Part-Time Communications Manager

Section Content

The Telecom Retainer

is the financial basis of the relationship between the Teleconvergence Part-Time Communications Manager and the client. The retainer reflects an ongoing relationship between the client and Teleconvergence.  As part of the retainer, Teleconvergence may participate in multiple projects, negotiate or renegotiate telecom and other contacts and leases, periodically review billing, offer our expertise in marketing management and/or sales training, CRM, process business review (Procedural Strip Mining), and so on.

The Telecom Retainer FAQ

discusses our retainer relationships with clients. It explains the advantages, limits, and applications of this particularly valuable service. Note: To ensure that every retainer client receives superb service, Teleconvergence has limited the number of retainers to no more than two at a time. Consequently, this service may nor may not be available to prospective clients.

Once upon a time, there were managers with P&L responsibility for business systems, especially telecom systems, and business services. The same executives were also responsible for their employees' relationships, job satisfaction, and productivity. 

Then, beginning with the dot.bust during the last decade and continuing relentlessly ever since, organizational structures have been flattened, responsibility for business systems has been delegated to IT, telecom has lost its identity as a separate field (except when there's a need for it and no one can fill it) and employee relationships are now the sole province of HR. The managers? Long gone.  And who's responsible for employee productivity or satisfaction? No one at all. 

The result is that many traditional staff titles and functions no longer exist. Executives have wider portfolios without the presence of previous support staff. Single managers supervise consolidated domains wthout much help, either.  Remaining staff have wider roles and do the work of multiple former employees. Some skillsets have been lost and even those employees who know how to do rarely performed work simply don't have the time to do it.

For many small and medium-sized businesses, especially, the last decade has not been kind. Until recently, salaries were high; small businesses couldn't afford the seasoned management expertise they needed unless they were willing to pay a great deal of money. Today, with business down, so are salaries, but the risks are higher.  And business owners are well aware that newly affordable valuable employees are the most likely to leave when the economy turns around.

So, in terms of telecom, who will do the periodic or even ongoing work that has to be done when the skillsets have been lost to do it?  How do you acquire the skills, perspective, and experience you need on the part-time basis that's all you can really justify to help you get to where you want to go and become the organization you want to be? 

That's where we come in.  We bring deep telecom expertise to businesses that lack it in-house and also make it available to companies in or entering the telecom field.  Our part-time communications manager service provides limited telecom-oriented outsourcing, strategic planning, retainer, and marketing services to organizations of all sizes.

As part of our Telecom Retainer Service, for example, Teleconvergence assists top management and acts as part of a client's management structure. We participate in formalizing objectives and in recommending strategies to meet them. We evaluate systems and billing and make recommendations as appropriate.  Over time, we learn the personality of a client, the ethics, the way things actually get done within the firm, and we use that perspective to enhance the technological, financial, and competitive positions of our clients in every possible way.

You can find out more about our long-term telecom relationships and benefits by reading both The Telecom Retainer and The Telecom Retainer FAQ.  You can also refer to the sitemap to the left for additional Strategic Consulting Services.

For telecom projects related to current operating needs only, please see the Communications Consulting Services section.