Telecommunications Cost Management

Rating:
Summary: Practical How To Book - not 50,000 foot theory
Review: Our firm is in cost cutting mode, so I got this book looking for practical tips on how to cut our considerable telecom bill. What I liked was the step-by-step approach covering local, long distance and alternative technologies. Instead of a lot of theory, it gets down to USOCs and has a checklist of specific savings ideas. The audit program at the back rambled at bit but had plenty of detail. The book throws in some useful "shovelware" at the back too -- sample RFPs, contracts, things to look for in a good contract, etc. Defintely worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: Practical How To Book - not 50,000 foot theory
Review: Our firm is in cost cutting mode, so I got this book looking for practical tips on how to cut our considerable telecom bill. What I liked was the step-by-step approach covering local, long distance and alternative technologies. Instead of a lot of theory, it gets down to USOCs and has a checklist of specific savings ideas. The audit program at the back rambled at bit but had plenty of detail. The book throws in some useful "shovelware" at the back too -- sample RFPs, contracts, things to look for in a good contract, etc. Defintely worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT PURCHASE THIS BOOK -- PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW
Review: Telecommunications Cost Management provides a tactical approach to telecom cost reduction. Not only do the authors provide easy to follow steps for executing a telecom cost management project, but they also provide useful tools such as templates, checklists and project plans to make the journey less daunting. The authors do a really good job of drilling down on the key aspects of VoIP, telecom security and satellite communications without a lot of technical jargon.

This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it to anyone responsible for managing his or her company's telecom spend or anyone consulting in the telecom cost management space.

Rating:
Summary: Great Tactical Telecom Cost Management Book
Review: Telecommunications Cost Management provides a tactical approach to telecom cost reduction. Not only do the authors provide easy to follow steps for executing a telecom cost management project, but they also provide useful tools such as templates, checklists and project plans to make the journey less daunting. The authors do a really good job of drilling down on the key aspects of VoIP, telecom security and satellite communications without a lot of technical jargon.

This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it to anyone responsible for managing his or her company's telecom spend or anyone consulting in the telecom cost management space.

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT PURCHASE THIS BOOK -- PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW
Review: This book was one of the worst books I've ever purchased in my 16 years of technology and I urge you NOT to spend your money on it. 99% of the book has NOTHING to do with cost management.

Being that the authors are with Price Waterhouse Coopers - they mention the topic of outsourcing more than 48 times in the first chapter alone. It felt a lot more like a sales pitch for their consulting company than any other book I've read. It became so repetitive and annoying that I was praying the book would get better.

It is rare to find a series of thoughts that have any real meaning throughout this entire book. Almost every paragraph is bulleted lists of ideas. It's like reading a book that is a terrible Powerpoint presentation on just about every page. I cannot remember when the author had more than three paragraphs in a row let alone paragraphs that were dedicated to the title of the book.

The constant bulleted items are extremely nebulous thoughts that serve to state obvious facts rather than specifics. Anyone that is looking for material on specifics about cutting costs around their telecommunications environment will find themselves getting very angry trying to get anything meaningful from this book. The book hardly covers cost management whatsoever. The author just decides we need yet another book to cover all the different telecom technologies from frame relay, ATM, to VSAT et al. Clearly this book does NOT live up to its title.

While the book looks to be rather thick with information, the actual content is around 120 pages (at best). The remaining pages in the book are various appendixes with totally nebulous things such as a glossary of telecom terms, lists of website links, other people's white papers, etc.. I'm positive that the publishing house added these things because they saw how small the amount of content was in here and wanted a "fatter" book.

I've purchased well over 200 books around technology, and this book is second from the bottom. I'm actually contemplating writing a letter to the publishing house demanding my money back.

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS BOOK.