Designing lasting simplification into a BSS contract

There is no easy route to overhauling business support systems (BSS). A gradual phasing out of legacy systems can be extremely complex and preclude simplification, whereas starting from scratch requires the stamina for a year-long, demanding project. Any communications service provider (CSP) needing to simplify its business and BSS faces a choice of approaches. Many variations exist, but they tend to fall into three groups, each with its own challenges. Brownfield - partial BSS replacement, e.g., replacing CRM, billing or mediation. Key challenges include lack of business simplification and typically a large number of interfaces. Main advantages include a smaller scope compared with full BSS replacement. In this blog I am going to outline ways to secure simplification through a greenfield replacement with an appropriate contracting process.

• Carve-out - gradual transfer of functionality in legacy systems to new components. Key challenges include excessive customization to fit the new system to old boundaries. Main advantages include the potential ability to deliver partial results faster.
• Greenfield – a new stack is built alongside the old with suitable integration points allowing for dual operation. Key challenges include project duration and the need for simplification. Main advantages include ability to get sustainable simplification in technology and business.

Leveraging vendor competences in a greenfield approach

A key advantage of the greenfield approach is that the process is similar from project to project, making it is possible to design a repeatable process that: These objectives can be achieved by gradually designing the solution through a procurement process, to secure the fulfilment of business requirements – i.e. the ‘what’ - in a manner designed by the vendor – i.e. the ‘how’. Executing the first phase of this co-design in a procurement process by targeting a fixed price can create a benign tension that leads towards the goal of simplification. CSPs can leverage vendor competence through vendors’ insight into their specific systems as well as their implementation capabilities.

• Enables business and IT simplification
• Maximizes the use of standard systems
• Secures short- and long-term cost efficiency and commercial leverage
• Does away with the need for a detailed specification to start the procurement process
• Leverages vendor competencies

Business simplification – prerequisite and outcome

The greenfield approach includes the opportunity to rethink products and processes, focusing on the outcome – the ‘what’ - rather than the ‘how’. Obviously, one can do that without a system project, but from experience, most such ‘radical simplification’ projects fail to deliver true simplification. On the other hand, writing down the essentials of what one needs from the business perspective facilitates simplification. Running a greenfield with the full process and product complexity of legacy systems will prolong and jeopardize the project. Obviously, business simplification does not appear magically from a greenfield BSS. The process can, however, facilitate and enable the simplification.

Contracting for long-term cost control and sustained simplification

The process set out above can, as noted, enable long-term cost efficiency and sustained simplification. Clearly, the process alone does not do it; architectural and financial discipline is required to sustain cost control, standardization, and simplification. But it can set the foundation. Any software vendor will in practice have monopoly over the software. But CSPs can still exert control if they confine the software vendor to delivering support and maintenance services at fixed, predictable prices that are valid for perpetuity. With this CSPs can obtain services required to operate and develop the solution in-house or outsource it to other suppliers. A prerequisite for keeping such control is that the implemented system remains ‘standard’ to enable this confinement of the software vendor: non-vendor staff must be able to do on-going upgrades to the software without it becoming a major project. The key to this ‘being standard’ is that the BSS must be upgradeable without vendor involvement. Typically, in practice, it means that the BSS has: Enforcing the use of standard features creates a synergy between simplification, cost control and leverage of vendor capabilities. Therefore, CSPs should also ensure that the vendor puts all the above in a contract and takes legal responsibility for upholding the result. This removes the difficulty of defining what ‘standard’ means in technical terms and makes it a legal requirement. Such contractual implications also ensure that the vendor applies pressure within the CSP to adhere to the capabilities of the standard system, adding to a benign tension towards simplification.

• High level of configurability, permitting required real-life functionality to be implemented in the standard system
• Regular updates with release notes, explaining what the upgrade is and how it is applied with automated scripts etc.
• Firm rules for what are ‘permissible customizations’, i.e., customizations that uphold the upgradability

Stamina for the journey

The software offerings and methodologies for BSS replacement are maturing to a higher degree of technical and project predictability. However, the challenge of having the stamina for the journey remains. Executing a simplification project requires discontinuing revenue-making products, having a project encroaching on the responsibilities of the line organization and focusing for an extended period on a desired future state. Often termed ‘change management’, it is more than classical system change management: it requires a management team committed to the journey. This issue is common to all approaches, greenfield, brownfield, carve-out and all the other flavors. If one cannot mobilize this stamina, it is better to stay with whatever one has, since replacement is unlikely to succeed. For a more comprehensive view on considerations when embarking on a simplification/greenfield journey, read the white paper BSS transformation: Approach for predictable BSS renewal or or try the BSS estimator.