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Final Project

Building a Better Telecommunications Company

Tommy Avery

March 5, 2011

ICT 4010: Enterprise Architecture

Professor Steven Else

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................ 1

General Background ........................................................................................................... 3

Business type, goals, and structure ..................................................................... 3

Operational Concerns .................................................................................................... 5

Identification of Major Architectural Issues ....................................................... 7

Analysis of Major Architecture Issues .................................................................... 8

Issue 1 - Culture ............................................................................................................... 8

Issue 2 - Communication .......................................................................................... 10

Issue 3 - Lack of Research and Development Program .......................... 13

Issue 4 - Lack of Process Development and Documentation .............. 16

Recommended Solutions ............................................................................................... 20

Solution to Issue 1: Culture ..................................................................................... 20

Solution to Issue 2: Communication .................................................................. 22

Solution to Issue 3: Lack of Research and Development Program . 24

Solution to Issue 4: Lack of Process Development and Documentation ................................................................................................................ 27

Roadmap ................................................................................................................................. 29

Appendix ................................................................................................................................. 32

Figure 1 ................................................................................................................................ 32

Figure 2 ................................................................................................................................ 33

Figure 3 ................................................................................................................................ 36

Figure 4 ................................................................................................................................ 37

Figure 5 ................................................................................................................................ 39

References.............................................................................................................................. 40

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Executive Summary

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 enacted by the United States

Congress enabled the deregulation of local telephone service to provide for

competition within the telecommunications industry. This has allowed for

many new companies to be formed that have the need to interface with

public consumers, the existing Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier, and other

vendors for data and voice telecommunications services. With this also

comes the need to establish a new presence in a market dominated by one

local carrier, as well as to compete with other similar telecommunications

companies.

This paper discusses some of the challenges faced by a regional

telecommunications company that has been in business since shortly after

deregulation occurred. The challenges that are discussed include the

cultural problems that develop within a growing organization where its main

product and service offering changes over time, the various communication

problems that disparate systems can cause, the problems of doing research

and development "on the fly" as well as the advantages to a R&D program,

and the problems associated by a lack of a refined process development

program.

The paper concludes with solutions to the above problems, relating

these solutions to an Enterprise Architecture program, and the benefits that

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a telecommunications company can gain from Enterprise Architecture.

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General Background

Business type, goals, and structure

Telco Inc is a telecommunications company that offers various types of

telephony, data, and related networking/telecommunications services.

Branding itself as a "Communications as a Service" provider, Telco Inc.

offers many innovative telecommunications services. Telco Inc. is classified

by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a Competitive Local

Exchange Carrier (CLEC) and as such has its own fiber-optic network,

carrier-grade telephone switch, and is fully interconnected in various

geographic regions with Verizon, who is the existing Incumbent Local

Exchange Carrier (ILEC) in the northeastern United States.

Telco Inc. has one office which serves as its headquarters and Network

Operations Center (NOC). The company has the ability to provide

telecommunication services primarily throughout the northeastern United

States, although network interconnections with other carriers allow them to

provide voice and data services throughout the United States. Telco Inc.

offers telecommunications services to businesses such as Internet access,

WAN connectivity using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), Hosted Voice-

over-IP telephony, as well as other traditional voice services such as Primary

Rate Interface (PRI) circuits and traditional phone lines.

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The primary goal of Telco Inc. is to continue to increase the customer

base while growing the network to support existing and future customers.

The company is presently divided into five main departments, consisting of

Sales, Provisioning, Customer Service, Billing, and Administration. The Sales

Department is further divided into Direct Sales, Agent Sales, Sales Support,

Sales Engineering, Customer Retention, and Telemarketing. Provisioning

consists of Dedicated Provisioning and Switched Provisioning, which each

handle different types of business orders. Customer Service is comprised of

Level 1 Customer Service, Level 2 Customer Service, and Platinum Club,

each which handles different types of customers based on revenue or

problem level difficulty. Administration consists of Human Resources,

Executive Management, Information Technology, Network Engineering, and

Accounting, while the Billing department is not further subdivided. Please

see Figure 1 in the Appendix for the company's core diagram.

Telco Inc. began as a reseller of telephony services for the ILEC.

Under FCC regulation, companies like Telco Inc. are allowed to purchase

services from the ILEC at wholesale rates and resell them to consumers at

retail rates (Jorde, Sidak, and Teece 2000). This allowed Telco Inc. to

operate for over seven years with little overhead expenses such as a carrier-

class network, telephone switch, and interconnections to the Public Switched

Telephone Network (PSTN).

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As Telco Inc. expanded it decided to invest in the required equipment

to become a facilities-based carrier. This required Telco Inc. to install a

fiber-optic network, interconnect in various local ILEC Central Offices (CO),

and also to hire outside personnel to help build, design, provision,

troubleshoot, and sell the various new features of this newly deployed

communications infrastructure.

