most commonly associated with the data used in the risk analysis process. A “metric” is simply a measurement against a standard. In some scenarios, metrics have been developed into highly effective predictors of risk. For example, actuary tables have been used in the insurance industry for decades to calculate the premiums for policies. These tables have been developed through statistical analysis of centuries of empirical data, and hence are the “standard” that the insured is measured against. Actuary tables are an example of quantitative metrics which are typically represented as a numeric value. For this reason, quantitative metrics are preferred in ERM programs, as numeric values can be integrated into complex equations to calculate an overall risk value.

The second form of metrics commonly used in risk analysis is qualitative metrics. Qualitative metrics present the characteristics of the standard being measured in a descriptive manner, such as “high”, “medium”, and “low”. This is the type of metrics frequently used to present the findings of a technical risk assessment. While subjective in nature, qualitative metrics are still very valuable to the risk management process.

So how does any of this help IT risk management and security integrate with an ERM program? Detailed empirical data on IT security is more difficult to obtain for risk calculations as compared to actuarial tables used by the insurance industry. New threats and vulnerabilities appear daily. Furthermore, technology evolves at such a rapid pace that what works to manage risk effectively today may be obsolete tomorrow. And exactly what standard is the correct one to develop metrics against? The financial industry is already heavily regulated, with compliance to Sarbanes Oxley, the Graham Leach Bliley Act, and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard measured annually. FSIs spend millions of dollars annually on technology and resources to maintain compliance with these regulations. Doesn’t that demonstrate that risk is being managed effectively?

Debunking the Myths

Unfortunately, the answer is no. While most FSIs have state-of-the-art technology to manage their IT risk compliance and security operations, the data collected is typically not suitable for integration into an ERM program. There is value in knowing that the current environment is compliant with the general “best practice” security definitions as described by regulators; and that virus signatures are up to date on 87% of the servers; and an average of 1125 ping sweeps occurs every week. But none of these data points is sufficient to provide “predictive” metrics in an ERM program. To get with their firm’s ERM program, IT risk management and security must first debunk two long-standing myths about information risk.

The first myth is that all IT risk can be defined in technology-centric terms. For decades, IT risk management and compliance, along with the IT security teams, have focused their efforts on testing the current configurations of servers, networks and other technology assets to find the latest vulnerabilities. The common belief being that if these assets are safe, then risk is being managed effectively. While these efforts are critical, information risk management and security efforts cannot stop at the technology. The “assets” that are key to the ERM program are the data and services provided by technology to support business processes. Risk must be defined in terms of these assets so as to be understood and used effectively by business decision makers.

Fortunately for most FSIs, overcoming this myth will not require significant investment in technology or resources. As stated earlier, nearly all large FSIs have invested in advanced technology to manage their compliance and security programs. These systems contain vast amounts of data that, aligned appropriately, can form the basis for true predictive metrics.

Easy as 1-2-3

Developing program metrics for an enterprise risk management effort can be accomplished in three steps:

Step 1: Ask what the ERM program needs to know. While this seems simple, it is often overlooked and results in too little or too much information being provided. Once the types, format, and frequency of metrics required by the ERM program are understood and documented, it will be much easier to know how to collect / derive the remaining data.

Step 2: Classify or characterize your technology assets to align with business processes and functions. It is recommended to start with business process definitions and mapping data, people, and technology to the processes. Starting with data or technology first becomes a “boil the ocean” exercise that has failed at nearly every large organization. A business process-based classification will allow for correct identification of critical risk metrics that can be quantified for reporting to the ERM program.

Step 3: Share. It is often the case that IT risk management is a function of a compliance or internal audit group, and information security is a function of IT. While there are reasons for separation to maintain independence, remember that the overall goal is to effectively manage risk. Combining compliance data with operational data will go a long way to creating viable ERM program metrics. However, there is another part of the organization that has a stake in effective risk management: business management. Involvement of the business units to understand how data and services are prioritized in their respective business processes will be vital in developing the standards for ERM metrics.

The second myth that has to be addressed is the belief that information risk can be effectively managed using a “test and fix” methodology. “Test and Fix” assumes risk can only be addressed through technology. Furthermore, risk cannot be identified until some audit or “test” is performed, and findings are presented. Once the “test” has occurred, the “fix” phase of the methodology is initiated to address the findings. The “fix” efforts continue until all issues are addressed or the next “test” cycle happens.

This approach is neither predictive nor preventative, yet it is the most common approach today for managing IT risk. To make matters worse, multiple annual regulatory requirements create a permanent test cycle with duplicate and redundant findings. Compliance initiatives are undertaken in a stovepipe manner resulting in enormous resource costs.

Finally, Analyze Before Action

To be effective, risk analyses must occur before business decisions are made. Failing to provide the necessary information risk metrics into the organization’s ERM program prevents those decisions from being made with the best data, puts the company at higher risk that cannot be mitigated, and costs millions every year.

Mark Moore is a Director of Risk Management at Acumen Solutions, a business and technology consulting firm with offices in the U.S. and Europe. He can be reached at mmoore@acumensolutions.com.

Fixed Wireless networks are reliable, safe and secure. Fixed wireless networks are now being used for connectivity to financial exchanges, data centers, corporate offices, and other critical facilities. These networks have passed the most stringent government and industry mandates for security and reliability making this technology a dependable alternative to fiber optic networks.

Further making the case for Fixed Wireless is the need for true diversity. The Financial Exchanges and the Federal Government mandate redundant connections and diversity in trading networks. Fixed Wireless is widely recognized by analysts and industry leaders as the best practice for optimizing network survivability; assuring mission critical circuits have no common point of failure in the building, street or central office.

