Service Delivery Emergence

inside TE Group
“A Transformational Journey to Service, Product
Ownership & End-to-End Value Management”

Mohamed Nabil Khalil

September 2016

Mohamed Nabil developed this case study only to stimulate discussions and analysis with the workplace peers in
a more of a casual style with the none of any intention to identify, focus or lay the blame on effective or
ineffective handling of the management team in handling situations. Appreciation goes to all the peers in the
workplace who contributed & have hands on that work….
Table of Contents

Prologue ............................................................................................................................................................................. 2
“Billing Operations” Phase ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Operations Transformation Model .................................................................................................................................... 8
Integrated Product Case Study ........................................................................................................................................ 13
“Service Delivery” Phase .................................................................................................................................................. 17
What is Next?...... ............................................................................................................................................................. 22
Final Business Snapshots…… ............................................................................................................................................ 24
Epilogue ........................................................................................................................................................................... 26
4G License, Is TE Group up to the Challenge?! ................................................................................................................ 27
Prologue
In today’s highly dynamic market, competition over attracting & retaining consumers is fierce enough to turn
telecom operators attention into unleashing non-conventional methods in doing business; customer satisfaction is
now an old fashioned business objective where all the focus on delighting and exceeding customer expectations. This
is now the main bet on customers’ loyalty and potential boosting of the Business ARPU. To achieve that, business
capabilities must be up to the challenges and fast paced environment which turns more severe when the factor of
uncertainty evolves in the scene especially as it is currently taking place in Egypt. Slow adaptation to such changes
could greatly hamper the whole business continuity especially in the presence of ready competitors to overtake the
position of any swinging performance organization.

Since the days I was managing the corporate PMO in TED (before its dissociation to the Home/ Enterprise Marketing)
and through the projects I was handling at that time, I figured out that we lacked inside TED a solid role of wholestic
Product Management that follows the New Product Development process. Each department is functioning in silo
and great efforts are required to connect among them with extreme pain and substantial drain of resources in the
whole process of introducing new products. The Managing director’s brute force & authority exercising were the
only resort to somehow get things done but that raised a major question on the sustainability of that mechanism in
the corporate structure. Projects which run through the IT & Operations departments suffer from ineffectiveness in
communication and poor cooperation mode where the marketing team is with no real control in-between to
effectively mediate among the two giants and other stakeholders.

The first strike of the Service Delivery idea came at the times of the Mega project named ”WIFI Accessibility” which
aimed to provide TED WIFI connectivity to café outlets, clubs and other Enterprise clients. The project was launched
on April 2011 then faced a heat of performance critique which led the product to roll back to project phase once
more in June 2011; finger-pointing, blaming and disavowing responsibility were common symptoms where no focus
to resolve the issues rather than defending one’s each back. And most critical is the absence of objective information
which identifies & quantifies the problems’ severity; and no single entity assuming responsibility on the product End-
to-End management. At that time, PMO assumed a temporary operational responsibility of product management,
revamping the technical gaps in the product performance, liaising among related stakeholders and before all of that
establishing a robust and reliable performance measurement dashboard to track and control the product
performance. That was shared with the Managing Director at that time while consulting that TED operational
structure lacks the role of a real patron for customer experience.
WIFI product was a strategic directive to the organization but didn’t succeed due to the lack of modern service
delivery (SD) perspective in managing products & services and lost the potential platform intended at that time to
be constructed known as “WIFI Offloading”. Expanding the network of hotspots was facing great troubles in
coordination among network and fields operations teams and the same trouble of connecting partners continued
which led to very slow progress in the roll out plan of the planned deployment targets. Customer experience in
parallel was suffering for the already up and running service where no single point of contact is responsible to focus
and resolve the evolved cases which rather keep on wandering inside the organization separated islands. WIFI
offloading was a great niche to TE group for stronger alliance with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) through those
complementary services via the traffic shifting from mobile to fixed network which has far greater capacity and
relative price advantage to the end customer. Lacking the wholestic role of service delivery in managing the product
was a core reason of not letting it to successfully fly.

More products under development faced the same struggle in meeting time to market or satisfying the planned
requirements due to the same lack of that End-to-End role i.e. Service delivery impact was missed in both
operational and project/development role. And imagining the acquisition of the 4G license and/or the full mobile
license where TE Group become a Fixed & Mobile operator, how could be the scene look like if the organization isn’t
agile enough to modernize its operations structure in a way to accommodate such drastic strategic transformation in
the business and technology line? the question doesn’t require much of smartness to answer, where the urge of TE
Group to move in restructuring its people, process & technology platforms are undoubtedly a core principal to
rightly position the organization in the market place; and it was a great acknowledged step where top management
approved and blessed the creation of the IT Service Delivery (SD) to start playing that role in connecting things to
ultimate unified goal and objectives. The objective of these changes is to support both the business and the internal
operations from an End-to-End perspective by introducing the Service Delivery concept and its subsequent activities;
directly focusing and based on three main pillars which are Customer Centricity, Operational Effectiveness &
Business Objectives.

Service Delivery started with assuming ownership regarding some services like Enterprise billing, Home billing, Port
speed management, Home commissioning system, and others to build a portfolio of services enjoying full
orchestrated and seamless support; the portfolio of services extended to assuming full accountability on full-fledged
products throughout TE group business lines and operational dimensions where the choice was set on to manage
the product known as “integrated product”. Newly created team named Integrated Product (IP) team to act within
the domain of the Service Delivery and focused to manage it from End-to-End perspective. Restructuring is taking
place inside the SD unit to enable such service orientation management with a sole compass arrow directed to
customer centricity i.e. what really matters to customers. It is noted that Service Delivery isn’t only interested in
running operations and closing issues in corrective mode but cross way further to handle initiatives aimed to tackle
problems from preventive solution mindset even if it goes deep to touch the enterprise architecture and enforce
modification and improvement on that layer.
TE Group should simultaneously think on bilateral tracks which are:-
1. Revamping its organizational structure to be the core backbone which spread confidence about the
organization capability as being in readiness mode to both, service introduction & service responsiveness
(i.e. service delivery).
2. Thinking beyond legacy products and capitalize on content management and real value added services(VAS)
which are the real drive for competitive advantage within the market which is getting less differentiated and
exercising edge solely on traditional service bundling & price offerings advantages to customers.
“Billing Operations” Phase
Overview:
Bill operations unit officially started functioning since January 2013 and taking over the operations of bill cycle
generation. IT department has decided to establish a billing operations unit to oversee customers’ billing operations
in the Enterprise and the consumer business units. Phase 1 started with the Enterprise business unit as part of the
completion of the BOSS project representing the newly revamped E-Billing operations within the Enterprise Business
Unit. The operations started by a single production cycle and a single test bill cycle then at later periods
improvement initiative has pushed the operations to a another advanced level to perform two test bill cycles per
month beside the official production run.

