Complexity is an unavoidable side-effect of communications service provider growth. A new system gets added, an old platform fails to be retired, a new vendor enters the fray, an acquired company’s customers remain on the old B/OSS, a new product is launched.
While a “sunk cost” mentality that favors the status quo is tempting, this complexity carries hidden costs – and they grow geometrically. Training, maintenance, customer experience, focus and agility are among the casualties brought about by unaddressed complexity.
According to Jim Hackett, who led Ford’s transformation until his retirement last year, “the costs of complexity are hard to see until they’re gone”.
Some complexity is unavoidable (even healthy), but with spring almost upon us, now is a good time to take a hard look into areas that might benefit from spring cleaning.
Like one large ILEC seeking to reduce the number of legacy back office systems and consolidate their customer and inventory. Leadership soon discovered they didn’t have “four or five” systems to consolidate (as they suspected), they actually had over twenty! CORE deployed a new off-the shelf BSS and OSS system. We documented requirements, directed data extraction, transformation and migration and validated successful deployment. The new set-up provides a shared picture of reality across the company, reducing silo mentality, increasing responsiveness and lowering operational costs.
Complexity creeping-up?
If you’ve been in business for a while, chances are growth has sometimes trumped efficiency. At CORE we understand business involves trade-offs and have seen the hidden costs of complexity first-hand. We know where to look and how to manage cross-functional teams to get results.
