Verizon Business Group transforms customer and partner experience

In the last decade, Verizon has grown to become one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. With exponential growth came operational challenges due to a complex landscape spanning 10 lines of business as a result of reorganizing its wireline and wireless segments into a seamless enterprise. The objective of the reorganization: better serve corporate customers and capitalize on growth opportunities. The merged Verizon Business Group (VBG) undertook North Star, a flagship program, to consolidate the Enterprise Architecture (EA) and transform Verizon into a customer-centric organization.

The North Star EA program modernized systems, boosted enterprise efficiencies, and ensured scalability. The merged entity was restructured, and function-specific systems as well as domain-specific technologies were realigned to support North Star architectural layers. Verizon undertook a digital transformation of its wireless and wireline network systems portfolio in three years.

In an interview with Dean Ramsay, principal analyst, TM Forum, Himanshu Polavarapu, Director, VBG Enterprise Architecture, Lakshmi Karlapudi, Sr Manager, VBG Enterprise Architecture, Ajith Lenin, VBG Enterprise architect, and Prasad Kalyanasundaram, Senior Principal Technology Architect, Infosys share lessons on how the robust architecture and architectural governance established by North Star enhanced enterprise capabilities, is empowering Verizon to deliver superior experiences for stakeholders - customers, employees and business partners.

Question: Verizon is an M&A success story. Why did you embark on a major IT program of consolidating merged entities? What was the thinking behind such a large-scale transformation?

Himanshu, VBG Enterprise Architecture: VBG embarked on a business restructuring program to provide customers, employees and partners with an omni-channel experience across wireline and wireless products and channels. A digital transformation of our business processes was imperative to ensure seamless service. We needed to adopt a digital-first approach to serve customers through their preferred channel, be it IVR, web or mobile.

Given the existing landscape, we had to first address issues due to legacy processes and systems as well as fragmented knowledge portals. The primary objective of the North Star program was establishing an operating model that strengthened the core network while restructuring business units for world-class customer service. We leveraged emerging technologies for a radical systems transformation to drive customer-centricity, simplify back-office operations, and enhance data governance.

Question: How did you create this ecosystem, revamp existing processes and introduce new services? Did you upgrade capabilities to achieve the end goal?

Himanshu, VBG Enterprise Architecture: Yes, we created an ecosystem by integrating all shared platforms and services, and decommissioned systems with overlapping functions. We developed standardized API platforms to integrate legacy stacks and introduced an ‘architecture governance and enablement’ function for seamless integration of the North Star architecture. A ‘value realization relationship matrix’ ensured alignment of development activities and architecture improvements with strategic goals through the execution value stream.

We adopted large-scale automation to augment capabilities and increase agility. Digital pathways were created for self-service and expeditious resolution by the contact center. We built a standardized partner relationship management platform as well as a problem and ticket management platform, as part of the program. It enhanced the sales and service experience by accelerating processes and time-to-resolution. We implemented advanced analytics to acquire new customers, identify high-value customers across product segments, and identify opportunities for proactive customer service.

Question: This EA program sets an IT roadmap for executing a successful internal restructuring program. Tell us more about the enterprise architecture program.

Himanshu, VBG Enterprise Architecture: We are talking about the technical architecture of a 32-billion-dollar enterprise; the architecture for 500+ applications. A majority of our systems are custom-built with varying maturity levels. We needed to modernize these legacy systems and upgrade technology to reduce technical debt. The need of the hour was a scalable, agile EA framework to address both business needs and GTS delivery cycles.

The Verizon North Star EA framework was built on three key pillars – Experience (customer, employee and partner), technology (market and industry trends), and financial viability; to support our business priorities. This North Star Architecture program established a world-class ordering and provisioning platform with 10+ discrete integrated B2C platforms, including quote, ordering, order fulfillment, billing, and service assurance. We aligned the North Star Architecture (NSA) with product, distribution and partner strategies, and developed several workflows. It facilitated collaboration between customers, channel partners and the delivery team, and created horizontal shared platforms for business and technology.

Question: How did the North Star boost sales and the sales team?

Himanshu, VBG Enterprise Architecture: Our program boosted the sales lifecycle by redefining presales as well as sales activities. The North Star enterprise architecture automated the sales cycle at scale and velocity. It aligned our lead and customer relationship management platforms with business segments, enabled contract digitization, and integrated a global deal monitoring tool. Our approach provided visibility across the enterprise and harnessed accurate customer insights. Moreover, robotic process automation and seamless handoffs powered by digital technology boosted deal velocity.