Billing Operations Process:

Since the early startup of the bill operations, the IT management team stressed on the presence of a clear process
explaining and assigning direct and visible responsibilities among the different partners engaged throughout the
end-to-end process. Several drafts have been tailored and aligned among activities owners to gain the process
consensus which will govern the operations for the subsequent periods including the agreed upon SLAs. There are
also other parameters came up as outcomes and decision points form the exercise of crafting the process like:-

• Bill Cycle will run the first calendar day of the month where compensation plan for the involved teams was
activated in coordination with the HR team after being approved from the senior management. That is a very
critical dimension in operations success to ensure that teams know their rights and thus are guided to deliver
the expected support in clear operational setup.
• The stated process was under challenge when faced with issues which could extend in their resolution time.
Maturity of the process and the evolved issues will help to govern and tweak the whole process cycle time to
meet the two Global SLAs (i.e. Production Bill Cycle time, % defected invoices).
• Billing Ops. was having a call in the prioritization of the upcoming CRs only if the Enterprise team’s priority
request has been validated by the Billing Ops to push any specific CR in queue with a validated need to
customers’ billing process. Billing Ops will be primarily responsible on that CR delivery time and will
intervene if it didn't follow its set prioritization.
• Billing Operations team might approve CRs for deployment in production as delegate to L3 authorization
incase of urgencies or risk of not meeting Bill Cycle SLA(i.e. incase of unavailability of L3 in that specific time).
The team is generally empowered to take agile actions as per situations criticality without referring to upper
management; competencies and decision making abilities have been built within the team to enable the
proper use of that trust and avoid any disruption might occur of unwise actions. That empowerment extends
to higher level of authorization than L3 when related to decision making and proper actions need to be done
to serve the business and the overall organization benefit.
• Billing Operations team might approve CRs for deployment in production without a formal UAT (N.B: like in
case of retroactive CR, this is not an override to the standard CR development process but a calculated
flexibility to be selectively used in case of jeopardizing meeting the Bill Cycle SLA. that would be only used
after ensuring successful 'pass' of testing from the QA team and that all required features from the
requesting team(s) are met. Then, UAT to be followed and close the CR formal approval process.
• Billing Operations is responsible to coordinate among the different teams inside or outside the IT domain
driven by the End objective to serve the overall billing outcome.
• The total cycle time of the test Bill cycle generation will be dynamic enough to accommodate the ECO
team's raised requirements on each specific month.
• Mantes will be assessed to be the channel of pooling the evolved billing issues with their resolution
techniques.
• Finance close the monthly financial period every second calendar day of the monthly basis, which mandates
to close any evolved issues in production cycle within the 1st calendar day.
• Further major improvement has been introduced in the bill cycle where a second test bill cycle has been
added to check on:-
• The first test cycle evolved cases actual resolution.
• The evolvement of any other cases between the time of running the first cycle and the second cycle.
• Reassuring that the running platform is stable with no issues before the official production run.
Full-fledged End-to-End process has been tailored not only to represent the bill cycle activities but to be design a
Service Handling Platform which could be a base to manage any offered services through which was being planned
at that time to be called Service Delivery.

A comprehensive performance measurement dashboard has been constructed which was the first measurement
tool to exist in the newly constructed unit and has adopted different names till settle on the “Enterprise Service
Delivery Dashboard” which was shared on a weekly basis with all related stakeholders in the Billing Service Chain.
Quantitative & analytics base have been set in the unit since then to measure the performance of the critical
outcomes of the whole service. The dashboard isn’t a passive tool for reporting or monitoring only but an active one
with a main purpose to drive corrective actions and source for improvements and process control.

Initial Challenges:
The billing operations’ main focus at the initial stage was to stress on the business transformation behavior with the
enterprise customer operations team; that process was started at the project time, however, the main effort was to
continue cooperating the business team and confirming their understanding of the newly designed processes. Issues
that were evolving at each bill cycle were almost not bugs but the agreed upon behavior of those new processes;
through active communication and liaising among the different technical and business teams, solid understanding of
such system outcomes is brought in which led to acceptance or tweaking through applied CRs. That was a critical
phase in the operation startup which bridges the activities from project to operations mood and cover up the
important gaps which were missed in the project level and most importantly the affirmation on the expected process
outcomes between the business and technical team.

Such smooth transitioning was crucial to stress on the business team confidence on the solution and getting
acquainted with the modified workflow technique; several concerns and new requirements have been raised to
touch the EMS, AR and the billing logic itself especially related to the product activation and integration among the
EMS and billing engine related to the calculation way of customers’ bills. Also, oracle financial (the invoices interface
application) has been subjected to focused action plan which impacted several features especially the invoices layout
with a main objective to appeal for the end customers gaining their satisfaction and full acknowledgment to the
calculated amounts which are presented in the acceptable explanatory format.

Communication bridges were strengthened among the IT technical teams and the ECO & Finance different teams
which was a crucial factor for the success of the overall operation. Agility in response and closure of open cases
while considering the ECO and Finance requirements with flexibility and wearing the hat of facilitation the other
teams’ mission and objectives in alignment with the systems’ capabilities. Issues popping from migration processes
at the BOSS project time caused observable cases which required a delicate handling as per the details of each case.
However, some other cases required batch handling after identifying the specific migration pitfall (i.e. 33 invoices in
SIMBA with taxes higher than the corresponding ones in oracle financials).

The billing operations was vulnerable to critical dependency on human intervention in running the process where
the planned or sudden unavailability of any resource subjected an observable negative impact on the progress of the
cycle. To reduce that impact, the bill engine activities have been consolidated with the other systems running
activities to be run under the authority of the MISOPS team. Other related activities to the oracle financials have
been unified under the billing operations team. Flexibility was granted to all partners involved into the process
through remotely managing the related activities rather than to stick on their physical existence to run the test and
production cycle; where the effectiveness was controlled through the tight and active communication via different
communications channels to ensure proper outcome at the acceptable set time durations. Another vulnerability is
pertinent to the continuous appearance of EMS system bugs where great effort were focused throughout the
operations years to stabilize the legacy system by resolving those bugs from corrective and preventive nature.

Automation:
Due to the mentioned dependency of the billing operation process on the human resource factor, initiative has been
triggered to automate the whole cycle crossing the different systems except the total detailed invoices report
generation which will be kept through the oracle financials. It is noted that the automation cycle will be backed up
with automatic error messaging and logs to be cascaded to the required concerned partners to take the according
action for resolution. The oracle financials (AR) and Billing engine (BE) experts will still exist in the process but as a
second support line incase of the inability to handle cases at the normal process flow, see sample of application
Snapshots known as “BOSS-Helper”
1. Objective
The objective of Boss-Helper system is to maximize the value delivered to Bill Cycle Stakeholders; this is by
delivering different functions which support the delivery of a robust Enterprise Billing Services end-to-end
for both Business and Technical teams which has a direct positive impact on TE-Data Enterprise Customers.

2. Capabilities
a. Automate bill cycle run by managing workflow between EMS, Bill Engine & ORACLE AR.
b. Works as a centralized repository for all information related to enterprise bill cycle.
c. Automate reports generation and its distribution for business/technical users.
d. Availability to view the different environments (production and operation).

3. Benefits
a. Process Automation
i. Eliminate human errors by automating bill cycle run end-to-end.
ii. Enable on-time tracking for bill cycle run progress update.
b. Information Accessibility
i. Support business teams with more information which facilitates invoices/orders validation.
ii. Provide technical teams with availability to track historical data for proper incident
investigation.
c. Reporting
i. Availability of different and customized reports which serve both business and technical
teams.
Operations Transformation Model
The transformation from Billing Operations to Service Delivery domain hasn’t been haphazardly performed but
through a specific change model representation by John Kotter, the Guru Harvard professor, which drove the place
and led to the Service Delivery concept realization along the period of more than three years. Ideas and initiatives
aren’t enough to drive a change in a place but the art of their execution is the one which decides the success
implementation on ground.

Transformation Model:
i) Establish a sense of urgency: and this is the toughest step in the whole process to inject the initial
energy in people’s minds and heart for the need to make a change where is always changing the ‘status
Quo’ isn’t easy as it brings people out of their used to be methods and comfort zone. We worked in the
unit with a conviction for change to be successful, that main stakeholders and management team need
to "buy into" the change. In other words, we have to work really hard on Step 1, and spend significant
time and energy building urgency, before moving onto the next steps. We used the below qualitative
formula to drive the change:-

C(Change)=D(Dissatisfaction) x V(Vision clarity) x F(First steps) >R(Resistance) where to make a change

in the place, the four parameters contribute in multiplication nature to increase the probability of
success of change initiative:-