Total Cost of Ownership for Fixed Wireless should be valued by combining the benefits of ultra low latency and the true diversity these networks provide. The cost benefit analysis for deploying Fixed Wireless in the trading network should combine the value of beating your competitor to the trade plus avoiding the potential cost of a service interruption or network outage during the trading day.

Shane Hampton is the vice president of market development for Business Only Broadband (BOB®), a company he co-founded with Richard Kingston in late 2005. Talk to BOB® Toll-Free Customer Support: 877-262-4553 or visit www.bobbroadband.com.

Therefore, it is imperative that IT and IS service providers, together with the business units they support, plan thoroughly and implement necessary solutions in order to cope with events beyond their control.

Originally called “disaster recovery,” the practice known as business continuity planning, where firms’ IT departments and technology experts are tasked with developing plans to direct activities in the event of a crisis, is now commonplace. In particular, the highly specialized communications needs of a modern financial services trading operation present a number of challenges. In the high-pressure trading environment – where immediacy is paramount – failing to have a workable BCP strategy can result in significant loss of revenue and profit, or even a mortal wound to reputation.

While it’s not possible to prepare for every possible event, IT and IS service providers, along with their business units, need to plan thoroughly and implement necessary solutions in order to ensure their systems stay running and available.

The task of developing adequate, workable plans to direct activities in the event of a crisis is not an easy one. This is particularly true when looking at the unique infrastructure present in the trading room. In this pressure-filled environment, not only is 100 percent up-time the goal, it is demanded.

For any firm, this is a massive commitment, because it mandates the delivery of a cost-effective workable technology solution that meets the requirements of the trading environment.

Most of the time BCP is thought of in terms of the large-scale natural or man-made “disasters” we see in the news: an earthquake or tsunami in Asia; a transit strike, bomb scare or major stock exchange outage in Europe; U.S. hurricanes such as Ike, Hannah and Katrina; or terrorist attacks anywhere in the world.

However, while such events can have significant effects on a firm’s systems, more common are the smaller, less-dramatic events that can impact certain elements of a system. Events such as the severing of a cable or an isolated component failure can be extremely inconvenient. Solutions that mitigate the effects of these events are often relatively economic to implement and can be extremely effective. And yet, when considering BCP, they are often overlooked.

To help in planning, we can look at disaster events as having four levels. The matrix on page 28 will give you an idea of the impact of an event on the operation of a trading floor and what the solutions should aim to address. Level One is isolated component failure. Level Two is loss of trading floor access. Level Three is loss of trading floor infrastructure. Level Four is extended loss of building and/or business district. A wide range of technical and architectural solutions exist that will limit the impact of an event on the trading floor operation.

Conclusion

For firms worldwide, BCP is now as prevalent as redundant backups for their key servers. While it’s nearly impossible to predict when and where the next disaster will strike, or how large or small its magnitude, firms preparing for these events will have the best chances to limit the impact on the productivity of their trading floors.

Colin Silvester is director of product management at IPC Systems, 201-253-2018; email: colin.silvester@ipc.com; web: www.ipc.com.

The key components of an industry-leading solution should be specifically designed to meet the needs of companies that are engaged in M&A activity or going through the bankruptcy process. The solution should cover the entire telecom environment and manage the following M&A or bankruptcy needs:

Contract Services

• ‑Comparison of contract rates and terms and conditions (T&Cs) for the two merging companies

• ‑Detailed contract review for penalties and obligations

• ‑Negotiate work-out deals for bankruptcy

Inventory Services

• ‑Full inventory that identifies areas of overlap or split for data circuits, voice services and wireless devices

• ‑Before and after analysis of the entire telecom environment including inventory, spend and optimization possibilities

• ‑Detailed reporting of telecom inventory and expenses by business unit

• ‑Reconciliation of all employee wireless devices

Billing Services

• ‑Reconciliation with the telecom vendors for past dues or missing payments

• ‑Transition of service without disruption

• ‑Change of billing / remit addresses

• ‑General Ledger format consolidation

• ‑Map or change profit and loss (P&L) transition to ensure all telecom charges are allocated to the correct P&L, business unit, cost center, etc.

• Establish chargeback process

Site Services

• ‑Evaluation of data centers to determine best consolidation options

• ‑Review of sites and determine which ones have more carrier diversity options

Transition Period Review

• ‑Provide on-site support for smooth transition of services

• ‑Manage vendors to ensure there is no disruption of service

• ‑Handle all change of party forms with each telecom vendor to ensure that proper billing changes take effect

• ‑Provide call center support to triage between the business and the telecom vendors

• ‑Manage the reporting of data for all companies involved

• ‑Follow through on orders to change Caller ID names, port Direct-Inward Dialing (DID) ranges or move Primary-Rate Interface (PRI) circuits

Enterprises will realize both immediate and long-term benefits including:

• ‑Compliance with bankruptcy regulations

• ‑Seamless integration of technology and telecom services

• ‑Immediate visibility and reporting on telecom assets

• ‑Contract optimizations and consolidation

• ‑Accurate chargeback to business units

• ‑Avoidance of service disruptions

• ‑Timely reconciliation of monies claimed to be owed by telecom vendors

• ‑Centralized processes for all MACD orders and invoice validation.

Having an integrated telecom expense management solution during an acquisition, merger or bankruptcy situation will enable an organization to maintain control and ensure accurate reporting while dealing with legal and compliance issues. The program should be specifically designed to meet the needs of each unique engagement.

Lori Thomas is Vice President – Global Head of Client Services at TnT Expense Management, 203-364-2380; email: LThomas@tntem.com; web: www.tntem.com.