Thursday, September 02, 2010
Rain, Wind, Ice…and Reuse
Looks as though hurricane season is in full swing. Hurricane Earl is bearing down on the Eastern U.S. seaboard and weather prognosticators are predicting no fewer than 14 named storms this season. While hurricanes may not be a common occurrence for us here in the New England, they certainly are for other regions as much as severe snow and ice storms can bring us to our knees in winter. So, what does this all have to do with reuse? Well, a lot actually.
Severe weather and natural disasters (i.e. earthquakes, volcano eruptions) can have a tremendous impact on service providers’ network operations. And communication, particularly in the hours and days following an event, is absolutely critical for first responders, relief efforts and families trying to connect with loved ones.
Restoring service quickly could very well hinge on how fast a carrier or OEM (if they’re operating a network as part of a managed services deal) is able to source replacement parts. With little, or no, visibility into equipment inventories it’s going to take longer to locate, transport and install assets despite the best intentions of existing disaster response and recovery plans.
While reuse strategies can’t predict the weather, this type of an approach can help you plan better for events like hurricane season and winter storms. By establishing greater visibility into stocks, you’ll not only know what excess equipment you have (and what you don’t) and where it’s located, but more importantly you’ll be able to incorporate severe weather patterns into your long-term planning and procurement processes. As a result, you’ll be better prepared when the time comes to respond with speed and efficiency.
Posted by Todd Adelman •
Category:
Reuse Best Practices •
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Don’t Forget to Check the Garage
Over the years, a friend of mine’s garage has morphed into a really big storage space. Holiday decorations, toys, old furniture…you name it and it’s there. What’s amazing is that despite the number of boxes and containers, he can put his finger on what he’s looking for almost instantly. It’s uncanny. He just knows where everything is.
When people talk about managing telecom assets, one of the questions I like to throw out to carriers is ‘What about your equipment in the garages? Do you have any visibility into those?’ Maintaining equipment stock in garages – or depots – makes perfect sense from the perspective of service delivery. When a critical service issue needs to be addressed, there’s no reason to waste time having a technician drive to a central warehousing facility for a part. The downside of course is that storing equipment at a garage presents another opportunity for assets to ‘fall of the grid,’ skew inventory levels and potentially have a negative impact on client service.
Making the most of a reuse strategy means gaining visibility into every corner of your ecosystem – garages included. When it comes to visibility, anything less than 'comprehensive' simply won’t deliver the results you need to maximize your equipment investment, drive down CapEx ratios and identify new revenue streams.
Posted by Jon Dalton •
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Friday, August 13, 2010
Feeling My Age
Recently, we had an intern candidate in. Smart guy, graduated from one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. He had researched our firm thoroughly before contacting us about an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of our unique and growing business. Determined to learn more, he came by to talk telecom.
A chip off the Y generation, I suspect his context was the smartphone in his pocket, an unlimited data plan, and the coolest bandwidth-intensive apps this side of the Mississippi. He asked me pointedly, “So what do you think of the problems AT&T has had with their network and the iPhone dropping calls?” I started in on the whole data traffic explosion thing, using words like unprecedented, unabated and unprepared.
After he left my office, I had the sudden feeling that I’d lived this life before. It wasn’t until the next day listening to a new Droid radio commercial pushing high-def video, unlimited texting and hyper-fast this and that, that it struck me. New generation, same problem. Just bigger.