(a) D: it is the most critical parameter in the formula where no change takes place without a feeling
of pain which is the main source to trigger change. We stressed on that using the following
techniques:-
(i) Letting workplace peers feel the pain of the status quo, for example, of the current
procedures they are using or the related weaknesses and defects of the different practices.
Magnify for them the pain so that they aren’t able to continue with the same status
anymore if seeking business stakeholders’ satisfaction and the overall organization benefit.
This is supported by understanding the objectives and goals behind the work done; and that
it isn’t only about exerting effort and creating buzz in the place but to zoom in the right
effort with the right buzz !.
(ii) Let them feel the lost opportunities, gains and new lands when changing the way of doing
things.
(iii) Raise the standards to them and benchmark the current performance to the top performers
inside or outside the place. And if the company survived with the current practices that
doesn’t ensure business sustainability in the future.
(iv) Stressing on the misleading concept of "‫ " مش بتقف على حد‬or “ we always have done it that
way” where it that is true for the short term but at least will not boost the performance in
higher pace and accordingly push the company to a higher positioning in the marketplace
while adopting the same traditional way of operations.
(b) V: there should be a vision of which direction we are heading to, and as much as we are able to
increase its depth and clarity, as long as we increase the probability to have a successful change
in the place. Though the initial unit name was Billing Operations and its specific handling to
customers’ billing activities, since those early days we stressed that we are heading to what is
called Service Delivery.
(c) F: or simply walking the talk, there should be real steps to be applied on the ground with the
new concepts, to get people confidence on our capability to drive a real transformation.

ii) Form a powerful coalition: we have an early belief that no one reaches a global objective alone
especially when sought to be sustained and long-lived; but it is a shared journey with others. We revived
the concept of being ‘partners’, even we used to have this terminology in our casual and official
communication. We have laid a great focus to build strong and solid communication bridges with all
stakeholders whether technical or business teams and a special focus on the technical one as they
represent the core force of implementing solutions and delivering services to customers (end customer
or business stakeholder). We sought Buy-in from peers, trust and engagement from peers; one of the
important factors to achieve that was to show quick-wins & different results which accordingly trigger
credibility in the new operational mindset & facilitate a paradigm shift in the way of thinking itself.

This stage is critical especially with the shared services between TE & TED where a substantial effort is
required to align among the existing differences in the two entities cultures, operational environment
and related objectives; where part of the coalition potential success is planned to be based on the
creating and communicating a unified vision (as described in the next two stages). We led a continuous
exercise and kept on communicating directly and in casual format to convince peers that change is
necessary; we have done it not in silo but with the cooperation of effective change leaders throughout
the organization that don't necessarily follow the traditional company hierarchy; we solicited special
support from division & unit managers advocating the transformation plan plus other key selected team
 members. To lead the change, we needed to bring together a coalition, or team, of influential people
whose power comes from a variety of sources, including job title, status, expertise, and political
importance. We used this power from members within the same department and outside interfacing
ones. The Service delivery team members themselves helped in that formulation of "change coalition"
while working as a team, continuing to build urgency and momentum around the need for change.

iii) Create a vision: as mentioned creating vision isn’t only important to have a long term direction, but also
to ensure the smooth merge & integration of strategy /operations between TE & TED. That will help in
the two sided teams’ engagement to behave in streamlined setup that enables crossing over evolving
issues from such unifying efforts and deal with the services & products objectives from a sole
perspective which is TE Group. It is noted that vision has been created since the early days of operations
and extending the unit role to a different dimension than the one which caused its establishment within
the IT department. Service Delivery team has been established within TE to oversee both existing and
newly developed products and services; the concept is to position Service Delivery as a central
operational hub seamlessly connecting among different teams within different departments with
focused aligned objectives among all partners. The ultimate vision is to create a global product team
handling all services within TE which is a niche area requires to be strategically filled within TE
organization structure. By doing so, TE can ensure the optimum performance from the existing and
introduced services to markets in terms of:-
(a) Assuming real service ownership which enables effective control and support when required.
(b) Establishing a robust service platform enabling further enhancement and development.
(c) Not only operationally vision, but also assisting revenue growth & customer satisfaction through
mature performance measurement system.

Integrated product was a chosen as the roadmap product to apply that vision for the following criteria:-
(a) The present management team sponsorship and support.
(b) The significant poise of the product within TE overall strategy.
(c) The overlapping and interfacing activities among TE & TED teams.
(d) The growth potential of customers’ base & potential extension on the same product or newly
related introduced products.

iv) Communicate the vision: vision without execution is just nothing!; where the communication of vision
is the first critical step towards a proper vision execution. We kept on educating the internal team and
the external ones by what is about Service Delivery and its operational characteristics; we went into
nitty gritty details to break that concept in understandable small chunks or actionable items with clear
objectives and goals. That vision translation took different communication channels via emails, meetings
even casual discussions with the different teams to implant the concept on the ground and ensure that
proper alignment. The frequency of that communication is high as it is known that repetition is
important to help to change the mindsets and culture to the new vision. Resistance isn’t a strange
outcome to occur where patience and persistence in the communication process throughout the years
of operations were a core asset to ensure its success. The communication of vision was smoothly taken
in an incremental staging to adapt and allow the teams a proper period between each batch of changes
to comprehend and upgrade to the next level of changes. Solid communication Feedbacks cycles are
built among all partners to tune the required messages and adjust the pace of change as per that
feedback process.

To ensure the success of the vision communication, the service delivery unit communication messages
have had strong competition from other day-to-day communications within TED, so service delivery
team needed to communicate it frequently and powerfully, and embed it within everything that we do;
not just call special meetings to communicate the vision. Instead as mentioned, we have been talking
about it every chance we get. We used the vision daily to make decisions and solve problems. We
tempted to keep it fresh on everyone's minds where other partners remember it and respond to it. It's
also important to "walk the talk." What you do is far more important, and believable, than what we say
to demonstrate the kind of behavior that you want from others. Building trust and credibility was
another vehicle to achieve that empowerment level.
v) Empower others: the whole strategy & process transformation aren’t one man show; but a shared
contribution among all partners. Service Delivery played the empowerment role in two perspectives:-
(1) Internally: within the service delivery team where the structure is designed to be flat; each team
member is coached and mentored to enable his/her decision making capability without posing the
senior members as bottleneck in the process. With the expansion of the unit in terms of managed
services, there will be service managers where from the team members with full authority,
empowerment to effectively manage those services and take whatever decisions; that’s why we are
always keen to invest through the years of operations to build the team capability and required skill
set that enable them for the upcoming critical roles. Innovation and transformation aren’t coupled
with fear of mistakes, thus, senior members in the service delivery are cascading power to the team
members and support when required at critical times to support breaking the fear barrier in decision
making process. The reached level of empowerment helped also to create operations sustainability
within the unit through team members’ overlapping and periodical rotational responsibilities among
themselves i.e. service delivery operations is currently non-human capital dependent.
(2) Externally: that empowerment process is extended to the interfacing teams from other
departments. Empowerment took the shape of: “service delivery unit will not care or seek to
override or takeover other teams’ responsibilities and accountabilities; even to cascade &
handover the activities that are streamlined within the service delivery unit“. Port speed
management was a pure example of that concept application where a process has been set to
connect among the various partners of that operations. Service delivery team handled the direct
management of this service for a period of time then let the processes owners to follow an agreed
upon workflow to deliver the set service outcomes; service delivery retains the role of the overall
performance measurement system for the whole service to ensure optimum control and
intervention with support when required.

vi) Plan for and create short term wins: we faced a challenge of time pressure showing stakeholders real
value added on the ground in short lead time to gain their buy-in and sponsorship for the changes and
transformation initiatives. Service delivery team has been aware that long-lived initiatives will lose the
aspired appealing; that’s why strategy has been set to deliver short term quick wins plus the longer ones
requiring extended effort and implementation. Short terms wins are used as
(1) A powerful branding tool for the service delivery unit and announcing to stakeholders the team’s
capability to drive results on the ground which accordingly helps in controlling the level of resistance
to changes and transformational plans.
(2) To show more agility for delivering results which is a critical factor inside TED where it is common for
initiatives being dragged in long cycles till being launched; service delivery team are keen about time
to market objective and how to design the related supporting & core operations facilitating that
objective. As an example, Application support is an area which is seeing core restructuring through
its newly created layers of support and other alterations in terms of processes and technology used
to provide customer centric responsiveness and way of handling customers’ issues.

