Clean Bill of Financial Health for Telecoms May Cause Serious Illness

Ghost-written article for Cisco Systems EMEA.
Published in TM Forum magazine, UK, October 2003.

Why - because profits without effort will encourage the average network operator to expand the organisation instead of improving it. If the last few years have taught us anything about network operators, it’s that they are not best prepared to cope with adversity. Yes, a global economic downturn has obviously affected all vertical sectors including telecoms, but the temptation is to use this externally as the cause when there are more inherent problems at play. Internally, IT is often the scapegoat. It’s not surprising that management remain reticent when substantial investments in technology fail to deliver the return or savings expected. At the core of all this IT is the organisation’s operational support system, or OSS – it’s heart, lungs and central nervous system combined. Improving the OSS – the way an organisation lives, breathes and does business day-to-day rather than tinkering with peripheral things is the way to reduce costs and improve overall health. However, not all network providers realise this, or are more concerned with the technology they provide than how they provide it. Furthermore, even those that do recognise this fact have yet to learn that organisation-wide ‘surgery’ of this nature should not be taken lightly.

Cure the Cause, Not the Symptom
Two key things are needed – firstly a thoughtful yet practical approach to OSS that deals with the organisation as a whole. A surgeon cannot help a patient by mending a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder, without also considering the circulation that keeps both functioning. The same applies to management trying to improve the organisation by taking each division, management layer or IT ‘limb’ in turn – neither humans nor organisations work that way. Where internal problems are concerned, examining the OSS rather than one part of the business may well reveal that the information all other IT or business systems are reliant on is flawed. Perhaps the way in which information is recorded should be reviewed, the way departments work together, or the way information moves from department to department – maybe all three.

Whatever the case, seeking the quick fix is easier to stomach when the unwelcome prognosis is that there is no such thing, no ‘silver bullet’, or single detail escaping everyone that can be tweaked as a panacea. The quest for the quick fix leads to constant fire fighting, with budget being splintered to attend to many problems occurring one after the other.

Those problems may not be internal flaws but external factors. Difficulties encountered by organisations we advise include: changes in regulatory environment; consolidating, converging or going global; maintaining margins during downturn; and protecting market position against new entrants and new business models. However, the more robust an organisation’s OSS, the better it will cope with unforeseen circumstances. One cannot predict the next bout of flu, but can be physically fit to cope with it when it arrives.

Regardless of the nature of the problem, the second consideration is that tinkering with an organisation’s OSS should not be underestimated. It is the business equivalent of neurosurgery, potentially a fundamental change to the way that every individual in the organisation uses their working time. Samuel Johnson was neither a surgeon nor a telecoms businessman, but he still recognised that, “Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better”. More than a century later, Dr. Bernard Burnes, researcher, lecturer, and head of the Operations Management Group at the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology, said of organisational change, “In cases where staff are required to keep up the same level of output during the transition phase, it may require additional resources to achieve this...Nothing is guaranteed to be more demoralising than having to make changes without the necessary resources or support”. When you accept that improving an organisations OSS will deliver improvements throughout the business and decide to do it, then adequate preparation is needed.

Prepare the Surgeon, and the Patient
Before any plans are made let alone implemented, consider that fundamental organisational change needs a budget of its own – not for OSS software, for kit, or anything else – for the change itself. Overtime will be incurred, mistakes or teething problems will be unavoidable, and as a result, resources will be used. The twin necessity to a financial budget is the need to allocate time for the change. You are changing something that has an impact on every employee in the organisation, and doing your best to prevent people outside the organisation feeling any adverse affects, or even noticing. That takes time, and the people implementing the change or being affected by it cannot be expected to cope in addition to fulfilling their usual responsibilities. The other consideration where time is concerned is to plan the change over weeks or months, with realistic deadlines and a way to measure progress. These may need to be adjusted as the organisation encounters problems, but a sure-fire way to ensure something never gets done is to label it ‘ASAP’.

Communicating the importance of the change internally can increase likelihood of success. Appoint an internal change management team, whose sole responsibility for the duration of the project is to ensure that things go smoothly and on time. Use representatives from all parts of the organisation involved and from mixed hierarchical levels, and foster an environment of respect but without bureaucracy, as in Edward de Bono’s theory on brainstorming. Everyone’s experience will be needed, and if concerns or ideas are not aired or overruled then the change will not be embraced.

Anyone attempting to fly British Airways on 18th June 2003 will have borne witness to the result of failure to consider, prepare and provide time to employees for significant OSS changes. Unfortunately there is a tendency for management to veer from one extreme to another – either the ‘fluffy’, people-oriented style, or intense, task-oriented style where the product or service is all, no matter what your staff turnover rate is. There is no simple way to decide what approach to take except to say that it will be closer to the middle than at either end. Accurate consideration of the participants of OSS change will help diagnose where the organisation is now, and where it needs to be. However, this is not the only reason for preparation before embarking on change. Changes to an organisation’s OSS are both time-critical and fraught with danger. To use the metaphor again, a surgeon will progress both methodically and quickly – and a lack of the necessary care or speed will end the same way. If the organisation were still based on paper, pens and copper wire, change might be approached more carefully. The fact that these have been replaced by IT and fibre optic cable does not necessarily make OSS change easier, only different.

The Recovery Room
‘Perpetual change’ seems to be where everyone is headed – a style of work where nothing is permanent and a dynamic organisation can respond quickly to any external factor. As an organisational state, perpetual change in consulting lingo has its roots almost a decade ago, triggered at the time by academic study of managerial steps taken by Nissan and Volvo in the automotive sector. That is not to say that network providers will be able to learn from their experience without suffering some of the same difficulties. Only this year, AT Kearney surveyed almost 300 European organisations in various sectors that had completed a business change programme. Only 20 per cent of those 300 were found to be successful. Regardless of the outcome and whether or not perpetual change is where you want to be, it is essential that both management and employees be given some time to recover from organisational change where OSS is concerned.

It is human nature to hoard information for coercive power, to build empires, and play politics. No amount of IT spend will change that. However, successful change is possible if it is considered and planned appropriately, and where else can network operators make an operational and cultural change more effectively than with the organisation’s OSS, the system on which the rest of the business depends? Let us hope that a temporary improvement of finances in the telecoms sector does not mean essential surgery is postponed any longer.