Enterprise business stakeholders tell us they’re not often asked for input about telecoms and mobility (T&M) sourcing practices. When they are, they’re likely to be more accepting of new practices related to standardization on specific technology platforms, and designation of a preferred service provider.

Sourcing and vendor management (SVM) executives need to ask for and then demonstrate they’ve listened to input and feedback from the business leadership. Forrester recommends conducting periodic high level interviews with key business stakeholders, and also surveying a small sample of representative business managers in regional sales, marketing, business operations, and finance departments about a) their top two or three business and technology challenges, b) how they are addressing them directly already or want help addressing during the next 12 months, and c) their interest in being updated about telecoms and mobility related activities including sourcing.

All user companies with distributed business operations see high value in network and telecoms technologies in enabling business initiatives. For example, our Q1 2013 Forrsights survey of 194 business decision-makers at North American and European firms with 1,000 or more employees found that more than four in five of the respondents considered telecom technologies important or very important to a) enable users in their organization to ‘gather better business information’ (85%); ‘support overall employee productivity’ (84%); and ‘empower closer engagement’ (81%).  

For more discussion on this topic, see my February 10, 2014, “Involve The Business In Your Telecoms And Mobility Sourcing Road Map” report – http://www.forrester.com/Involve+The+Business+In+Your+Telecoms+And+Mobility+Sourcing+Road+Map/fulltext/-/E-RES93163