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The Telecom Consultant
Bulletin
Insights, Viewpoints & Facts
from Telecom's Influencer Community
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March
2011
This Month's
Theme:
The
State of the Telecom/IT Consulting Market: The News is
Good!
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Welcome!
Since
1997, The Brookside Group has conducted
an annual State of the North American Telecom Consulting
Market study. The scope of this annual
study includes the consulting market's definition,
classifications, size, growth, growth drivers,
services/expertise, client mix (by size
of client and vertical market), market influence,
and consultants' use of industry vendor
consultant programs (commonly called Consultant
Liaison Programs).
The
study's findings are based on both an in-depth survey
conducted among a revolving sample of industry
consultants and updated consultant profiles compiled by
Brookside, and maintained in our consultant database of
more than 4,500 independent industry consultants in
North America. Earlier this year, we conducted and
completed our 2010 study reflecting the input from a
total of 742 industry consultants; 276 who participated
in the study's survey (13% response rate), plus an
additional 466 updated consultant profiles compiled
during calendar year 2010.
The
general definition we use to qualify and accept industry
consultants into our database is summarized as
follows:
- Independent,
objective and ethical specialist;
- Hired
and paid by end-user clients - enterprise, SMB
(mid-market and small business),
government;
- Help
their clients assess, plan, design, and/or
integrate communications networks,
and choose the telephony, video,
and/or data communications solutions best suited to
their clients' needs;
- Help
negotiate, procure, deploy, and manage the
solutions.
Key findings from our 2010 study are
highlighted below. Please click HERE to request a more detailed report.
Some important insights/perceptions that
I have gleaned from both the study and our work with
consultants and vendor consultant programs in 2010
include:
- The telecom consulting market is growing and
broadening in scope due to the convergence of
traditional telecom (voice telephony) consultants and
IT, network infrastructure and business process
consultants; largely in response to and impacted by
the evolution/deployment of Unified Communications;
- Vendor recognition of/support for consultants as a
significant channel of influence (see the market
influence stats below) is also broadening and growing,
but varies widely among vendors and market segments,
and is resource constrained, i.e., not as effective as
it can or should be;
- The consultant/system integrator (reseller)
relationship needs more recognition, support and
strengthening, and is a key factor in consultants'
vendor solution recommendation decisions;
- In addition to delivering what consultants need
most from vendors (see below), the number one success
factor for an effective vendor consultant program is
senior management recognition and support;
- The challenge for vendor consultant program
managers to attain senior management support is
defining, measuring and reporting the program's
contribution, i.e., "Share of Consultant Influence."
Please
excuse the length of my introduction to this bulletin,
but I thought it was important to define the parameters
of our study and share some insights to help provide
context for the key findings summarized below.
Sincerely,
Mick
Sawka
The
Brookside Group |
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Consulting Market Growth
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Summary
of Key Findings (Brookside's 2010
Study) |
- Telecom consulting in
north America is returning to health, projected to
grow between 8 - 9 % in 2011 on a revenue basis;
- Unified Communications (UC)
and UC-related applications, mobility, and wireless
infrastructure will drive this growth, i.e., market
need for consultants over the next two years;
- Telephony/voice-driven
solutions continue to represent the majority of
consultants' engagements, with a growing
representation of hosted/cloud solution considerations
and recommendations;
- Demand for telecom
consultants in the U.S. continues to grow within the
SMB market (mid-market and small business), which now
represents nearly 60% of U.S. consultants' average
client mix. This trend is less so in Canada where
enterprise continue to represent more than 50% of
consultants' average client mix;
- How U.S. consultants classify
or position themselves continued its gradual
broadening, i.e., moving away from traditional telecom
(voice telephony) consulting classification to broader
IT, business process and engineering classifications.
This trend is less true in Canada where telecom
consulting maintained its traditional telephony
classification focus with a growing business
process/management consulting role.
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Consulting
Market Influence |
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Summary
of Key Findings (Brookside's
2010 Study)
- Consultants
in both the U.S. and Canada are evenly horizontal in
the range of services they provide their clients,
ranging from up front strategic communications/network
planning, to solution assessments/recommendations,
through to deployment support;
- U.S.
consultants were more active in the healthcare and
professional services verticals compared to 2009;
while Canadian consultants worked more in financial
services, education and government;
- Consultants
averaged 6 - 7 client engagements in which they
recommended specific vendor solutions to their
clients;
- The
total average sales dollar value, per consultant, of
their communications solutions recommendations to
their clients increased 8% to $7.9M among U.S.
consultants, and increased 19% to $7.5M among Canadian
consultants.
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Consultants'
Use of Vendor Consultant Programs
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Summary
of Key Findings (Brookside's
2010 Study)
- Vendor consultant programs are
consultants' 2nd most preferred source of vendor
information and support, after their personal contacts
within the vendor organization;
- More
than 90% of consultants selectively use and rely on
vendor consultant programs;
- As
rated by consultants, Avaya and Cisco are clearly the
most widely used and effective consultant programs in
the U.S. and Canada, followed by:
- ShoreTel, Microsoft,
Mitel, NEC and Alcatel-Lucent in the
U.S.;
- Bell Canada, Mitel, NEC, and Alcatel-Lucent in
Canada;
- The
primary role and value of vendor consultant programs
to consultants is providing them the information,
insights and support they need to confidently
determine when to include the vendor's solutions in
their assessments;
- What
consultants want most from a vendor consultant program
are program manager single point-of-contact,
informative/easy to access web portal,
informative/current email updates, consultant
conferences.
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Market News, Resources &
Events |
- Telecom
Expense Management Software for Consultants:
Valicom
now offers consultants access to Clearview,
an affordable web-based software tool for
telecom consultants to use in delivering
telecom audits and telecom expense management
services. Click HERE for more details.
- Consultant
Program Membership Links -
Not
a member of the following telecom vendor consultant
programs? Click on the links of interest below to
register for these informative and helpful
programs.
- Consultant
Program Directory -
Need
Vendor Consultant Program contact information?
Click HERE to access Brookside's Directory
of Telecom Vendor Consultant Programs.
- Telecom
Consultant Bulletin Archive - Click
HERE to access all past issues of
The Telecom Consultant Bulletin
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Questions, Comments,
Suggestions?
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Contact
The Brookside Group
Call
us: 973-543-6765
Email us
Go
to our web site
Submit a question or request
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