How DSPs can reduce order to activation cycle time by 70%
Digital service providers (DSPs) all face the inevitable journey to transform how they deliver services and optimize their order to activate (O2A) process. How can they streamline this to save time and money?
15 Jul 2020
How DSPs can reduce order to activation cycle time by 70%
Digital service providers (DSPs) all face the inevitable journey to transform how they deliver services and optimize their order to activate (O2A) process. In an environment where customer expectations are leading operator strategies, they have no other option.
These companies want to deliver services more rapidly and improve the customer experience overall, but are challenged with increasing inefficiencies in the O2A process, the four major reasons being:
These challenges in the O2A process impact DSPs’ business through elongated cycle times, missed due dates, delayed revenue realization, high operational expenditure (OpEx) and poor customer experience. Hence, DSPs must assess various transformation approaches and choose the right one; one which is outcomes focused and provides long term benefits.
Typical approaches currently employed by DSPs for an O2A process transformation include:
Of these approaches, the managed transformation model promises longer term, sustainable business benefits such as the reduction of cycle times, accelerated revenue, enhanced customer experiences and significant operating expenses (OpEx) savings. This article looks further into managed transformation enablers and how they are uniquely positioned to address all the challenges in the DSP’s O2A process.
In this model (Figure-1 below), operations and transformation initiatives are actioned in parallel, and there is continuous process improvement with active participation from the Operations team:
These companies want to deliver services more rapidly and improve the customer experience overall, but are challenged with increasing inefficiencies in the O2A process, the four major reasons being:
- Complex ecosystem - Multiple siloed systems including: CRM, ordering, fulfilment, billing and activation systems, etc.
- Multiple roles/teams with siloed goals – 15 to 20 roles in the O2A process with no end to end ownership of order completion.
- High number of manual tasks – increased delays and complexities because of the multiple hand-offs necessary to complete the O2A journey.
- Mergers and acquisitions - Introducing additional stacks, newer product lines and integration challenges.
These challenges in the O2A process impact DSPs’ business through elongated cycle times, missed due dates, delayed revenue realization, high operational expenditure (OpEx) and poor customer experience. Hence, DSPs must assess various transformation approaches and choose the right one; one which is outcomes focused and provides long term benefits.
Typical approaches currently employed by DSPs for an O2A process transformation include:
- Outsourcing operations – They outsource the entire process to a third party and give them full ownership. With many vendors handling some or all of their operations offshore, this can help with cost-saving. However, this method lacks long term sustainable benefits and has no guaranteed process transformation, as there is often no focus on continuous process improvement, just on keeping costs down.
- Leverage external consultants - to analyze and recommend improvement ideas. However, many of these ideas never get implemented due to lack of active participation from the Operations team.
- Managed transformation model - Partners work together with the DSP to optimize and transform operations holistically. This involves the Operations team’s active participation in ongoing process improvements.
Of these approaches, the managed transformation model promises longer term, sustainable business benefits such as the reduction of cycle times, accelerated revenue, enhanced customer experiences and significant operating expenses (OpEx) savings. This article looks further into managed transformation enablers and how they are uniquely positioned to address all the challenges in the DSP’s O2A process.
Implementing a managed digital transformation
In this model (Figure-1 below), operations and transformation initiatives are actioned in parallel, and there is continuous process improvement with active participation from the Operations team:
The transformation team utilizes various enablers to identify automation and process optimization opportunities, and then integrate the transformation changes seamlessly into operations. The Operations team is also empowered to continually feed improvement opportunities with the transformation team.
We suggest firms adopt the following three enablers for end to end process visibility, efficiency and improvement. 1. An Agile work cell, 2. Process optimization and automation and 3. Operational Accountability:
Consolidate multiple functional roles like order validation, order processing, design engineering and provisioning into one role namely the Service Delivery Manager (SDM). The SDM is empowered with end to end order ownership.
The Agile work cell team manages each order end to end, which ensures better control, transparency and eliminates messy handoffs. It can also help in reducing rework, queue wait-times and 70% of the touchpoints in the O2A process.
