Uri Unplugged

Each year, as we at RADirect conclude our current year’s business and begin to plan for the next one, I try to develop a new “theme” for our team to adopt over the course of the coming year. This year, I chose the following theme: ‘Commitment’. In doing so, I found the following definition particularly useful:

“Commitment: The act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to a course of action.”

The reason that I choose a theme to begin with is that it helps me think about what I’d like to accomplish. I then translate a concept into more defined and feasible actions.

Each one of us holds many roles in his or her life. For instance, in my personal life, I am a husband, a father, a son, a grandchild (my grandma just turned 96!), a friend, a community member, and so forth. In my professional life, I am a leader, a manager, a mentor, a motivator, an employee, a colleague, etc. And of course, there’s always the role of ‘I’ myself...

The question we may ask is, “How can one better bind himself to each of the courses these various roles require?” Is it even feasible (hey, only 24 hours in a day last time I checked!)? Does it make sense?

I believe that as long as your roles don’t contradict each other, they will actually complement each other. The stronger you are in each of your roles, the more you will grow as a person and the more successful you will be in your other roles. Let me give you some examples:

• If I am more successful in my professional roles and feel better about my accomplishments, wouldn’t that make them more meaningful? Wouldn’t that help me secure the financial future of my family?

• If I have a good relationship with my wife, wouldn’t that make me a better model for my kids? Wouldn’t that make me a happier person in life? Wouldn’t that impact my professional roles for the better?

• If I am a better model for my team, wouldn’t that make my ‘I’ go higher? Wouldn’t that improve the rest of my roles?

I am pretty sure you get the picture (I mean ‘my picture’). All of our roles involve varying degrees of interdependence, and your ability to be truly committed to more of your life’s roles will increase, not impede, your overall success and happiness.

Another aspect of commitment that I think often gets distorted is the idea that to take on more commitments, we need to do more work. This isn’t always the case. In my view, a commitment to something doesn’t mean that you have to do everything yourself. You can always rely on colleagues, friends, family members or whatever other means you may have available (did I mention outsourcing?).

Commitment entails your own responsibility to the course of action, and perhaps also its outcome. But you don’t necessarily have to personally take on all of the activities associated with reaching the outcome.

So there you go, my colleagues, partners, customers, prospects, family, friends - and whoever else may be reading this post-

My resolution this New Year is to be more COMMITTED!

Happy New Year!

Uri

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have just received my U.S. citizenship! Congratulations (to me), and God bless us all…

My wife and I were invited to visit the INS office in Newark, NJ at 8:00 am. According to the invitation, the entire process was scheduled for approximately 2 hours. We arrived at 7:45 just to be on the safe side, and by 8:00, we were already called by an agent. Surprisingly enough (considering the fact that this agent must see 10-20 individuals like us every day), the INS agent was extremely nice, and it immediately disarmed any tension I had prior to the interview. The interview/test took about 20 minutes or so and by 8:25 my wife and I were both outside. At this point, we thought we’d be out of the INS office in no time and were ecstatic with the overall process thus far…

That was the end of efficiency and the beginning of bureaucracy!

Soon after, we were instructed to come back to the same office at 11:00 and submit a form that basically claims we haven’t committed any crimes, dealt with drugs, or joined the communist party since the interview!!!

Then we were told to wait for the ‘oath ceremony’ that begins at 1:30. At 12:30, we decided to grab a quick lunch in the cafeteria and returned at 1:00 to learn that the oath ceremony had just started (for no apparent reason, INS decided to start the ceremony early). Since the ceremony was already in progress, we were not allowed to join, and were told to keep waiting as we would be called back for the next oath ceremony. We called a supervisor and asked her to be a little more specific and got pretty much the same story. We then spoke to the manager of this location, who was very rude and basically threatened to escort us out of the building or to reschedule our oath ceremony in 6 months… At that point, we decided to bite our tongues and play their game. At 3:00, they decided to conduct another ceremony (usually there are only two – at 1:30 and 5:00) and we were done by 3:30.

Obviously, this is not a typical example. Nevertheless, I think that there are a few lessons learned from this experience:

1. Set expectations correctly. If we had been informed upfront that the process would take the full day, we would have made the appropriate arrangements (kids, you know) to be there the whole day.
2. Communicate accurately what’s next. People expect to know what, when, and how things will happen. Why not share your plan with them?
3. Stick with the plan. If you told someone you’d do something at a certain time, make sure that you fulfill your promise.
4. Treat people with respect. We all like to be treated as human beings. Sometimes we have the tendency to forget this when we provide services. It’s not just another case you’re handling, it’s a person.
5. Acknowledge your faults. Exceptions do happen. When you have one, acknowledge it, communicate it and make sure you re-align yourself with your customer with a new acceptable plan. This is something most of us can understand and tolerate.

Obviously, this phenomenon is much wider in scope and extends beyond the inabilities of any specific organization. This is especially true in an era where most service organizations try to cut costs and implement more and more automation, IVR, off-shoring and anything else that serves the purpose of cutting or keeping costs down.

We, at RADirect take a different approach with our service practices and enable (actually encourage) our customers to have access to knowledgeable, resourceful and accountable individuals. We offset the additional costs by charging reasonable fees for the services we provide, and have found more and more customers that are willing to pay a small premium for these services.

This has proven very successful for us. Our business has had very strong average growth since inception, an excellent ratio of repeat business and many referrals from existing customers - all good metrics for a healthy business.