vii) Consolidate improvements: service delivery team ensured a continuous flow if ideas in place;
continuous improvement mechanism was established in the unit under the responsibility of what is
called RAI team (reporting, analytics & improvement). This is ensuring that improvements aren’t adhoc
spontaneous process but rather a structured mechanism to deliver new operational insights based on
quantitative and quantitative data consolidated in within the RAI team domain. Service delivery unit is
simply driven by the basic questions: how do business teams assess service delivery operations
performance? What could be provided to add a real value acknowledged from business? A feedback
mechanism is established to track and ensure the link between those two questions.

viii) Institutionalize changes: service delivery (SD) team aimed to build a solid base to make any change
stick; SD seriously attempts that those transformational efforts should become part of the core of TE
Group. TE corporate culture often determines what gets done, so the values behind SD vision must show
in day-to-day work to walk the talk. SD will make continuous efforts to ensure that changes are seen in
every aspect of TE within the current three unit domains-Service Assurance, Billing Operations &
Customer Operations Center (previously application support). This will help give that change a solid
place in TE culture.
It's also important that TE leaders continue to support the change. This includes existing staff and new
leaders who are brought in. If SD team loses the support of these people, it might end up back where it
started.
What SD is doing to nail changes on ground:-
(1) Talk about progress every chance we get. Tell success stories about the change process and quick
wins accomplished, and repeating those achievements.
(2) Include the change principles and values when hiring and training new staff fulfilling the new
restructuring of service delivery.
(3) Publicly recognize key members of the service delivery unit who are able to match the pace of
change and transformation through job enrichment with extended roles & responsibilities.
(4) Ensure rotational assignments within the unit which levels the knowledge gained through the
different team members that accordingly ensures continuity of the change momentum,
decentralizing the core knowledge present in specific key members and leverage the team work
outcome in combined activities and assignments.
Integrated Product Case Study

Service Delivery wasn’t an end in itself but a preparatory platform to manage services from End-to-End perspective;
and though its presence the IT domain, it functions in a more extended format to cover the full aspect operations of
the service. The ultimate objective to reach a wholestic Product management for the Integrated product which plays
a critical effective enabler role to the sales and marketing team and revenue generation of that product; a
competency driven from its rightly operational strategic orientation.

Before detailing the formal strategy that will govern the product management, a great care is firstly laid upon the
team formulation which undergone sequential filtering to rightly select the best fit calibers that are capable to match
the stakeholders’ expectations.

Key Conceptual Principles:

1- Team members are encouraged to learn, develop & show real value added with shown passion, positive
attitude and pride to TE Group’s identity even in the most periods of dynamics and business uncertainties.
2- Based on merit and shown excellence, rotational responsibilities are shared among IP team members to
leverage the teams’ skill set and broad understanding of the diverse stakeholders and wide operations
scope.
3- Standard ITIL platform will rule the scene in managing the IP product while considering the required
customization pertinent to TE group culture & suiting the way of operations with its surrounding ecosystem.
4- “if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together” IP team ,while functioning inside the
Service Delivery unit, will act as service oriented team with a considerable dedication and alignment to serve
for the set objectives; team members handle issues in homogenous & seamless manner i.e. not functioning
in silos.
5- When the habit is ON the brain is OFF, and Vice versa i.e. IP team will not follow the status quo work
routine habits but will always think in new ways to create & communicate change or new initiatives in place.
6- A small bottle of water could be around three EGP, but If a person is in a desert and didn’t drink for two
days, he has a higher value for the same bottle that if you charged him one thousands EGP, he probably
would pay for it. The Morale: customer decides the value where the seller decides the price i.e. service
delivery unit is business driven (customer centric) where the integrated product team approaches business
stakeholders with a basic question “how can we support & add value to your side?” Business team
determines the value and what pains they want the IP team to support them, and reciprocally the IP team
determines the price (i.e. the mechanism of the IP intervention and its structure, required business
commitment which raise the probability of the mutual cooperation success).

Core team Drivers:

The whole IP team will be evaluated on five core concepts:-

1- Quality: doesn’t need further explanation, except by saying that this is the main difference and value the
team will bring to business with the quality of its outcomes ; not only pushing things forward or doing work
but focus on valuable outcomes. IP team is encouraged to deliver work that makes each member feel proud
of and not just shallow delivery and keep on continuous loops of rework and ineffective communication.
2- Speed: or as being called ‘Agility’ especially at the current phase of operations and after the announced
transformation where stakeholders are having a leveraged expectations from the whole unit in its new
shape. This puts challenges and responsibility on the IP team’s shoulders to position its response at that level
of being HIGH without, definitely, impacting the quality of the delivery.
3- Customer Satisfaction: it is all about that term, and it is all about that focus on that term which led to the
success of the current transformation; that to let the business and the management team see and realize the
team’s care about customer satisfaction whether the internal & external ones. IP team will continue the trip
with an open eye on that dimension which is a real key differentiator and competitive advantage to the
whole service delivery unit at that critical time of Telecom Egypt dynamics and potential upcoming 4G plans.
4- Positive attitude: no place for negative spirits or such kind or similar like energy in the place; but rather
positive inspiring one which brings ideas, innovations and a real continuous improvement to the place.
 5- Team work spirit: it is never one man show in that place, IP team structure is built on that each team
member to shine on individual collective format; and as mentioned above that to go far then there is no
option to make that except TOGETHER; team work spirit is encouraged and efforts are maintained to set the
the proper setup for such kind of operation style that brings harmony & synergy to the place.

IP team isn’t like that helpless turtle where that picture is reinforced in the team’s mindset to believe and act on the
concept of being enablers to drive change and transformation in the place; a real impact with no complacency to the
status quo or misleading virtual barriers which acts as blocks of resistance to improvement.

Integrated Product Strategy

1- Strategic Goals :
a. Support the whole organization to merge/integrate TED with TE Group through seamlessly
streamlining related operations, products & services.
b. Support the New Product Development Process from inception till execution through strong &
effective liaising with related partners.

2- Operational Goals:
a. To create a service ownership End-to-End which oversees the whole Integrated Product(IP)
operations from all its related dimensions including:-
i. Operations mode already on ground
ii. Project mode for upcoming projectised phases, enhancements and/or modifications.
b. To continue the journey of change management after creation of the Service Delivery unit and build
a real success story in operating that service in the utmost effective and efficient manner which
shows the management team the business value of the IP team.
c. To plant the seed of the coming concept of Product Operational Management team which isn’t
functionally driven but value chain driven i.e. departments’ boundless.

3- Objectives:
a. Complete understanding of the current operations state including:-
i. Evolving and present incident and issues.
ii. Reality check on the drafted process with the actual activities running on the ground.
iii. Present Reports and health check tables
b. Overall governance on upcoming IP development phases whether as a next phase of projects or CRs.
c. Coalition and strong alliance with all TE stakeholders related to the IP operations & product
development.
4- Strategy:

the IP operations strategy will focus on creating and connecting the above three elements starting by
identifying players in field (i.e. main stakeholders impacting the business operations) and creating strong
bonding with all stakeholders especially TE ones; that overlaps with the effort required to understand the
current process and operational activities taking place between TED & TE, within TED-TED itself and within
TE-TE itself. Different systems within the TE and TED domains need to be carefully understood to have a
deep understanding of the current operation architecture and the nature of data flow among applications
and systems enabling to have insights about erroneous data behavior, incidents or errors. The tight
combination and strong alignment among the three elements bring the real value need to be brought for
the IP operations. Very focused and powerful dashboard will be designed to oversee the whole operations
performance level, and related action plans for required corrections or enhancements. That dashboard
should extend in its scope to cover also sales lead, trend analysis and some beneficial projections and
insights to the management team. The dashboard will be periodically shared on the designated intervals (i.e.
weekly) and interim report (i.e. quarterly) to be prepared to summarize the operations and achievement of
that covered period. Email list will be created for the IP team which will be the main communication tool
with any stakeholder related to that product operations.

