Voice of experience: Key lessons in telco transformation
Brad Pruner of Salesforce offers key takeaways from a multi-phased value chain transformation program for a CSP in Canada which enabled integrated selling, omnichannel customer experience and end-to-end automation for the telco’s B2B segment.
18 Oct 2021
Voice of experience: Key lessons in telco transformation
TM Forum member Brad Pruner, Senior Director – Digital Transformation, Salesforce, offers key takeaways from 25 years of experience in the telecoms industry, which includes spearheading a multi-phased value chain transformation program for a communications service provider (CSP) in Canada that enabled integrated selling, omnichannel customer experience and end-to-end automation for the company’s B2B segment.
There are many great articles about digital transformation extolling the importance of a user-centric approach to design, and most of them discuss the virtues of communication and change management. In the programs I’ve led, I admit, sometimes we got this right, and sometimes not so much.
It is easy to fall in love with what you are building and forget that your stakeholders may not understand the value. In undertaking a value chain transformation program for a Canadian telco, one of our most successful approaches was enlisting champions from our frontline customer service teams to help us design the desktop based upon the information they needed to complete their jobs.
The full project was delivered over multiple phases and was able to successfully modernize the value chain, unlock self-service capabilities, harmonize billing and create an integrated selling capability underpinned by automation of the fulfillment process.
Teams must work hard to not import flawed processes into a new system. Processes evolve in the context of the systems, organizational structure and culture from which they are born. Most CSPs have evolved their system infrastructure along product or regional lines of business. The result is an ecosystem of siloed systems and processes that are inward looking.
A transformation program must start with reimagining and simplifying processes wherever possible. I recall internal debates when we were tackling an e-contracts program. I heard passionate arguments for maintaining manual aspects of our contract registration process justified as being necessary. However, the truth was that those processes reflected how business teams manually validated contracts, which simply wasn’t necessary in a digital paradigm.
Business processes like contracting don’t need to be unique. I would sooner leverage a globally pressure-tested process for contracts that hundreds of telcos use rather than build something bespoke. Giving your program team permission to say “no” to the status quo and challenging them to look outward for crowd-sourced solutions can help drive a simplification mandate.
Let’s face it, digital transformation is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. These programs are complex, and with complexity comes risk. Many careers have ended on failed bets.
One of the many reasons transformations fail is because we ask a program to define maximum certainty (in the form of defined and signed-off user stories) at a point of minimal information (before shovels hit the ground). Many transformation programs take multiple years to deliver any results. And by the time they are ready for the big reveal, the business and stakeholders have already changed fundamentally.
In our B2B transformation program, we achieved success by breaking our program scope into bite-sized pieces, each supported with its own business case. Thus, we didn’t approach the executive in charge with a monolithic high-risk investment, but rather a series of smaller programs that earned the right to progress to the next phase based upon the value they returned.
I want to be clear, we didn’t always get it right. It is tempting, under duress of time and budgets, to take short cuts and skip over what everyone would acknowledge as “best practice”.
However, when I look across the programs that have been most successful over my career, the common ingredients were grit and the passion of a fantastic team to focus on the things we know contribute to the success of our users and our customers.
Engage users in the change
There are many great articles about digital transformation extolling the importance of a user-centric approach to design, and most of them discuss the virtues of communication and change management. In the programs I’ve led, I admit, sometimes we got this right, and sometimes not so much.
It is easy to fall in love with what you are building and forget that your stakeholders may not understand the value. In undertaking a value chain transformation program for a Canadian telco, one of our most successful approaches was enlisting champions from our frontline customer service teams to help us design the desktop based upon the information they needed to complete their jobs.
They were given sign-off authority baked into the agreements with our vendors. Being able to say the system was “built for them, by them” helped us create momentum and instill confidence.
The full project was delivered over multiple phases and was able to successfully modernize the value chain, unlock self-service capabilities, harmonize billing and create an integrated selling capability underpinned by automation of the fulfillment process.
Evolve the process to fit new systems
Teams must work hard to not import flawed processes into a new system. Processes evolve in the context of the systems, organizational structure and culture from which they are born. Most CSPs have evolved their system infrastructure along product or regional lines of business. The result is an ecosystem of siloed systems and processes that are inward looking.
A transformation program must start with reimagining and simplifying processes wherever possible. I recall internal debates when we were tackling an e-contracts program. I heard passionate arguments for maintaining manual aspects of our contract registration process justified as being necessary. However, the truth was that those processes reflected how business teams manually validated contracts, which simply wasn’t necessary in a digital paradigm.
Business processes like contracting don’t need to be unique. I would sooner leverage a globally pressure-tested process for contracts that hundreds of telcos use rather than build something bespoke. Giving your program team permission to say “no” to the status quo and challenging them to look outward for crowd-sourced solutions can help drive a simplification mandate.
Use a modular scope & approach
Let’s face it, digital transformation is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. These programs are complex, and with complexity comes risk. Many careers have ended on failed bets.
One of the many reasons transformations fail is because we ask a program to define maximum certainty (in the form of defined and signed-off user stories) at a point of minimal information (before shovels hit the ground). Many transformation programs take multiple years to deliver any results. And by the time they are ready for the big reveal, the business and stakeholders have already changed fundamentally.
In our B2B transformation program, we achieved success by breaking our program scope into bite-sized pieces, each supported with its own business case. Thus, we didn’t approach the executive in charge with a monolithic high-risk investment, but rather a series of smaller programs that earned the right to progress to the next phase based upon the value they returned.
The trick for this to work is to have a “north star” user experience and a defined blueprint that links the investments together.
Valuable lessons
I want to be clear, we didn’t always get it right. It is tempting, under duress of time and budgets, to take short cuts and skip over what everyone would acknowledge as “best practice”.
However, when I look across the programs that have been most successful over my career, the common ingredients were grit and the passion of a fantastic team to focus on the things we know contribute to the success of our users and our customers.
