Consolidate “stuff” from acquisitions
Do you have too many things? Need to simplify and save OPEX?
Context
Initially when new technologies become available, a large number of early adopters pioneer the space.
After some time, in a drive to reach economies of scale / dominate, smaller independent companies get acquired by larger, better capitalized, and managerially more sophisticated businesses.
But at this point, each company has its own:
- Installed service base
- Product definitions
- Networks and equipment
- Element and network management systems (EM)
- IT systems.
- Processes
- Way to manage customers (CRM).
- Way to manage delivery (processes / order-management / workflow).
- Way to manage billing and invoicing (ERP).
- Way to manage support (SRM).
The process of post-merger integration is always tricky. Momentum established within each company must be retained while the consolidation of people, processes, systems and data is tackled.
As the business case is dependent on taking cost out of the business, how do you:
- simplify / reduce processes?
- simplify / reduce systems?
- re-structure your organisation?
Traditionally, consolidation processes takes a long time and can be expensive as the under-the-covers complexity in each business is always higher than expected.
How will you provide a consistent and cohesive experience to customers?
What now?
A service provider is a complex system. People, processes, systems and technologies combine over time in a way that defies any single framework / methodology. There is no silver bullet.
Careful considered analysis must be used to identify strengths / building-blocks and separate them out from what is not working well, then build out new capabilities on-top of a credible base.
Knowing what your strengths / foundations are it critical.
Our methodology combines deep business and technical knowledge to formulate a pragmatic way forward:
Step 1: Practice Maturity Model
We use “practice” to describe how your people, processes, systems, technology and data combine to achieve and outcome.
An effective way to understand the current capability level is using a “Practice Maturity Model”. This technique evaluates the “practice” maturity of 46 things you have to have within a service provider as they operate a specific line-of-business (similar product set).
When this model is applied to a service provider it quickly teases out:
- Systemic strengths, weakness and opportunities.
- Process and organizational strengths, weakness and opportunities.
Using this insight, patterns can be validated, or amended.
Step 2: Patterns & Outcomes
A “pattern” is coarser concept than a journey. Patterns blueprint how specific practices combine for a line-of-business.
For example, within converged service providers you would expect to find a few patterns for:
- Fixed & multi-site fixed line (MPLS; Layer 2; SDWAN)
- Enterprise voice (and UC)
- High volume simple fixed (SME; broadband access)
- Mobile
- Hosting and security
- Others… (cloud; IOT; etc)
Typically, patterns will combine re-usable practices with more specific practices (product and LOB).
Creating awareness of patterns enables focus:
Step 3: Smart Data Foundation
Simon securely connects to whatever systems are in use within the company. Databases, APIs, spreadsheets – just about anything.
A “service specification” is setup for each unique pattern within the consolidated business. This is a drag and drop definition of what data is important to your “services”.
When the service specification is activated on the data edge, innovative mechanisms then ingest data to identify each unique service, dealing with multiple systems, duplications and data breakdowns.
Simon then smartly aggregates data, transforms it to be brutally simple into our “Smart Data Foundation”.
Interpreting your data
A simple drag and drop interface is used to configure your patterns. These “outcome maps” match the manner in which customers and staff talk about work.
This approach enables a common language to be established without getting buried in technical or system details. The outcome map becomes a canvas on-top of which business and technology teams can collaborate.
Analytics
Instrumentation placed on-top of this data is able to start providing insight into performance of people, tasks, processes and services.
Dashboards (with trending) enabling fact-based insight into your business.
Digital footprints in your data can be used to extract real insight into the processes actually being followed in your business. Understand where delivery is delayed, and things are going wrong.
This is achieved using a technique called Process Mining. This process analysis method that aims to discover, monitor and improve real processes (processes not assumed) by extracting knowledge easily from available event logs in many systems.
Step 4: Transform
Data is the foundation of every digital transformation, and in this case consolidation.
Simon is ready to enable the process.
Visibility: End-to-end visibility of customers, contacts, services and resources.
Align Practices: Workflows and automations for equivalent services from different companies can often be aligned before system migrations happen. Simon allows each individual practice to be gradually changed.
Multi-domain Master Data Management: the Smart Data Foundation acts as a type of federated multi-domain master data management (MDM), enabling dual-running which is essential for a graceful migration. Simon has grappled with complicated questions like: what is a customer?
System Consolidation: Service specific workflows and automations can incrementally modified until a functional migration is from a legacy to target system.
Dual-Running: Services can be gradually migrated. This dramatically reduces risk and complexity.