The strategy will focus on the creation of a Product Management Team under the sponsorship and guidance
of the Service Delivery domain. That team isn’t functionally driven but Value Chain driven; that’s why a
present selected team member is already out from the Service delivery unit and belongs to the QA team for
its required role in the value chain. One of the assigned tasks for that team to draw the value chain of that
operation which ensures the End-to-End understanding that accordingly enables proper effective actions.
That strategy is based on boosting the concept of Customer Centricity within TE group

5- Values & Operational Frame of Reference: that operation is established on a solid base with three main
basic elements:-
a. Trust: no finger pointing and blaming techniques among functional teams, no “you” or “I” but “We”
that’s why IP team has been created which includes partners from different units to crossover that
language.
b. Transparency: “removing business stakeholders”, “removing TE team” etc. and all similar like of
statements will be prohibited to be used by the IP team. This operation is built on full transparent
edges to provide full visibility among all stakeholders for what is going inside the core operation with
all needed details.
c. Service Delivery: the IP operation is driven by value delivery among all partners and stakeholders in
its activities. We will ensure that the Service Delivery concept is shared and understood among all
partners in basic terms which positively impact the effectiveness of the whole operation.
6- Success Criteria:
a. No (at least few) communications from TE to TED side without the direct presence and intervention
of the IP selected team i.e. the IP team is the central hub to orchestrate the whole product
management inside TE & TED.
b. Gained trust by TE team which reflects on communication openness and effective cooperation with
the IP team.
c. Full control on IP operations and enabling the output as a decision making tool for the management
team.

7- Milestone: official communication to the management team including the CIO and MD for the IP team
operation startup & assuming responsibility by maximum September 2016.

8- Team Structure & Dynamics: the team will be constructed on two main layers; the core part with all green
highlights and privileges to move freely and having full authority and empowerment to deliver the
designated results and set objectives. The supporting part which should provide two main roles:-
a. Full support for the core team and facilitation for their roles and activities.
b. Assessing the core team performance and assuming full governance for the whole operations
especially if things went into undesirable or unplanned conditions.
The current structure might be subjected to changes within its operations lifecycle and the inclusion or
exclusion of new partners as per the situation analysis. And it is interesting to note that the team structure
encompasses partners from different units which started by the QA team within TED. Initially, we will built
on that strategy to include any other partner from any team whose input is assessed from our side to be
helpful for the overall operations performance and is willing to contribute within the IP team (i.e. no forced
obligation ).That stage was followed with focused filtering as per the shown capabilities to reach a final
screening decision on the permanent team structure that will be assigned at running the operations forward.

Service Delivery Head

Service Delivery
Service Delivery
Manager
Support Manager

IP Supporting Team

Application Support Service Assurance Billing Operation Quality Assurance

Leader Leader Leader Leader

Core IP Team
“Service Delivery” Phase
To enable such strategy of the Integrated Product, a deeper movement was required to be undertaken within the IT
operations division. For almost three years and we have been communicating the concept of Service Delivery in all of
our interactions whether internal or external ; we have always had a hope to instill that operational philosophy
though we knew it isn't easy to do such kind of restructuring down-top rather than the normal top-down traditional
approach.
But the transformation has taken place through perseverance along the years and the CHANGE has taken place to
officially end the billing operations journey and continue with the imposed challenges of carrying over the Service
Delivery wider business/operational scope.
 The IT Billing Operations Unit was renamed to IT Service Delivery Unit.
 Additionally, the IT service Delivery Unit will include a new responsibility of Service Assurance with the
objective to oversee the complete cycle of any service that is provided by IT System(s) besides the original
responsibilities of Billing Operations Management and Application Support.

The objective of these changes is to support both the business and the internal operations from an End-to-End
perspective by introducing the Service Delivery concept and its subsequent activities; directly focusing and based on
three main pillars which are Customer Centricity, Operational Effectiveness & Business Objectives.
1) Billing Operations: the seed function which was the center beginning of the whole Unit operations’
story; the objective is to sustain its performance and push it for further improvement level through full
automation of the underneath activities as mentioned in the earlier section of that document.
Integrated Product is already handled in terms of related issues to billing within the unit and that strong
base of the billing function will support in the full product management.

2) Service Assurance: that function will focus on the End-to-End management of the Services & Products
within the unit responsibility and accountability. There is a set criteria of the services that will be
acquired within the unit management to fulfill the following:-
a) To have a real business sponsor keen about the service performance, providing support when
needed and facilitate agile decision making to put the service operations in shape.
b) To be of a realized value to the company in terms of revenue relation, strategy, and/or direct impact
on operations.
c) To have full acceptance & support from the management team related to that service that Service
Delivery team will has a responsibility and accountability to run that service and take the proper
related decisions pertinent to its performance behavior and aspired improvement plan.

Technology platform is crucial to transform the service assurance management from normal
spreadsheet manipulation to a more dynamic and rich reporting format. Thus, alignment and
cooperation have been triggered with the Business Intelligence team (BI) and seek support to build on
the available BI capabilities in terms of data capturing from source systems, processing and
representation. The whole purpose of enhancement in reporting in that technique is to enable enhanced
and impactful decision making in relation to improvement initiatives and operational insights triggering
actions. The future plan is to have a centralized Performance Measurement Hub for the whole unit
which is already started to gather the whole unit reporting in one central area of responsibility and
accountability where continuous leveraging to the used tools and mechanism will take place by timeline
progression.

The ITIL framework will be the standard service management platform to govern the service delivery
unit structure and methodology of work to align IT services with the business needs. That will be via
establishing integration with TE strategy, delivering value, and maintaining a minimum level of
competency. It will allow TE to establish a baseline from which it can plan, implement, and measure its
existing and upcoming services in pipeline. It is used to demonstrate compliance and to measure
improvement. It can be announced that the Service Delivery Unit is applying the major components of
ITIL framework:-
1. ITIL Service Strategy: understands organizational objectives and customer needs.
Current progress: focus is already set and implemented related to the customer’s needs of
services to achieve their objectives. Strict monitoring and review on the set service goals to be
calibrated against the activities which run on the ground. A great concern is laid on IT Financial
 Management comprising the discipline of ensuring that the IT infrastructure is obtained at the
most effective price; plus another focus is set on the present architecture of the acquired
services (i.e. for integrated product efforts started to tweak the current architecture and initiate
direct integration between the TE OSS and TED Reseller portal) for consideration and
improvement. Those efforts are inline and with main care of Business relationship management
to ensure full buy-in and support when required (i.e. not only technically oriented).

2. ITIL Service Design: turns the service strategy into a plan for delivering the business objectives.
Current progress: it is highly considered to translate the crafted strategy to real actions on
ground and ensure the proper cascading. Most of the effort was directed in confirming full
alignment of the service orientation among all stakeholders for full visibility and transparency of
operations; that what Service Delivery team cared to deliver Seamless Operations by the
provided good-practice guidance on the design of IT services, processes, and other aspects of
the service management effort. Adopting the ITIL mindset, design started to encompass all
elements relevant to technology service delivery, rather than focusing solely on design of the
technology itself. As such, Service Delivery team focused in that stage of the service design to
address how a planned service solution interacts with the larger business and technical
environments, service management systems required to support the service, processes which
interact with the service, technology, and architecture required to support the service, and the
supply chain required to support the planned service. (The whole Middleware mechanism
connecting between TE & TED systems is being reviewed to identify the present errors, gaps,
severity classifications & root causes for corrective and preventive action).

3. ITIL Service Transition: develops and improves capabilities for introducing new services into
supported environments.
Current progress: within the several modules of the Transition stage, Service Delivery team
focused on the Change Management module which follows the Enterprise Business
Management Division. That focus was triggered from the criticality of the Change management
aim to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt
handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service
quality, and consequently improve the day-to-day operations of the organization. That reflects
the huge impact of the change management process on the overall performance of the Service
Delivery; that’s why close interaction and alignment is taking place with the concerned team to
align the related activities among all stakeholders.

