Challenge

A Tier 1 global communications service provider, with assistance of TMNG Global experts, has made great progress in assessing the staffing requirements that come with consolidating operations support across a geographically diverse multi-service footprint.

Like many telecoms worldwide, the company has been working toward integrated operations in the wake of acquiring several other telecommunications-based companies over the past decade. At the same time, the expansion of the client’s service portfolio and the desire to integrate all service operations as much as possible has added further complexities to the consolidation agenda.

This has proved especially true for Network Operations Center (NOC). With overall responsibility across the regional and transport networks, the NOC has been consolidating and refocusing the distinct legacy NOC environments into a single, unified operation.

As the NOC approached the latest phase in the consolidation process, which involved integration of mobile and video service operations oversight into its NOC, and additional consolidation of regional activities, along with increased pressure to reduce staffing; it needed to determine the magnitude of required staffing based on a hard review of the existing organizational structure.

Executives closest to NOC and regional NOC operations felt they were running as lean an organization as prudent operations would allow, but were unable to provide senior management with pragmatic evidence. Senior company executives sought an answer that was to be based on an objective analysis performed by outside experts.

The client turned to TMNG for assistance to leverage our deep experience helping major global carriers with organizational restructuring and operations efficiency. Company management understood that it would take a team of experts who had first-hand experience in the running of telecoms to really comprehend the complexities of the network operations challenges they faced.

The Existing NOC Framework

The organizational frameworks for the NOCs were designed to accommodate the execution of legacy regional operations requirements associated with the local service territories of the carrier, as well as execution of the carrier’s global network operations responsibilities. Operational oversight of monitoring, maintenance and repair attending regional and local network transport and switching components was the responsibility of the regional NOCs. The NOC was responsible for overseeing and monitoring the operations of the domestic and global long-distance switching and transport components to ensure maximum network efficiency.

With consolidation the NOC had taken on an oversight role with respect to the regional NOCs, serving to coordinate monitoring across the regions and to help resolve service problems that extended across regions or that expanded beyond a certain threshold in any given region. The NOC was also responsible for tracking and reporting outages across the entire operating territory for purposes of incident reporting to the national regulatory agency.

With so much of the primary operations maintenance and repair oversight responsibilities of the regional NOCs being similar in nature, the company’s senior management wanted to know whether some of the tasks and responsibilities could be consolidated to reduce required staffing levels and/or to achieve best-in-class efficiencies.

Further complicating the organizational assessment was the desire to consolidate within the NOC all facets of local, regional and national operation oversight as they pertained to video and mobile services. These operational responsibilities had to be folded in with an eye toward leveraging existing expertise and organizational structure to the fullest extent possible.

TMNG Global Solution

How much of all this activity was duplicative effort that could be better organized? Were there inefficiencies in execution or processes within and between the various areas of responsibility? The only way to make a valid assessment of whether the organizational structure across all the regional and global NOCs was optimal was to review how responsibilities were assigned and executed at all levels. This would allow TMNG’s team to identify areas of duplication, best in class practices, unnecessary activities and other efficiencies, and provide recommendations as to where improvements might be found down to the individual levels of responsibility.

TMNG’s experts were well equipped to perform such a task, given their extensive background in operations management and the sophistication of the tools they brought to bear in organizational modeling and performance analysis in all areas of telecom operations. They were given a mandate to take whatever steps they thought necessary to provide the comprehensive answer on NOC structure and staffing.

The TMNG team began with a comprehensive survey of the existing organizational structure, obtaining data on all the functions, current staffing levels, along with the primary activities, processes and tools. This in-depth understanding of the way things were set up allowed the team to evaluate overall effectiveness and areas of expertise.

Benefits to the Client

Armed with such information across all task categories, the TMNG team was able to assess, and objectively calculate the manpower requirements for each group within each regional NOC and the worldwide NOC. In the process, the Team was also able to compare activity profiles within and among the NOCs, allowing it to identify areas of duplication. By analyzing the actual performance data, the TMNG team was able to confirm appropriate staffing levels to support the current environment, as well as to support ongoing consolidation.

TMNG provided the client with three primary deliverables, including:

• An Organizational Modeling Tool (OMT): The OMT enables an analytical assessment of staffing needs. Comprised of a task-level assessment to identify, document and size required activities across core functions of the NOC Operations, the Organizational Modeling Tool enables NOC management to quantify staffing needs to support current and planned operations. Moreover, it enables management to forecast and analytically support future needs based on changes in volumes of activities, improvements in processes and tools, or the addition of new responsibilities.
• Efficiency Recommendations: As a result of the interviews and data collection, TMNG provided actionable efficiencies which resulted in operational savings and/or provided improved productivity and knowledge. These efficiencies ranged from eliminating unnecessary or duplicate tasks, establishing best-in-class processes across the total NOC, to establishing a Wiki-style information sharing web-site to promote cross-functional knowledge and document existing best practices. Utilizing the Organizational Modeling Tool, TMNG was able to quantify the operational savings associated with many of these recommendations.
• A Tool Migration Strategy: A primary deterrent to full consolidation is the current reliance on multiple similar, but distinct tools across the legacy environments. The Tool Migration Strategy enables the NOC to move from the existing array of tools into a single, streamlined framework of best-in-class tools and processes that can be utilized across the multiple functions and services. In addition, it provides the foundation to add additional tools to mechanize surveillance and feed downstream processes.

Not only was the TMNG effort able to provide the company’s top management with a level of confidence in their budgeted requirements for staffing, going forward the Telcom will have a much firmer foundation on which to assess its staffing needs. As a result, this engagement is sure to continue delivering returns for a long time to come.