Well, one place that seems to have a decent collection of both entertainment and useful information is iTunes. More recently they’ve added something I find really interesting called iTunes U. If you’re not already familiar with this, these are lectures from well-respected professors and well-known business figures speaking at some of the best schools in the U.S., even the world. It’s sort of like eavesdropping on a very expensive education. What’s really great is that it’s free.

As it relates to technology and especially to making informed decisions, we’ve provided a sample of just three that we think you should check out:

1. Decisions – Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer’s (Stanford) lecture is titled ‘Evidence-based Decision Making’ taken from his book, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management. Dr. Pfeffer is funny, insightful, and downright entertaining as he goes through why companies make seemingly nonsensical business decisions and how that happens.

-       Following deeply held, but unfounded beliefs such as Silicon Valley companies’ unwavering decision to tie compensation to stock price despite over 200 independent studies that contradict this.

-       Executives who keep doing only what they know from their last job and invariably apply whatever they did before to their new company, even though there is no correlation or similarity.

-       The practice of casual benchmarking  - blindly copying what others are doing without thinking about why it works and under what conditions it will be successful.

2. Effective Negotiating – Margaret Neale’s (Stanford) lecture is titled ‘Winners Don’t Take All’ and along with her article Are You Giving Away the Store? Strategies for Savvy Negotiations in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, we learn a great deal about how bad deals are made. Also an entertaining and insightful discussion, Prof Neale offers stories, examples, and demonstrations of how psychology plays a role in our negotiation decisions. Some examples of her talk:

-       How AT&T purchased NCR for a stock price of over $140 when it started at $41 – with no bidders

-       A group of bankers who in a negotiating exercise in one of her lectures, ended up bidding $352 for a $20 bill.

-       Psychological keys that can predictably and dramatically alter outcomes when players are primed in the right way – either in a positive or negative way.

3. The iPhone Effect – Behind This Week’s Cover Story – Jim Ellis interviews Roben Farzad on his cover story, ‘AT&T’s iPhone Problem. NOTE: This differs from the actual story podcast that can be downloaded from BusinessWeek’s website.  While the article is extensive in its description of AT&T’s wireless network problems, the interview provides a wider perspective that is more relevant to the wireless industry in general. Some examples are:

-       The unforeseen impact of the rapid adoption by a concentrated demographic, such as young college students. Events such as college football games with audiences of 20,000-50,000 and with70% or more all simultaneously using data intensives apps at the same time, creating brand new network challenges.

-       Because of its iPhone exclusivity, AT&T was the single benefactor and lightning rod for criticism on poor data network performance. Farzad, rightly points out with the android and other such platforms, the smartphone’s data consumption will be an issue for the entire industry.

-       Farzad offers a balanced assessment of why wireless networks are and always will be different from landline ones through new applications, rapid growth, and highly coveted devices – all which drive up demand in an ‘all you can eat’ environment.

Links:

You’ll find both Evidence-based Decision Making and Winners Don’t Take All here, then choose to enter through iTunes U. Once in, on left, under Categories, choose Business, then the blue Business Management thumbnail. Open that and you’ll find both lectures.

Here’s the BusinessWeek interview, the date is 2/4/10.

About the authors:

Dr. Pfeffer

Prof. Neale

Robed Farzad

Perhaps you haven’t negotiated a new contract in say 20 years, or your business has grown by 2000% in the last 24 months, or we found a bunch of stuff that wasn’t on your old contract. Stuff like that. But a company that has been diligent about their services and needs? Not likely.

Consider that these statements are based on surveyed results; not actual data that can be checked with any kind of accuracy. These are self-reported numbers. Furthermore, they’re saying that this is an average, which means there are a sufficient number of cases that exceed 36%. What network provider could sustain such an attack on their already narrowing margins?

Also, contracts are not monolithic. In most cases they’re made up of multiple services with many cost elements that don’t lend themselves to a total 36% drop in overall spend. Take LD Voice: There are access costs, feature charges, multiple jurisdictions across individual states and countries, and of course switched and dedicated rates that carriers love to muddle things with on-net/off-net scenarios.

The issue here is evidence-based decision making, with emphasis on the evidence. The TEM/TLM industry should be moving more toward actual standards and methodology. Conveniently citing numbers without fact-checking what’s behind them is not good for business. Customers are rightfully suspicious of consultants because they’ve been burned so many times. Let’s stop that and restore confidence to the profession by using things like utilization modeling based on actual history so we can benchmark results fairly and accurately. Let’s separate the unusual from the usual to show where clean ups of billing issues is a discrete subset. True impacts using apples-apples comparisons is key to credibility. And finally, let’s make it a practice that a before and after study is part of the process so clients can conclusively validate what they’ve saved. If the bottom line number is closer to 17% for a new contract, with another 12% for clean ups, let’s report that and not hide it under the banner of contract savings. This should also add some longevity to engagements by educating customers on how sustain their savings.

Your comments and more important your results would be welcome to see where you’ve come out on renegotiating your telecom contract.

Many contracts have automatic renewals or specific procedures that must be followed to prevent auto renewal.  Some take it for granted that dates negotiated on their last RFP made it into the contract, this is often not so.  Always check your contracts and know the procedures, dates, and revenue commitments agreed upon.

Some jump the gun and turn the incumbent provider into an enemy before knowing the particulars of how to discontinue their agreement.  It is also important to consider the time and resources necessary to move to another provider.  Know your dates and plan in advance.  Staying one step ahead of your providers will help you to negotiate the best deals.

Usually, TEMs are viewed as providing a very short term engagement, where they reduce costs quickly.  TLMs are expected to provide a holistic view which might begin at expense management but would also look at order fulfillment, asset management, managing SLAs, and on and on.  But is it unrealistic to expect long-term savings from short-term engagements?  No.  Any TEM/TLM should be able to provide recommendations for extended savings.  The biggest obstacle to maintaining and increasing savings is your organization.  Loss of efficiency usually takes place when there is no communications between people negotiating contracts and people ordering services, and when there are no quality management processes in place to monitor activity (MACD, Contract maturity, organizational changes).

TLM is something that you should be getting from any vendor, but it is only achievable with buy-in from your organization.  Monitoring processes from cradle-to-grave is the only way to achieve long-term savings.