Operational Concerns

With the new people, services, and infrastructure came many changes

to the way the company was used to operating. These growth changes are

not unique to Telco Inc., and many companies experience similar changes as

they grow. The challenges that I have observed include some of the

following aspects:

• The "culture" of the current environment is one in which there

exists an "old versus new" mentality, in that some of the personnel

who have been employed with the company since its beginning are

not adapting well to the changes in products, services, processes,

and people.

• As a telecommunications company, one would speculate that we

would communicate well both externally with customers and

vendors, and internally both within and between departments. This

unfortunately is not the case as various types of miscommunication

have resulted in various types of losses to the organization.

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• There is presently no method for doing research on potential new

products and services, as no department exists to do this function.

Engineering is currently only tasked with the operation of the

existing network.

• Significant knowledge gaps exist within the Provisioning

Department due to a lack of defined process development and

documentation program within the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze these issues from an

architectural standpoint, to investigate potential solutions for remedying

these challenges, and to provide a preliminary roadmap for deploying the

improved architecture.

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Identification of Major Architectural Issues

1. Culture

Due to the way in which the organization has grown in the past few

years there have been many changes to the way business has been

conducted and the number of new people that have joined the

organization, allowing for various cultural problems to develop.

2. Communication

The present architecture does not provide for an efficient way to

communicate either internally both intra- and inter-departmentally,

nor externally with customers and vendors.

3. Lack of Research and Development Program

Presently no formal Research and Development program exists within

the organization, thus making new product and service deployment

and enhancements to existing products and services more time

consuming, costly, and difficult to troubleshoot once deployed.

4. Lack of Process Development and Documentation

The organization's present level of process development and

documentation is unstructured, with little to no oversight, which

causes many service deployment and repair problems.

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Analysis of Major Architecture Issues

Issue 1 - Culture

Business Case. According to Canary and McPhee, knowledge and

knowledge management is political in at least three ways, the third of which

states that "organizational processes and structures are infused with an

already present set of beliefs, commitments, and priorities that were

themselves socially constructed" and that were formed by previously made

decisions. These politics become solidified and become the way of doing

business (Canary and McPhee 2010). This is certainly the case at Telco Inc.

as well. There is an increasing attitude of "old vs. new" with regards to the

way in which business is conducted and how people perform their roles.

This conflicting and change-resistant mentality has further led to a "not my

job" attitude.

Base Architecture: Specifically in the case of the Sales and Sales

Support departments there is resistance to changing to an online Customer

Relationship Management application that has been deployed through

salesforce.com. The conflict is between who should be responsible for

entering in customer data, the salesperson or sales support person.

Furthermore, in the past, salespeople were allowed to create their own

proposals and contracts from templates that were stored on networked

stores. With the present system, salespeople must enter in customer

information into the salesforce.com application, and then send the request

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for a proposal to sales support. Some salespeople have been trained to

enter in which products they wish to propose in the salesforce.com

application, while others are resistant to do so and ask sales support to do

this function.

Furthermore, there is an overall perception that the organization’s

provisioning department doesn't do a good job at turning customers up on-

time and correctly. This perception within the sales department is always in

the back of the salespeople's mind and is a distraction to the sales process,

causing them to wonder what's going to happen to this customer once the

order is handed off to the provisioning department.

Target Architecture. This problem with culture and the resistance to

change with the business as the services, products, and people changed is

not unusual with modernization initiatives. When people become

comfortable, it can allow them to become resistant to change and not to

notice the environment around them changing (Johnson 1998). From an

enterprise architecture standpoint, this type of issue would be noted in the

business architecture category of the TOGAF framework, and would also

address the organization's readiness, or lack thereof, to transition its

services and business type. Upon discussions with key stakeholders within

the organization such as the CEO, COO, and VP of Operations, an open-

minded culture where employees readily adapt to the ever-changing

telecommunications environment is what is desired.

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Gap Analysis. As one would imagine, changing the culture of an

organization isn't necessarily an easy task. The culture of a company is

determined by many factors, but a key factor is the stories that the

employees share with each other about the organization. To get from the

present culture to the target culture, the organization must change the

stories that are told. Certainly other aspects can be changed as well, such

as compensation packages and formalized employee reviews; however, the

first part of that would be to change the stories (Bregman 2009). The Open

Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) classification could be used to

address this evaluation in Phase A: Architecture Vision, with solutions and a

migration plan being determined in Phase E: Opportunities and Solutions,

and Phase F: Migration Planning, respectively(TOGAF 2008).

Issue 2 - Communication

Business Case. An important key to enhancing communication

amongst coworkers is building the relationship that exists among them.

Relationships at work don't need to necessarily be personal, but they do

need to be congenial. Surprises, such as a large or complex order,

unexpected due date being missed, or changes in deadlines can cause

communication problems (Carroll 2009). At Telco Inc., various internal and

external communication problems exist across the Provisioning and

Customer Support departments. This is in part due to a lack of training, as

well as people not being motivated to come to a resolution for whatever

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problem they have at hand. Too often Project Managers are content to send

an email explaining part of the customer's order when a better process may

have been to pick up the phone and call the customer.