Data-driven prospecting and visibility into in-progress carts helped our teams manage multi-layered quote-to-order projects and improve sales conversion rates. A robust digital backbone enabled us to incorporate dynamic pricing and discounting models for effective lead acquisition and management across products.

Prasad, Infosys: We created a partner community portal as well as a global portal for retail and business customers. We leveraged the Pega Platform for digitization of workflows and introduced event-based orchestration for order management and change processes. Automation and digital tools simplified onboarding and delivered a superior experience to our customers, employees and business partners.

Ajith, VBG Enterprise Architecture: We improved the IVR experience for customers by streamlining the call routing and reducing hand-offs. We enabled brand new digital channels for sales while motivating the sales team with a flexible pay structure that incentivized top performers. NSA also introduced a federated catalog concept, which can facilitate integrated go-to-market for wireline and wireless products in the future.

Question: How has your program improved the customer experience? Share some examples of how it made a qualitative difference to the customer experience.

Lakshmi, VBG Enterprise Architecture: Our program not only transformed VBG into a data-driven enterprise, but also simplified workflows to drive consumption of real-time data from diverse sources across technology stacks. Verizon can now use actionable business intelligence to drive informed decisions and enhance the customer experience.

North Star opened up several avenues to delight customers. A data lake helps us trace the customer journey and harvest business insights from customer, product and billing processes. Interoperability of data between product and customer processes allows us to adopt data science and predictive analytics across lines of business. We developed predictive models to analyze the propensity for customer churn. Digital tools enable self-service for customers and employees. Notably, adaptive learning tools improve the decision-making skills of our teams and empower them to respond to customer requirements proactively.

The highlight of our customer-first transformation is a centralized customer experience platform that orchestrates a consistent customer journey across systems of engagement. This platform delivers an omni-channel experience by allowing customers to interact with Verizon through a channel of their choice and switch between channels seamlessly for any transactions.

Question: Your program covers a lot of ground from a technology standpoint. How did you address the challenges in technology modernization?

Lakshmi, VBG Enterprise Architecture: We adopted a 3-pronged approach for the task at hand. First, we ensured financial viability by optimizing solution designs to reduce TCO and maximize ROI. Second, we paired technology modernization with process improvement. It enabled rapid deployment of personalized product bundles as well as an experience-driven design approach for product differentiation. Finally, our technology and EA strategy enabled incremental modernization and consolidation. It helped prioritize investment in OSS/BSS modernization and strategic product development such as our 5G One Fiber initiative.

Our EA team identified key technology levers, and overlaid these levers on the current systems landscape, which helped us adopt a strategic approach to reach our end state architecture. We incorporated certain overlapping functions, retained specific applications, and transformed some elements of the architecture, for example, customer hierarchy and service management.

The modular North Star architecture adopts domain-driven design and API-first principles, which enables us to leverage cloud-native technology stacks and public cloud platforms. Moving towards loosely coupled architecture by decoupling monoliths using microservices, facilitated the use of scaled agile framework.

Question: How have TM Forum tools accelerated the project or helped you achieve business objectives?

Prasad, Infosys: TM Forum’s reference frameworks and open-source assets ensured a seamless digital transformation and influenced the selection of off-the-shelf technology.

Comprehensive coverage of OSS/BSS capabilities in the TM Forum Applications Framework (formally Telecom Application Map) helped us improve lifecycle capabilities across domains, including product, customer, service, and resource management. The application map served as a baseline for creating our business capability map. Business priorities and architecture capabilities were mapped to returns for prioritizing investment. The ROI approach minimized total costs while validating technical and financial viability during the solution design phase.

We used the business processes in eTOM to create process abstracts and process groupings in L0, L1 and L2 architectures for North Star. Besides, technology best practices helped us refine deliverables, and ensure repeatable and consistent delivery across the organization.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) enabled seamless collaboration between our business partners, product owners and development teams across project phases, including requirements gathering, architecture design, solution identification, business process flow validation, system changes / enhancements, configuration update, and deliverables management.

Question: This program clearly offers lessons for telcos to use technology for executing mergers. What is the future roadmap of this program?

Himanshu, VBG Enterprise Architecture: We can maximize value by building on this program with new business and technology strategies. For instance, we are focusing now on consolidating the digital sales ecosystem, an integrated service management module, and incorporating omni-touch points to enhance the sales and service motions. Most important, the EA supports our world class delivery organizations’ journey in the continuous modernization to drive cross-sell and up-sell across lines of business, and accelerate product / service rollout for multi-access edge computing, IoT and 5G