The current industry standard for Telecom Process frameworks, eTOM, has been a valuable resource, but the increasing diversity and complexity of today’s business requires something more. Looking to optimize efficiency and deliver stronger value to shareholders, and driven by a major technology transition, a multinational telecom (Telco) firm has been pursuing external expertise to improve and consolidate their core business processes from a customer-oriented perspective.This is the first step towards a major reorganization, involving a dramatic reduction of the number of applications and IT platforms used.

The Solution

Use Best Practice Frameworks to Increase Process Maturity

To improve application management, product development, and create a ‘leaner’ business model, business processes must be understood from an end-to-end, customer-centric perspective in order to gain a further understanding of what is required to deliver the needed value at the lowest cost. Once this task is completed, an IT service provider will be selected to consolidate a number of key aspects of their IT systems under a single best-of-suite product. Clarity and efficiency when communicating with this supplier can only be achieved by relying on a strong industry standard such as eTOM. Interfacing has acted as a consultant to the Telco firm in introducing and extending the eTOM framework to consist of multiple level processes beyond the conventional model, taking into account both the immediate requirements of the IT project and the future lifecycle of the process documentation in the company.

The Method

Map As-Is Processes, Implement To-Be Processes

Phase one of the process team’s involvement has consisted of mapping as-is processes. In order to effectively organize and communicate the client’s processes using the eTOM framework, the team was faced with the challenge of adapting the existing model to reflect multiple dimensions of business processes. The Telco firm utilized multiple channels for sales, support, and customer service while offering multiple products and product families. Each combination of products comes with a different process stream altogether, requiring a process model well beyond the detail of eTOM in order to effectively map all of the possible process touch points. In core areas such as billing or sales, these process streams reflect end-to-end customer transactions, making it easier to identify gaps and inconsistencies in the offerings, handling, supporting systems, and overall customer experience across all channels and segments.

Phase two of Interfacing’s work with the Telco giant involves the implementation of to-be processes in order to fully optimize their business processes. Automating every level of the company’s multi-level processes comes hand in hand with deciding on a new IT service provider to manage the to-be business processes under a universal ITsuite.

Successful Process Documentation

Under Interfacing’s guidance and an eTOM assisted approach, the process team has successfully mapped 150 end-to-end processes structured in a framework of 6 top-level core process areas. The end-to-end processes represent 400 sub processes, some of which are reusable across process areas. The use of the best-practice frameworks and Interfacing methodology enabled this project to be completed on time during two quarters in 2008.

Benefits

Greater Efficiency, IT Alignment, Improved CRM

The successful development of the Telco’s process documentation has a number of benefits. Further documenting the process framework gives the Telco the ability to accurately decide on a new IT service provider to seamlessly support the entire range of business processes. In addition, greater financial efficiency can be achieved by eliminating gaps within processes. Increased optimization can be achieved through the visualization of process touch-points. Using a universal IT suite will result in a reduction of IT costs, as well as improvements in quality, product, and time to market. In the end, the Telco will emerge from the process with the capacity to serve customers better, delivering stronger value to shareholders. Finally, leveraging the eTOM as a foundation for process identification and classification ensures that the process repository will be able to grow and improve with industry best practices.

eTOM documents business processes in a drill-down methodology, using a layer paradigm – from top-layer processes at the customer relations level, down to processes at the supplier/partner interactions level.

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