We don’t think there is a better way to wrap up a five-month long project with TELUS Enterprise than to have the honour of being named Best Telecommunications Website in the 15th annual 2011 WebAwards. The competition was stiff with over 2,000 entries from 96 industries and 45 countries participating in this year’s competition, but TELUS Enterprize. Power to Solve. stood out amongst the competition!

High Road worked around the clock with TELUS Enterprise to develop a five-month e-learning internal awareness program that we only had a month and a half to create and develop. High Road and TELUS Enterprise were up for the challenge, creating the strategy, information architecture, content, measurement plan and technical development in record-breaking time.

The game itself was a mix of Wheel of Fortune and Trivial Pursuit and sought to not only educate its 2,500 Enterprise Solutions team members about its business priorities, solutions, brand and key initiatives but also to create enthusiasm, engagement and a little healthy competition.

In addition to answering monthly questions from May to September, employees were able to earn bonus points for submitting “Power to Solve” Moments – mini-blogs citing how they have used their problem-solving skills and leadership to improve the customer experience at all levels. We then incentivized users to “like” and “vote” on stories to earn further points. It was amazing to see how much support and excitement employees had surrounding the Power to Solve Moments – with close to 300 Power to Solve stories collected!

The program has been so successful that the team has had to move their goal posts for success three times already and had a 42% engagement rate amongst the target audience!

Congratulations to everyone at TELUS and at High Road who worked on this award-winning program!

Ok. So, I might actually be able to buy a phone I want, when I want! I heard Roberta Fox from Fox Group on CBC radio early this week, which resparked my interest – doing a series of spots on number portability and there have been a number of blog posts in Canada looking at how Wireless Number Portability will change the Canadian wireless landscape.

Today, Bell, Rogers and TELUS will allow customers from BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec to switch cell providers and keep their cell number. In addition, other wireless carriers will be required to allow users to make this change by September 12. If you look at how Rogers and Bell have battled it out for the land line market, it will be interesting to see how WNP will affect competition within the wireless space.

With the CDMA and GSM wars still waging and high early termination fees in place, we might not be able to leave one carrier for the other as easily as we’d like. But at least now we don’t have to be at the mercy of the carrier’s choice of which phones to bring into Canada. Canadians who were locked in with one carrier did not have the option to upgrade to the latest and greatest phones. Now at least the opportunity exists…

With half of all Canadians using a cell phone, I expect that we’ll see this help push carriers to adopt new phones faster, to try to encourage users to switch based on the device/platform. And although I love my phone, my UTStarcom Pocket PC, I am looking forward to having more choice between some of the cool new devices with Windows Mobile that Americans can already purchase.