4. ITIL Service Operation: manages services in supported environments.

Current progress: that stage of the main operations where the services and value is actually
directly delivered with the aim to provide best practice for achieving the delivery of agreed
levels of services both to end-users and the customers (where "customers" refer to those
individuals who pay for the service and negotiate the SLAs) based on robust performance
management system. Also the monitoring of problems and balance between service reliability
and cost (i.e. heavy recommendation has been shared with stakeholders especially the
marketing team to migrate the remaining customers in Limited Extra Usage service due to its
high cost of operations pertinent to its materialized value to the organization) are considered.
The scope of accountable operations by the Service Delivery team include technical
management, application management, operations management where service desk still within
the Product House Division team which should be , as future plan, to be within the area of
management of the Service Delivery Unit as per standards & efficiency on ground.

5. ITIL Continual Service Improvement: achieves services incremental and large-scale

improvements.
Current progress: the whole service delivery unit has been structured on the concept of service
continuous improvement with the aim to align and realign IT services to changing business
needs by identifying and implementing improvements to the IT services that support the
business processes. The present dashboards created by the service delivery team are with a core
purpose of dynamic monitoring of the services set performance agreements & improvement
initiatives. The dashboards design aren’t passive reporting with some values and graphs but
 active in nature which highlight gaps and smoothly drives proper corrective action plans when
required.
Continuous service improvement isn’t achievable without looking into the full perspective of
service performance; operational metrics aren’t enough, that’s why Service delivery team
started to cooperate with the Revenue assurance (RA) team to consolidate the operations
performance metrics with the financial ones which are presented by the RA team. Even more,
customer satisfaction & organizational capacity are to be augmented to portray the full
perspective of the business service outcomes. As represented in the hereunder Balanced score
card (BSC) framework, it connects the four perspectives which are directly linked to the
organizational vision & set strategy. TE group must focus on the righteous methodology to guide
vision to strategy to action on ground that is assessed by robust wholestic performance
measurement. Service delivery unit has the objective in implementing the full-fledged solution
with the cooperation of the BI team in the second half of 2017.

3) Application Support:
The joined application support function within the Service Delivery unit serves as the frontline mirror of
performance for the other two functions; its accountability on most of the IT systems gives the privilege to
monitor the technology platforms through which all services are operating. It was perceived that the far-
reaching goals aren’t achievable with the current level of application support performance which requires
further revamping. The function will be given a special focus to be improved in the following domains:-
(a) Process: the application support can’t stay at a level of ‘diverters’ of tickets to system owners
and/or give only 100% focus on only cases closure, but to understand the depth of the raised
incidents and their root causes are of great criticality to the whole service delivery effectiveness.
Till the availing of the proper headcount in 2017, though squeezing the current capacity but it
was crucial to create a temporary virtual team which play the role of 2nd layer support that have
more privileges to undergo rot cause analysis and perform rigorous communication with the
related stakeholders to comprehend reasons behind cases evolution and handling of any
delayed tasks or extra support required by 1st line support.

Another role has been created titled as Business communication officer/Process Improvement
to specifically ensure proper communication with the business stakeholders and tighten the
proper interfacing among technical and business teams with a main aim of ultimate customer
centricity driven perspective. Operations within the application support will be based on a
robust performance measurement platform that covers all the function key operational drivers.
That role will be incorporated with another new functionality within the operations division
which is the Service Level management (SLM) governing the performance agreements with
 business and subjecting them to periodical review and incremental enhancements initiatives
which evolves from the mutual interaction and alignment with technical and business domains.

In the continuous pursuit to serve the internal & external teams, Service Delivery(SD) unit
announced late changes which are focused of adding a solid value on the ground where two
extra layers of support are added to the Application Support team which its structure will be as
follows:-
a. 1st Line Support to be the frontal team managing and handling internal and external
inquiries, cases & incidents.
b. 2nd Line Support to support the 1st line for escalated, delayed and/or cases require
serious intervention; that layer will be responsible to assure the customer centricity
dimension which is a strategic perspective of the SD unit through strict follow-up on
SLAs and mediating critical cases with stakeholders. 1st & 2nd support lines are more
focused about Incident management (i.e. corrective actions).
c. 3rd Line Support which will be governed by the RAI team* that will have much space to
work on deeper preventive initiatives rather than corrective ones through carrying over
meetings, active communication with the pertinent stakeholders and management
teams. That team will officially be accountable to focus and deal with Problem
Management (i.e. preventive actions) as per the ITIL framework rather than Incident
Management.

*RAI Team stands for (Reporting, Analytics & Improvement) which will play the role of:-
1. The quantitative hub of the whole SD unit that generates the various performance
measurement dashboards.
2. As stated, act as 3rd line of support to the application support team.
3. Following up all action plans & improvement initiatives especially with systems’
owners for potential identification for areas of enhancements.
4. Effective Interfacing & engagement with 2nd line of support and close sharing of
cases, analysis & outcomes of related action plans.
5. Act as the service assurance arm while ensuring the realization of the overall unit
objectives.

Measures have been adopted to ensure the harmony of the Application support team with the other teams inside
the SD unit; and reciprocally capitalizing on the Application support wide exposure to systems’ functionalities and
built-on services to complement the service management team within the SD unit where all focused on the ultimate
concept of End-to-End serving customers whether inside or outside the IT department.

(b) Technology: the current technology platform is currently under deep review where the
integration layer and performance levels between the ticketing systems & Helpdesk aren’t
satisfactory in terms of:-
(i) Efficient and accurate way to Track the involved teams’ performance in terms of SLAs and
durations spent on different levels till final incidents’ resolution.
(ii) Poor integration between legacy systems which evolves further difficulties in proper tracking
of incidents and lack of effective reporting covering the whole incident cycle end-to-end.
(iii) Inflexible customization or tweaking ticketing application (i.e. Helpdesk) which restricts the
fulfillment of business needs and new requirements of enhancing incident management
control & management.

Service Delivery team is currently a core decision maker in a formulated Change Team to
restructure the incident and CR management handling. Consecutive workshops are taking place
to select the best solution as per set weighted criteria which combine the tradeoff of solution
complexity, business appeal and time for implementation. That should be an interim solution till
the full rollout of the HP Open view service management platform.

(c) People: the current role of the team members will be leveraged and not to be confined on fast
resolution and sole focus on cases closure at the set SLA, but to extend that to understand
 reasons & root causes; team members will be qualified for that role through continuous hands-
on coaching.

The Application Support is required to be renamed to Operation Support Center (OSC) which entails the
following operational philosophy:-
1. As per the current Service Delivery concept of operations, it isn’t any more fitting either the
structure nor the Unit strategy to deal with applications in silos and supporting them in isolated
lands nature i.e. each sub-team dedicated to a certain group of applications supporting them in
isolation to another team who is handling another set of applications; however, there is a high
possibility that raised technical cases could overlap and touch the two groups; where the traditional
support perspective based on applications have led to suboptimal results and recurrence of similar
issues due to the lack of handling root cause in that structure.
2. The whole area need to be restructured according to the new concept of Operations Support Center
which doesn’t look into applications rather than services that supports the whole IT/Business
operations regardless to the underlying applications. Teams will be restructured in a way to handle
end-to-end streamline of services that cuts through different applications.
3. And to offer enough support & agility to 1st line support, That will be reinforced by the creation of
physical layer representing 2nd line support. New hiring is required by three juniors & one senior
member to fulfill that plan.
What is Next?......
Tal2a product has no specific revenue code but its revenues are pooled within the whole family of Capped services.
That might have financial implications related to the accurate ability in calculating the profitability of Tal2a
respective to the other services; where the operational implications highlight that there is no streamline per product
or per group of products that receives special treatment as per strategic, revenue and or type of service. There is a
Customer Segmentation exercise isn’t progressing in the right pace; where the reasons behind it could be numerous
but seemingly enough that the exercise objective isn’t clear enough, not well defined or lack the proper sponsorship
to push it forward. As a result, customers are dealt with seamlessly with no differentiation especially the Home
Business unit; where in the Enterprise business unit the story is a bit different and dedicated account managers plus
specific operational monitoring tools offer the premium service to those niche customers.

