Drive towards greater mobility

If you turned up to work this morning to find your desk phone had disappeared and calls to your landline re-routed to your mobile phone - for good - how would you react?

Isn't it a good thing to be able to walk away from at least one phone at the end of a business day? Not according to mobile telecommunications sellers and a surprising number of New Zealand employers.

The pitch goes like this: the fewer phone devices and services an employer has, the easier telecommunications is to manage. The more contactable employees are, the more flexible and happy they are; the more productive employee "up time" the business gets, the more valued the customer feels.

Vodafone New Zealand is enjoying marketing mileage from deals with "fixed to mobile substitution" pioneers, including property services firm Colliers International, technologists Fisher and Paykel, and Edge Creative, a business events company and small business.

Vodafone's fixed to mobile service, called Integrated TalkZone, links customer and Vodafone PABX networks allowing incoming "landline" calls to be transferred directly to mobile devices.

Colliers say the new technology gives them an edge over rivals and helps win deals. Phil Thompson, managing director of Edge Creative, is so enthusiastic he says he is willing to increase his overall phone bill by a third to accommodate the new model.

"The juice for me is in the improved customer service and real-time internal team communications we get," says Thompson.

"I think wider than just the phone bill because I have staff all over the country doing events and we need real-time notification of changes. We can't shift our deadlines."

New Zealand employees often embrace increased mobile options as much, if not more, than their employers. But to what end?

A March survey commissioned by IT network specialists Avaya found that if New Zealanders could free up an hour a day through converged telecommunication services, 58 per cent choose to spend it working. Managing directors in other nations would more often choose to spend it with family.

So is increased mobility good for New Zealand employees and their families?

"I think the question that needs to be asked is: should you be pushed work messages by these devices?" says one Westpac Bank executive and young mother.

"It could become invasive and encourage people to become workaholics."

A Bell Gully lawyer agrees, saying that while he loves being mobile, he won't use devices that send him regular reminders. "That's push technology, and I do not like push technology."

These are savvy mobile users who spend more time on the move than at their desks. But Phil Patel, general manager business markets for Vodafone New Zealand, says employers of less experienced mobile workers need to manage the transition experience, training people in how to manage a solely mobile business connection so they don't try to take business calls at all hours.

"Employers need to plan a full mobile work environment and consider details like whether all customer and internal team addresses and phone numbers have been loaded on to the mobile devices. You can't just replace desk sets," he says.

In other words, a smart employer will not surprise its staff by dumping desk phones overnight.

Effective change management gives employees fair warning of the "fixed to mobile substitution", training and encouragement, input into the kinds of mobile devices used, and a sound business explanation as to why the desk phones are going.

Providing these issues are ironed out and employees have control over their devices, there is something to be said for only having one phone to worry about. For a start, you probably won't miss that important customer call when you leave your desk for coffee.

A mobile device car kit means you can leave work at 4pm to pick up your toddler or beat the traffic out of town on a long weekend.

Edge Creative's Thompson says the removal of desk phones wasn't an issue for his 13 staff.

"Even if we couldn't action a request because we were [driving], what the customer was most pleased about was being able to speak to someone straight away - customers usually have a quick question around some area or concern," he says.

Patel says while the fixed to mobile substitution telecommunications model is in its early stages, it will snowball over the next 12 months because of "fixed versus mobile price premiums".

"But two key things need to happen: we will introduce technology that allows two numbers to reside on a single SIM; and offer split billing, so that customers receive separate bills for personal and company calls," he says.

Businesses with busy mobile workforces are advised to watch this space.