Business Acumen a Cloud Communications MustBusiness Acumen a Cloud Communications Must

No Jitter Research career and salary data shows the growing importance of partner management skills.

In a No Jitter post last week, "The Ever-Shrinking Communications Services Contract," attorney Martha Buyer, who specializes in telecom law, bemoans the increasingly troublesome way in which carriers deliver enterprise services agreements and the "nasty provisions" buried within them. In recounting a recently encountered situation, she related how the carrier agreement her client had been asked to sign might as well have been a blank piece of paper. The carrier had buried "virtually everything" on a hard-to-navigate website.

The practice of pointing enterprises to online service guides is as old as the Web itself. But lately, it seems, carriers have begun stooping to a "new low," as Martha wrote, in obfuscating salient details. Hank Levine, a widely known and much-respected veteran telecom attorney, agreed with Martha's assessment. Finding actual terms has long been a game of "Where's Waldo," he told her, but lately "in some cases virtually every term is being treated this way."

This isn't to say this practice of burying terms precludes an enterprise's ability to negotiate on contract specifics. But, as Hank pointed out, you've got to find everything first.

I was thinking about this situation in light of the growing use of cloud communications services. As cloud telephony begins to supplement or replace premises-based voice systems, enterprise IT managers charged with buying and managing those services must hone their negotiation skills. As Robin Gareiss, president of Nemertes Research, discussed in her February No Jitter post, "Cloud Looming: What You Need to Do Now," finding the right mix of technology expertise and business acumen is one of those vital issues enterprise IT needs to consider as it migrates to cloud communications. This business acumen includes the ability to interpret contracts, as well as regulations, and to analyze service-level agreements, she wrote.

Partner management is essential for effective cloud communications use, Robin said. The most success comes in having between 1.2 and 2.6 IT staff members devoted to management of each relationship, depending on size of staff and complexity of environment, Robin continued, citing Nemertes research. About 60% of companies surveyed by Nemertes said they have enough people managing their partners, but most -- a whopping 93% -- said they don't have the right people.

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With this in mind, I turned to data we've gathered as part of our annual No Jitter Research surveys on enterprise IT communications careers and salaries. Based on our data, I would have to say that the No Jitter audience would agree that refined business management skills are becoming increasingly important.

In surveying the No Jitter audience, we asked respondents to rate how important their ability to negotiate and interface with vendors is, not only in performing their current jobs successfully but also for career advancement. In 2015, roughly a quarter of enterprise communications professionals considered this an important skill set for today and the future (meriting a rating of 5, 6, or 7 on a 1-to-7 scale from not important to highly important). Our 2016 results show a considerable jump in that importance rating, with 64% of enterprise communications respondents signaling the importance of these skills for their current jobs and slightly more (68%) noting the importance for their career advancement.

We found a similar jump in the importance enterprise IT communications professionals place on financial and budgeting skills, with 21% of respondents rating such know-how as important for their jobs in 2015 but 60% doing so in 2016. The gap is even wider when considering the importance for their career advancement, with 19% of respondents giving financial and budgeting skills an "important" rating in 2015 compared to the 63% that did so this year.

Backroom, down-and-dirty technologists might despair over the need to move outside of their product- or architecture-oriented comfort zones. So be it. But anybody who desires to stay relevant in the enterprise when cloud communications becomes the telephony choice du jour had better understand what comprises a cloud contract, where to find the details, and how to talk the talk.

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