That gap which exists in products’ segmentation has led to flat product catalogue, flat treatment, and flat
sponsorship. That was also reflected deep into operational levels inside the Service delivery unit where the
application support function deals with the same operational SLAs to almost all of the services, application and
product related support i.e. no differentiation; even a fixed template with fixed values for the offered SLAs is
provided for any project related to a new product or service. The consequences are expected from such a ‘one
custom fits all’ strategy where:-
1. The heat and tense relations are a common environment among the technical and business teams.
2. Technical teams can’t differentiate the business impact per incidents or able to classify their priorities
(though not their main role by the end of the day).
3. Business teams (the raising entity of incidents) see most of the cases as critical, top priority or VIP customers
which stress more the technical side for agile responses.

Some mistakenly conceive that Customer Experience (CE) is managed by the customer service department & the
customer loyalty team within the marketing team; actually CE is measured by the both functional entities in TE
Group but when it comes to End-to-End management that role is definitely missing. Within customer service
department Surveys for the general service satisfaction are performed to customers, incidents and problems are
handled or pushed to other layers of support which is the application support function inside the IT department that
as per the cases complexity and details could be further pushed to the technical operations department; and the
cycle keeps rolling where stakeholders involve in ping pong communication with no ownership for End-to-End
resolution. In-between that vicious cycle, customer satisfaction is lost in that operational dilemma.

Service delivery has a great role which already shows realizable footprints since its structuring regarding playing the
role ownership and connecting the various functional roles within virtual streamline of services. But performance
quantum leaps in TE group will be materialized when adopting a real Physical platform for Product Operational
Management; where each service or group of interrelated services are managed through a dedicated team who is
concerned about:-
1. The operational performance as per the set agreed levels or the established baselines.
2. Managing CRs and evolving projects pertinent to each specific service in close interaction with product
development and technical teams.
3. Responsible & in close cooperation with the customer service team for the End customer satisfaction.
4. In close cooperation with the sales team to get qualitative assessment of the service is performing in
general and quantitatively through sales figures and leads.

Product
Billing Operaitons Service Delivery Operational
Managment
In the telecom business, products are increasingly facing commoditization with lower differentiation power among
competitors. TE Group Business Model is encouraged to include core components of product differentiation based
on the differentiated service by customer; that’s why TE needs a solid productized structure rather than the current
flat all-in-one portfolio of services. TE Group management is aware of the high turnover within the customer service
department and the challenges on its staff capabilities to offer dynamic value added support to customers while
controlling the incidents’ flow to the following supporting layers i.e. capability to resolve the case on the first
engagement with customers without escalating to other teams. The effectiveness of that cycle isn’t well monitored
which would be the right fit to be managed by the product operational management team.

Product operational management is a logical extension to the service delivery scope which could be hierarchically
structured outside the IT department. Service delivery is already considering the cost factor which is relatively
neglected while in normal operations mode inside TE with signals of long cycles of communications, rework and
similar like presented solutions or initiatives not focusing on the cost factor; product operational management
operating strategy is allowed for the maximization of the difference between the value of the service to
customers(service concept) and the cost (operating strategy& service delivery system) i.e. product operational
management is built upon the basis of the service delivery to realize higher value margin to TE Group.

Product operational management (POM) could also fill the absent role to connect between customer service and
marketing teams; what is known as Support Forum could be created within the POM to act as the bridge among
technical support, marketing & customer interfacing support teams *; it is a dynamic tool which is an asset to cope
with the highly paced & interactive communication with customers especially through the social media channels.
The main aim of the Support Forum to seek real-time feedback and agile responsiveness to issues facing customers
and impacting their direct satisfaction with the provided services; it is one of the tools that put the customer simply
into the center of the business; indeed, some major companies like Zappos (which was acquired by Amazon) invests
in service rather than using much of advertising. Service excellence is the best referral to acquire and retain
customers especially for TE Group where service inconsistency and dissatisfaction is quite uncommon.

*it is noted that service delivery unit is currently sponsoring an initiative known as “Platinum Customers”
with marketing, technical & customer service teams to segment customers as per their value and deliver the
pertinent support service to each category of customers rather than the flat one fits all support. This is to
start to move the service strategy towards more of customization and personalization which bonds
customers to TE group portfolio of services.
Final Business Snapshots……
Vision
TE Group, especially its broadband arm TE Data, has grown the past years beyond the set expectations and planned
projections; that success brings with it challenges that they have to address in managing its level of service to
customers. The home grown systems and applications, especially the CRM, billing and supporting tools are legacy
constraints to the degree not being able anymore to match the high speed market change and ever increasing
customer expectations and requirements. There must be a clear vision of the way forward in that current turbulent
& competitive market; that is driven from top management who are crafting the strategy and the next steps to
position the whole group. Vision which is kept in its ivory tower doesn’t worth the exerted effort and resources but
its designers should walk the talk and guide that vision into proper execution through wise and sharp alignment
with the related hierarchical partners who accordingly cascade and share with their team members.

Human Capital
There is slang Arabic origin saying which says “ ‫ ” مش بتقف على حد‬or in English “ it doesn’t stop on anyone” which is
used many dimensions in life in general and specifically used to be drawn in business environment; I have seen &
lived in many corporates which unluckily have nonverbal consent in applying that paradigm in the workplace. The
company will not stop on anyone, any team member wants to leave then he could easily leave, anyone can do the
replacement and the ship will continue sailing. This is the breakdoun application of that mindset belief which
destroyed the future of very potential business entities; definitely, replacement can be done but isn’t it the same
level of previously calibers’ experience? Understanding of the corporate or need to restart the learning curve of the
environment? And many other challenging questions which deem that quote to be devastating for corporates’
future. The ship could keep sailing for a while but it can’t speed up & accelerate anymore while losing its top notch
captains; it could continue sailing for a while but even can come to a complete halt with the first challenge to face.
Recently, TE group has lost real top notch calibers who aren’t yet substituted while leaving a critical gap and posing a
huge concern on the organization capability to achieve its future growth plans in times of stumbling projects, over
delayed deliverables, huge rework and most critically plummeting employees’ morale. That’s why, reputable mega
organizations understood that philosophy and walk the talk in recruiting and retaining the best calibers in house as
they are the sole growth factor potential for them. It is ‘Human Capital’ which emphasizes its importance as an asset
i.e. not the traditional mindset of calling it ‘Human Resource’ implying a cost item in the P/L statement, a resource to
be depleted.

Telecom Infrastructure
Throughout all of the above stated elaborations in the case study considering revamping in processes, human capital
, structure and technology; it can’t be overlooked to stress on the telecom infrastructure capability as the linchpin
where all other factors are dependent on having that enabling infrastructural platform to offer the customers with
their specific telecom needs: high speed, broadband and low cost; without that strong base anything else is with low
return value on the overall service effectiveness and efficiency i.e. MSANs Mega infrastructure project should move
in high speed of implementation to ensure the consistency and quality of service of the whole infrastructural
network to TE Group customer base.
Finance Strategy
The biggest challenge for TE Group is to reconcile between the two poles of ever demanding customer demands and
close monitoring on the organization’s financial performance. Through the different occasions, the corporate used to
speak about the realized revenues and their continuous growth generation, but revenue measure isn’t the only key
performance measure to confirm business success; changing mindset is required to focus on all value drivers (i.e.
value maximization) and ultimately the bottom line. That entails TE Group to be efficient in what it is doing and
growing profits and capital base to drive revenue growth and above all return on invested capital as compared to
the company’s cost of capital. TE Group faces challenges concerning huge delays in projects, halted projects and
unmaterialsied benefits from already implemented initiatives. That requires a closer scrutiny from the management
team to ensure efficient and effective utilization of the organization’s valuable capital and other resources; and most
important above all resources is wasting precious non recoverable time in needless financially & strategically
unjustifiable projects and initiatives. Focus must be laid in what brings real value to the organization and
management team’s responsibility is to ensure the effective cascading and monitoring of that mindset throughout all
the levels of the organization’s hierarchical layers.