Do you choose your service providers based primarily on costs or are you willing to pay a little extra for quality and service? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I promised this blog wouldn’t be just about all the great things we do and all the knowledge we gained and can share with you. It’s going to be about our mistakes, too. So here’s one:

About a year ago, we started to work with a new customer, the CIO (let's call him 'Roy') of an organization that provides data repository services for regional hospitals and healthcare providers. Roy's project involved the creation of a global data replication system that included storage for a PACS system in the main data center, with a backup system for the imaging files in a disaster recovery site.

We began the sales process, like we always do, by understanding the environment, objectives, budget and growth requirements, along with many other factors associated with a well thought-out project planning process. We then designed a solution based on the latest software release of one of our storage vendors, which although in beta, happened to address all the requirements of this particular project. We communicated to Roy that our solution was a beta revision of software, and offered some financial incentives to him for agreeing to be a beta user. We articulated the benefits of the solution and explained the main principals of this architecture, the pros and cons, etc. Everything was according to plan.

Everything? Did I mention risk? We’ve been in business for quite sometime, seen many beta installations, and have come to have certain expectations of them. Typically, you may find some minor GUI glitches, perhaps some small bugs, and sometimes some other non-critical issues that can be resolved almost instantaneously by the vendor as soon as they are identified.

Well, this installation was a disaster! Nothing worked correctly, and we made numerous mistakes in trying to rectify the situation, perhaps even making matters worse. It took us about two months to stabilize the main data center site, and another ten (yes, 10!) months to get to the point where we were 100% confident that this ‘new’ software release worked as promised.

You would be correct in assuming that Roy did not want to take another risk until we had stabilized and tested this new software revision with numerous customers, so we held off on implementing the installation at his remote data replication site during this time. For nearly a year, Roy had only a single instance of the repository of his images, albeit on a RAID-5 array.

I’ve stayed in touch with Roy throughout this entire year, calling or emailing him almost every other week. I have kept him up to date on the vendor’s progress with the software and the status of other implementations using this feature. I also set up several conference calls with Roy and the vendor so we could all set new expectations, re-define the objectives and agree on our ‘next steps’, making sure all three parties were always in full agreement.

Needless to say, I’m not proud of this project! Roy – this is not the first time you’ve heard this from me, but I’m terribly, tremendously, dreadfully sorry for this experience! If I had ever suspected that this could be the outcome of our experience, I would have never put you through this.

SORRY!

Lessons Learned - The Hard Way:

1. Avoid being a beta customer, unless risks are low and financial gains are high.
2. Testing is important. When the stakes are high, do more testing upfront.
3. If possible, leave yourself a contractual ‘escape’ route to mitigate the risks of a newer technology.
4. Speak to references that are using the same technology for the same application.
5. Speak with references using the same people/resources. Validate that the human factor is trustworthy and knowledgeable.
6. If you happen to be the exception, make sure you re-write your ‘contract’. It is important to redefine objectives, timelines and financial gains/penalties throughout the experience.

Exceptions happen to everyone! What we at RADirect do with them and how we use them to improve our internal processes and decrease our bad incident rate, I’d like to think, sets us apart.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At RADirect, when we speak to customers who are considering deployment of a pseudo-wire/TDMoIP/VoIP solution, we typically identify three major change drivers:

1. Integration
2. Technology adoption
3. Transport and other costs

Integration
Integration of voice with the user desktop, back-end/CRM, and unified messaging applications are all benefits unique to a VoIP implementation. So is ease of phone system management. If integration drives your current project, clearly VoIP is the way to go.

Technology Adoption
Does anyone still have any doubts that VoIP is the prevailing technology? Without question, VoIP is the way of the future, and manufacturers spend most of their R&D, marketing, and sales efforts promoting it.

If you are at the end-of-life cycle with your existing voice system, by all means, choose VoIP. But if you haven’t reached that point yet, I would argue that you might be better off holding on to your existing system, at least until it needs a boost or integration becomes an important factor for your business. Otherwise, you may find yourself investing much more time, effort and money than you had planned just to get to the same service level you have been at for the past ten years.

Transport and Other Costs
Customers motivated by a need to reduce their transport costs are typically the ones that pay a premium on transport (i.e. satellite links or international trunking). In cases where the business model is significantly impacted by operating costs (such as service providers, call centers, cruise lines, etc), reduction of transport costs is even more important. Such customers can get a better return on investment when they deploy a pseudo-wire solution with voice compression, designed specifically to optimize voice transport. RADirect’s vmux product line is perfect for this.

Other customers want to take a different approach to the reduction of operating costs, aiming to manage a single type of network or use excess IP network bandwidth for voice. These customers would also realize a better ROI by employing a pseudo-wire solution like TDMoIP. With no forklift upgrade to your voice system, implementation is easy, service levels are guaranteed to remain high, and the cost of pseudo-wire solutions is comparatively low.

Of course, there are always cases that involve a mixture or some variation of these drivers. The most important thing is, before you launch your pseudo-wire/TDMoIP/VoIP project, ask (and answer) yourself: ‘What are the primary business drivers for this project?’ Only when these are defined should you start the process of identifying a solution that satisfies your requirements.

Have you recently upgraded your phone system? Are you currently considering an upgrade? Share your pseudo-wire/TDMoIP/VoIP success or distress stories.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)