The key steps towards optimizing the process and increasing automation potential are:
1. Order visibility dashboard
This gives a simplified view of the order journey and provides actionable insights for the Agile work cell. The dashboard shows the status of all the orders and detailed summaries of each order, specifically: customer name, service location, contact history with the customer, and cause of the order delay. It also provides productivity reports for teams and SDMs.
Key benefits of this tool include predicting order completion time, monitoring order failures in real-time and faster responses to customers.
2. Performance tracker
Build a performance tracker tool to track, monitor and report the performance of processes and people involved in O2A. This tool must allow SDM input to continually improve the reporting process. Building such a performance tracker tool can improve governance and enable scrum leads to track and meet various operational accountability aspects such as:
By using the managed transformation enablers presented in this article, DSPs can drastically reduce the O2A cycle time by up to 70%, achieve OpEx savings of up to 50%, enhance customer experiences and win new business. Consolidating multiple function-based operations teams into goal-oriented scrum teams can double productivity.
Contributing Authors
Managed transformation enablers
We suggest firms adopt the following three enablers for end to end process visibility, efficiency and improvement. 1. An Agile work cell, 2. Process optimization and automation and 3. Operational Accountability:
1. Agile work cell - Transform multiple function-based teams into goal-oriented scrum teams – the "Agile work cell"
Consolidate multiple functional roles like order validation, order processing, design engineering and provisioning into one role namely the Service Delivery Manager (SDM). The SDM is empowered with end to end order ownership.
The Agile work cell team manages each order end to end, which ensures better control, transparency and eliminates messy handoffs. It can also help in reducing rework, queue wait-times and 70% of the touchpoints in the O2A process.
2. Process optimization and automation - Analyze process performance, identify factors that elongate cycle time, set target cycle times for each process, and identify and implement improvement opportunities.
The key steps towards optimizing the process and increasing automation potential are:
- Data-driven process analysis - Use process mining to obtain insights on performance and process variances.
- Identifying improvement opportunities - Conduct design thinking workshops with all stakeholders to identify key improvement opportunities, categorize opportunities against business impact (high/medium/low) with the level of effort to implement (high/medium/low), and set new baseline targets.
- Prioritizing initiatives - Leverage robotic process automation (RPA) to automate manual tasks. Hyperautomation enablers like NLP integration, human-in-loop, AI/computer vision can improve straight-through-processing by up to 80%.
3 - Operational accountability - Build the right tools such as an order visibility dashboard and performance tracker to help SDMs and scrum leads with operational accountability and excellence.
1. Order visibility dashboard
This gives a simplified view of the order journey and provides actionable insights for the Agile work cell. The dashboard shows the status of all the orders and detailed summaries of each order, specifically: customer name, service location, contact history with the customer, and cause of the order delay. It also provides productivity reports for teams and SDMs.
Key benefits of this tool include predicting order completion time, monitoring order failures in real-time and faster responses to customers.
2. Performance tracker
Build a performance tracker tool to track, monitor and report the performance of processes and people involved in O2A. This tool must allow SDM input to continually improve the reporting process. Building such a performance tracker tool can improve governance and enable scrum leads to track and meet various operational accountability aspects such as:
- Compliance adherence – Turnaround time and quality
- Performance management – tracking and monitoring the performances and SLAs
- Reporting – people and processes
- Knowledge management – easy knowledge transfer and service order provisioning
In conclusion…
By using the managed transformation enablers presented in this article, DSPs can drastically reduce the O2A cycle time by up to 70%, achieve OpEx savings of up to 50%, enhance customer experiences and win new business. Consolidating multiple function-based operations teams into goal-oriented scrum teams can double productivity.
Contributing Authors
- Rajesh Khanna – Director- RPA Practice and Process Consulting, Prodapt
- John Kingsly – Director, Strategic Insights, Prodapt
- Abhay Goyal – Senior Analyst, Strategic Insights, Prodapt
