Speed To Market – The Challenge when The Amount Of Transformational Process & Network Innovation Plus BAU New Product Development Outstrips The Normal Capacity Of A BAU Telecoms Organisation – The Innovators Dilemma

.The once in a generation move from Copper to Fibre in the UK, while at the same sunsetting many of the core telco services from the last 20 years, while migrating the customer bases in a safe and friendly way to the New World services, isn’t easy (a massive understatement).

Many organisations have developed and scaled legacy models, often outsourced in the UK or abroad and the cost/market challenges over the last 5 years has led to many organisations having to shed skilled resources and have become reliant on partners (IT/Process Outsourers) who take time to change and respond and who themselves struggle to find the right resources as the ship rapidly changes direction.

BAU Review

A key area to review organisationally and from a budget perspective is what is truly deliverable from the BAU teams/model, how long is the transition from a model office/incubator model (assuming you can squeeze it into BAU and or have an Incubator) into the BAU teams either in your organisation or via an outsourcer
There are a number of elements to review and consider:

1.  Gold Plated Products viz MVP? (MVP can be fine as long as the customers expressly understand the model, how the service/product gaps are covered and its reflected in the price and given an accurate timeline of when the missing bit will be automated?
2. Do the BAU teams have the resources and skills necessary to cope with BAU services, Product Innovation and Complex Migrations – if not how do you cover the gap and for how long? There is a misconception that its easy to use generic teams for Consumer & Business Services….there are a number of large Altnets going through the maturity curve currently and many haven’t solved this yet
3. In the UK Wholesale Telco world, most CP’s start with scale consumer services, however, higher margin B2B revenues are key in balancing the books and often need slightly different models (DIA/L2) whether they are single site based or part of complex National networks and have a vastly different set of delivery and assurance requirements/features which are often missed during requirements capture or left to wallow in an ever increasing backlog
4. Are some of the higher order b2b2b higher services inherently “non scalable” and will always be semi repeatable – many CP’s have tried to squeeze business into a single model without fully reviewing the challenges and then failed miserably as the cost and service experience get out of hand
5. To be successful in the Wholesale Telco world, Partner “Trust” is key and if you don’t find the right balance between the challenges above, its easy to destroy hard fought opportunities.

All of the above needs reviewing and a sensible strategy agreeing before you start the journey and find it impossible to “back track”.

Lessons from the past

For those that will remember, when BT was created from the separation with the PO and quickly realised it had to expand into b2b quickly but had neither the time, the skills or experience, it went rapidly created a rapid “Test/Learn/Validate” process essentially running an overlay partner/afilliate/model office process over 3-5 years to help it decide where to “stand and fight” BT copied the best bits of the MCI model through the acquisition and circa 25 years later here we are.

How we help

Acuity Insight   provides impartial advsory to help you make informed choices. We have access to people who understand the challenges, opportunities and potential fixes for the Innovators Dilemma.