Projects’ Delivery Effectiveness

I consider the effectiveness of projects’ delivery is based on two main pillars:-
1. The effectiveness of handling the project lifecycle through its different stages and milestones which are
orchestrated in a way that delivers the intended objectives and goals.
2. Post-launch project control that ensures the sustainability of the project’s goals throughout the lifespan of
operations.
TE Group suffers in the two dimensions; projects are generally overly delayed with hassle of gathering requirements
and reaching agreement. While in project’s user acceptance testing (UAT) or even after launch, it is normal to find
stakeholders claiming that they don’t agree on the presented requirements and disclaim their pre-agreement and
acceptance. Conflicting objectives might arise among stakeholders that impact the project progress and after launch
operation control. Projects are used to be launched by brute force either from management’s call of urgency and set
strict launch date or on the discretion of the program management team that might be not aligned with the required
pace for the proper completion of the project’s activities. Lots of pressure is being laid into the operations team
whether the technical or the business side from the evolving cases, issues and/or system bugs which should have
been considered and resolved in the project phase. Business stakeholders start to panic and gradually losing
credibility over time of the efficiency of the projects’ delivery in overall.

How Service Delivery (SD) team is handling that challenge?

SD team started to communicate with the program management team to bridge that gap by introducing a critical
new stage in the already present project life cycle named as Project Operational Assessment Acceptance; it isn’t
UAT but a following stage to the official project launch. The aim of this stage is to assess the project’s capability to
deliver what is supposed to achieve as per the set plans and goals. The duration of that phase will be defined as per
each project’s complexity and nature of operations where it is subjected for even tuning within the assessment if
required extension. The main goal of that phase is to announce that the project is capable to deliver its activities in a
smooth manner to the different operational teams, where SD is a core team, without major defects or severe cases
which deem the SD team raising the flag to roll back the operations into project mode once more. Thus, there is a
level of stability that is required from the project deliverables which are measured on the experiential level as per
the SD expertise and the proper qualitative assessment. Earlier involvement of the SD team will be mandated within
the project management methodology to ramp up the pertinent knowledge base as per each project and mature its
technical and business understanding which hopefully raises the potential of success in the operations mode after
any project’s delivery.
Epilogue
One way of shifting TE Group strategy is accomplished by moving closer towards service differentiation. Sales and
revenue generation is core to thrive & grow the business but with lack of proper enabling service platform then that
task would be of a daunting nature; especially within the current competitive threats posed in the market and similar
portfolio of products where the competency and excellence in delivering and supporting those services vis-à-vis end
customers are core competitive differentiator. The hast speed and accompanying defects with the introduction of
the Integrated Product has strained the operations phase to correct and put back on track which was overlooked in
the project phase. Powerful service management engagement is capable to restore the product performance into its
set agreeable levels and rescue deteriorating customer satisfaction.

Service Delivery (SD) unit didn’t adopt its power as being system or application owner but crafted its operational
philosophy on filling the present gaps among stakeholders and interconnect the whole operations towards set clear
goals. Integrated product (IP) team, which functions under the supervision of the SD unit, established a wholestic
Balanced Scorecard (BSC) which scans different business perspectives to mention some: Financial, Operational
performance, Customer Satisfaction, Operations Improvement etc. Each domain of the BSC is mapped and aligned
with the designated matching action plans which led to a real driven management based on quantification from a
robust performance management system presented by the BSC methodology. In that way, SD provided what is
called a decision support platform to manage the integrated product and any other product/service. Decision
support enables objective management based on quantitative measures plus the qualitative part where all combined
ensures effective translation of strategies to execution through sharp and attentive handling and follow-ups of the
evolved action plans.

The business model presented in that case is about the essence of servicing products in an agile and reliable nature
to the end customer. In traditional operational setup, much time could be spent trying to nail doun all the
possibilities and risks around uncertainties or any presented complexities (like incase of Integrated product) which
led to never get around of taking any action; but in the service management value proposition model, service
delivery unit understands and says ‘Enough” when it is clear to go around excessive details or way far deep into non-
core issues. Thus, SD unit focuses on working on those operational conflicts and thinking hard about the key
priorities which are tightly linked to business objectives across the whole organization, and separate what is
essential from the nonessential through an interactive, real-time planning discussed and highlighted throughout the
whole case study. A number of capabilities are required to meet that challenge inside TE Group and SD unit has
organized itself around those capabilities. Building the required depth of technical knowledge while avoiding being
drained in further needless depth which are already overlooked by the designated technical teams per domains; it is
the enough technicality which facilitates the management cycle per service from an end-to-end perspective. One of
the core enabling tools to level the technical knowledge across the different functions within the SD unit is that using
the rotational assignments technique which includes all team members to assume assignments within and outside
the unit.
4G License, Is TE Group up to the Challenge?!
 The three giant competitors are ready with the 4G rollout to market once they officially acquire the
license…..
 They also have the ready expertise of the mobile operation, infrastructure, resources, organization structure,
etc……
 Where are the areas of differentiation and offered possibilities by TE Group to the customers which lead to
a competitive positioning within the telecom market?
 Furthermore, should the organization retain its traditional conception of IT as cost center, or should it
migrate to a scheme that recognizes IT as a service provision center that generates measurable value for the
organization?(as mainly highlighted in the case study through the Service Management concept)

That basic question definitely doesn’t only occupy the organization’s Top Executive minds but every employee and
partner with a stake inside TE Group. And the case study is offering an only potential answer from the scope of a
reliable service management which could offer an effective competitive advantage for TE Group’s Vision, Strategy &
Execution. Customers’ patience on mediocre level of service isn’t spacious anymore with the presence of alternatives
and hungry competitors to attract each other’s customer base. The whole game is about who provides a competent
customer centric operation with agility and high response to changing & customers’ needs. Effective Service
Management could be one of the prescriptions for TE Group in offering a real edge in dealing with services on
discrete manner i.e. each product/service is distinguished and handled in a way tailored and matching the nature of
product and customers’ segments. Effective Service Management puts an end in dealing with products with ‘one fits
all’ strategy & operations which further deepened the commoditization of the products and diluted their unique
selling proposition.

Though its almost diminished returns, the presence of the fixed lines for TE group is a source of power, it is a
relatively enormous barrier of entry for competitors to replicate TE infrastructure; that could be used as tool to
acquire and lock customers to TE with the newly introduced bundled services at the 4G market rollout startup of
operations. It is noted that the present lead time of the acquired license is a critical privilege for TE to effectively
utilize till the next following market rival starting 4G rollout; it is a matter of ‘Life & Death’ as that period is the
decisive one if TE can distinguish & position its market presence or not. Offering a Single Bill, integrating TE with
TED and most importantly Time to market (TTM) that is the differentiator in that race, Service Management could
be a winning card in that race…..

IT inside TE Group should quickly proceed to go far from being a cost center and seriously adopt profit centric
strategies. Service Delivery softly started to go through that path and provide a real tangible value which directly
impact the end customers' products profitability while operationally providing that with full awareness and hands on
capabilities of cost effectiveness. TE Group has has been discarding the control on the cost element for its operations
except their financial recording where the concept of cost optimisation and direct lineage to profitability measures
are almost missed. And at the times of commoditization of legacy IT products, competitive advantage based on low
cost provider becomes of a great importance to the organization as a powerful tool of differentiation in the telecom
market.

Service Delivery scope will not stop at that level but will extend to play the role as of "operations innovation center"
with a main objective of providing the required operational agility which enable the organization to compete in
terms of the commonly used term 'Time to Market' but few are able to put in proper execution. This will be through
new ways of doings things as already triggered inside the Service Delivery unit.

Service Delivery team quietly understands the coming quote which is being said by one of the U.S military executives
when being asked about the success behind the biggest run organization in the world which is the U.S Military army
"overwhelming fire power supported by state of the art logistics". TE fire power is the sales team who directly
generates revenues and all the rest of the organization is the supporting functions. Service Delivery will keep striving
its efforts with a direct focus on the sales generation process ...... That What really counts by the end of the day on
the P/L statements.