Remember the birth of client-server apps? The pinnacle of performance and productivity. That is until so many users tried to access them simultaneously, the volume of data requests clogged networks and brought servers to their knees. Frustrating and unproductive, there was nothing friendly about it. And how about the time when a 56K modem was considered a high-speed connection? The truth is that with each new era comes a quantum leap in technology that, frankly, makes you forget. If nothing else, it’s probably the most exciting time in the Telecom industry for a young intern – or anyone else.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
The Measure of More
I like value propositions. They both engage and enlighten. They help determine where we spend our money and our time. The key is separating the vague and mediocre propositions from the value props that are actually capable of delivering greater efficiency.. increased revenue.. lower costs..better client service. More often than not, companies fall short when it comes to transferring value statements into something truly meaningful to a customer – the language of currency. Don’t just tell me I’m going to save money or make money. Show me.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. ‘So tell us Mark, what’s the value of reuse – in black and white.’ Well, it’s startling. Through our knowledge of how telecom supply chains work we’ve created a financial ROI model that does just that…and has been proven out at some of the world’s largest organizations. The model is powered by variables set by each client, including the volume of excess and decommissioned equipment you plan to reuse, resell or recycle over a period of time, across X networks, etc. We recently ran the model for executives at a large global carrier and the value to the client over the course five years was more than €23 million net. Pretty black and white, I’d say. That is a value prop. That is the measure of more.
If you’d like to learn more about our model and what your potential savings could be, drop us a note at info@tradewings.com.
Posted by Mark Portu •
Category:
Reuse Best Practices •
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Factoring Sustainability
During a recent call with the Director of Sustainability for a large global Telecom manufacturer, we mused the growing body of metrics employed by them to measure progress against corporate sustainability goals. As discussed and publicly documented in the company’s 2009 CSR, their sustainability efforts have focused in 3 areas:
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Internal operations (supply chain, etc.)
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Product/technologies
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Corporate citizenship
Relative to the first, they have admittedly produced no large-scale monetization of carbon credits to date, but religiously conduct audits on $’s and kilowatts saved, and how their products are moved modally for example. (eg. air-to-alternative and carbon/ton-miles)
By way of introduction to these “modal" measurements, Carbonfund.org’s shipping calculator utilizes three user generated inputs to determine a unit called a ‘ton-mile’ (e.g. a ton of freight traveling 1 mile, or a half ton of freight traveling two miles, etc.):
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Total number of shipments
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Average Weight of Shipment (lbs)
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Average Shipping Distance (mi)
From this information we determine the shipment(s) ‘ton-miles’. So if you have 50 shipments (A) of 100 lbs (B) each traveling an average distance of 500 miles(C), you multiply A*B*C, 50*100*500 to get 2,500,000 lbs-miles – to get to ton-miles, divide by 2204 to get 1,134.3 ton-miles. Once you have that figure, multiply it by the appropriate emissions factor depending on how you are shipping the package. So 1134.3 ton-miles being shipped by truck (0.3725 lbs CO2 per ton-mile) gives you a total emissions of 422.52 lbs CO2. Shipping Emissions Factors:*
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Air cargo - 1.7739 lbs CO2 per Ton-Mile
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Truck - 0.3725 lbs CO2 per Ton-Mile
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Train - 0.2306 lbs CO2 per Ton-Mile
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Sea freight - 0.0887 lbs CO2 per Ton-Mile
It always comes to down to math, but solving the equation requires unprecedented visibility into inventory data, such as product weights, and material flows from location to location. And ideally, you want choices. Such as the choice to ship a replacement/spare part from Amsterdam to Barcelona, instead of Dallas to Barcelona. Trade Wings offers this level of visibility, and we’re making a difference for our Telecom customers, including Ericsson and others who have been recognized year after year for their outstanding efforts to address issues of sustainability through asset intelligence.
As a result of his company's diligence, the Director of Sustainability of the aforementioned large, global Telecom OEM reported to us that they have reduced their carbon footprint by 13% (in carbon/ton-miles) year/year. He also left us with this observation: As customers become more sophisticated in their environmental commitment, business imperatives will drive innovation and 'sustainability' will become synonymous with 'strategy'...and those who don't get it will be left behind.
*The calculator provides an emissions metric for shipping by Zeppelin. I have omitted this from my list, but if prefer to know, give me a call on +1-603-766-7000.
Posted by Lisa Clark •
Category:
Green Telecoms •
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