Despite the cold temperatures and severe winter weather, the month of February is finally showing production indications of a thaw from the winter season as the significant volume increase forecasted for 2010 starts to come to fruition. While the severe weather has certainly made itself known - including not one but two major snowfalls in Atlanta where Endeavor TAC is located - the highlight of the month has been the continued ramp in volume thanks to quite a few large-scale deployments as well as Endeavor's on-boarding of several new customer accounts that are just kicking off. It's an exciting time at Endeavor!

This month's edition features a special Q & A section from Endeavor's CEO, Justin McLain, where selected questions from both our TAC staff and Field Engineers have been answered by the man in charge himself. Finally, Endeavor's sales team is very excited about Channel Partners Conference & Expo, taking place March 1st through March 3rd at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. For more information, please check out the Upcoming Events section. We look forward to seeing you there!

That's a wrap for this month. Until next time!

Your Team at Endeavor Telecom
editor@endeavortelecom.com

For our spotlight this month, the team at Endeavoring gathered questions from the staff and Field Engineers and posed these to Justin McLain, Endeavor's Chief Executive Officer, who took the time to respond to five of them. We hope you enjoy!

Do you plan to open up anymore TACs in the country with future expansion?

As it stands now, there are no immediate plans to open up additional Technical Access Centers (TACs) in the United States. That being said, international expansion and acquisition always make that a possibility. Under our current model, all activities in the field are managed through a central TAC which allows us to take advantage of economies of scale and eliminate redundant administrative functions and costs. This saves us and, consequently, our customers, money. While located on the East Coast, the TAC is staffed 24x7x365 in order to support customers across all time zones. Additionally, Atlanta has been a good market in which to employ staff; we have access to graduates from some of the nation's best schools, are able to pull from a culturally diverse pool of professionals who can support the three different languages used in our markets, and cost-of-living is reasonable so we can attract top talent by paying competitive salaries.

Are you capable of doing the type of work that one of our Field Techs is capable of doing?

Yes, but not nearly as well as our field engineers. Much earlier in my career at previous companies that I ran as well as several consulting engagements, I was fortunate enough to get a good bit of hands-on experience in the field. I also have to give thanks in part to John Lynch, a former Endeavoring Tech of the Month, who "showed me the ropes" and has been one of our top Field Engineers since the inception of the company. Since working at Endeavor, I've personally installed customer premise equipment and pulled cable as well as worked our staging line, scheduled dispatches, audited orders, and taken support calls. One of the dispatches I performed on my own seven years ago was in a quick serve restaurant in a mall food court where a dead rat fell out of the ceiling when I moved a tile - I haven't been able to eat in that mall since. While I am very interested in how things work, I feel it is essential for Endeavor's managers and executives to truly understand what is going on in the field and in our business overall. Over the years, it has been necessary to remain informed about new developments in technology to make certain we are providing the solutions that are in demand in the market. While I do understand the physical and network layers well enough to complete most routine dispatches, I think our customers are much better served by leaving their work in the hands of the experts - our team of 9,000+ individually managed Field Engineers.

Why are Field Engineers still required to fax completed Service Requests? This is an outdated process.

I'll answer that in two parts: First, why do we need signed SRs at all? We need to keep documentation on 100% of our dispatches. Our internal audit team views images of the end-users signed paper work orders (the Service Request/SRs) in order to validate details of the dispatch against call recordings and closure notes. Additionally, our customers require access to the images of their end-users signatures to help them defend disputes.

The bigger question is: Why do FEs have to fax the work orders versus send them in some more convenient method? After our last FE survey, our IT team and the process folks have given this question a good bit of thought. It is a firm business requirement that we upload the image within 24 hours of performing the work, but I agree that we should allow other ways to upload it. Currently when an FE faxes an SR into Endeavor, a module in ESP recognizes the SR number from the fax image via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to automatically attach it to the associated order in ESP. The image then undergoes an encrypted authentication process and is queued up for inspection by auditors and third shift employees. For the purposes of FE notification and payment processing, the SR shows uploaded immediately at the time of fax receipt and, if not flagged as a problem during inspection, remains as such. Largely in response to the Field Engineers request to allow them to scan and upload SRs themselves, our ESP Integration team is working on a software revision that will allow FEs to scan SRs and upload them in an inspection queue directly. This will give FEs two possible methods of getting this documentation back to the TAC.

Why does Provisioning call me repeatedly when I've told them I'm going to be on vacation?

This is another item which surfaced from the recent FE Survey. Currently, vacation and planned time off is tracked separately from the Endeavor Service Portal (ESP). That process is more manual and can result in survey request calls during planned time off. This disconnect will actually be resolved with another initiative in the works by our ESP Integration team. In the near future, this will all be integrated into the same portal you use daily to download your work orders, view your schedule, and access training modules. The new-and-improved interface will enable TAC to block off vacation days which should minimize phone calls.

How is Endeavor staying ahead of the competition? Why are we the "Telecom Truckroll Company of Choice?"

This is an easy question. Primarily, we beat our competition through bringing in and retaining the best people. We are in a people business, so it is only natural that our advantage be in our people. We closely monitor performance in the field, train our staff, and make certain we have measurable ways to track all areas of the business. It starts with selection. Everyone we hire in the TAC is nothing short of first string. I am very proud of our management training program and the fact that we promote from within by bringing educated and qualified staff through Service Delivery and Service Provisioning. In the field, each technician is individually managed and undergoes a rigorous on-boarding process that includes a series of interviews validating knowledge base and professionalism standards. Endeavor also keeps performance metrics for each individual technician, which are tracked on an ongoing basis. Unlike most of our competitors, who may end up subcontracting a dispatch out to a contractor who then subs it out to another contractor and so on, each individual technician dispatched to a site by Endeavor will have gone through the qualification process which historically has proven extremely effective in ensuring top notch service across the board. We also have the most sophisticated management systems in the industry. ESP is what enables all of these people to do their job to the best of their ability most affordably.

In Memoriam - Martin Frohberg

The Endeavor family recently suffered the loss of one if its long time members with the passing of Martin Frohberg on February 15, 2010. Martin has served as an indispensible part of Endeavor's history, holding a variety of technical roles in Endeavor's Service Delivery and Logistics teams since the company's inception in 2002.

Over the years, many new hires have been directed Martin's way for assistance as a hazing ritual of sorts. While his gruff, no-nonsense demeanor may have seemed intimidating at first, particularly to nervous new hires who had no idea what they were in for, Martin ultimately warmed up to reveal a hidden kindness and a witty nature.

Martin's infamous gruffness was just a rough envelope surrounding a truly sincere and generous man. Today, our company and the world is sadly mourning the loss of a sincerely selfless man who, rather than conspicuously wear his compassions on his sleeve, chose to privately show them through his actions. Martin is survived by his wife, daughter, sister, and an extended family at Endeavor to whom he meant so much.

Channel Partners Conference & Expo
March 1-3, 2010
Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino; Las Vegas, NV; Booth 1512
Click Here to register for the show!

Comptel Plus Spring 2010 Convention & Expo
March 14-17, 2010
Gaylord Opryland; Nashville, TN
Click Here to register for the show!