From an internal communication perspective, management doesn't

give timely updates to changes in network infrastructure, changes in

business rules related to product deployment, or information from Company

Leadership meetings that affect various business units relayed in a timely

manner. Furthermore, because the company has an open-door policy with

communication to the CEO, there have been times when management was

incorrectly informing the Executive Leadership team of events with

customers and other employees. This type of communication problem

causes Executive Management to believe all is well within the organization,

when the reality of it is that there are many concerns in various areas of the

organization. These communication problems can be better addressed by

building a better relationship, whether it be a better relationship with

customers, between managers and subordinates, or between equal

coworkers.

Base Architecture. The flow of information between various

departments in the organization and to customers, vendors, and other

interested stakeholders should be outlined during Phase B: Business

Architecture of the TOGAF ADM model (TOGAF 2008). Presently at Telco

Inc. a formal Information Exchange Matrix does not exist; however, as

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indicated above, the inter- and intra-departmental flow of information, as

well as information being relayed to customers, vendors, and other key

stakeholders such as referral partners, is still occurring, just not in an

optimized state across the organization.

For example, presently the salesforce.com application allows members

of the sales department (refer to core diagram for specific groups) to

communicate with each other regarding the details of a proposal for service,

or a signed contract. Even when sending the order from Sales to

Provisioning, a "Special Provisioning Instructions" Microsoft Word document

is included to describe, in common vernacular, the details of the order.

However, communication back from Provisioning to Sales doesn't have as

structured of a format. The Operations OSS has the ability to keep notes

relating to the order, but it is difficult to access what information is there.

Furthermore, not all information is accurately kept by all project

managers. This can cause misinformation to be given to the customer

regarding the status of an order as well. As reference, Figure 2 in the

appendix shows the current process flow for the sales team when interacting

with salesforce.com. Figure 3 shows a business interaction matrix, which

describes the relationship interactions between the various departments

within the organization.

Target Architecture. From a communications standpoint, the

Executive Leadership Team would like to see seamless inter- and intra-

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departmental communication flow. All departments should log all

communication that occurs with a customer or vendor or about a customer

or vendor for follow-up and reference. This will not only provide for better

inter- and intra-departmental communication but will also give a historical

reference and timeline of events for business analytics purposes. It is

desired to have a single, common interface to access all customer

information, as the ability to have a common interface for information will

help to increase communication.

Gap Analysis. Given that there are presently many systems that the

various departments must interface with, the target to migrate to one

operational support system is a challenging undertaking. Using the TOGAF

ADM we can address the specific business requirements for the new system,

as well as the application requirements, and technology architecture

requirements for the new system. Included in the appendix is a role/system

matrix (Figure 4), which can be used during the TOGAF ADM process to help

map employee role to system function to help with the application selection

or development process (TOGAF 2008).

Issue 3 - Lack of Research and Development Program

Business Case. For every 10 percent increase in investment in

research and development (R&D), small businesses may see up to a three

percent increase in market value (Ison and Jarcyzk 2009). One of the main

purposes of R&D is to create new or improved technology that can give a

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competitive advantage at the business, industry, or national level. There are

various types of R&D, including Basic Research, Applied Research, and

Development. Basic research is used to gain further knowledge of the

subject under study, applied research involves trying to gain the knowledge

to determine how a specific need may be met, and development is using the

knowledge or understanding gained from research toward the production of

useful material, systems, methods, prototypes, or processes (Inc 2000).

R&D can be used in the telecommunications industry to assist in projects

ranging from determining if a specific type of IP-enabled Private Branch

eXchange (PBX) will interface with an existing softswitch to assisting in

developing new products from existing services, such as creating a unified

messaging service offering.

Base Architecture. At Telco Inc., no formal research and

development program exists. Typically the way new services or products

are developed involve a salesperson speaking directly with an engineer

about a specific question that a customer has asked. Furthermore, there is

no formal service development or testing when this type of question arises.

Normally, the engineer will work directly with the customer to determine if

their concern can be addressed or not. This causes customers to effectively

be the "Alpha" and "Beta" testers for any new type of product or service

offerings.

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In addition to the concerns in deploying new services in this model,

Telco Inc. also has no roadmap for future service enhancements and

offerings. This makes it difficult for customer-facing departments to address

customer's concerns and to discuss future potential functionality, and causes

no clear understanding of these "ad hoc" service offerings.

Target Architecture. Based upon the size of Telco Inc., it may not

be financially prudent to have a full time dedicated Research and

Development team; however, after discussions with key stakeholders, a

desire to have a more formal process for investigating new potential

products and services does need to be initiated. The requirement to solicit

feedback from members within the organization not directly involved with

the product/service development process is also desired, as well as the

ability to reach out to agents and existing customers to help determine

market potential for services prior to development and launch.

Such an approach would require the ability for engineering, sales, and

Information Technology (IT) management to collaborate about and develop

pre-prototype models of the services to be deployed early in the product

development process. The costs and time associated with projects that

could potentially fail can significantly be reduced by developing a pre-

prototype model of the software/interface/service being offered. This can

apply for both internal IT project deployment as well as customer-facing

deployments. Furthermore, having the engineering, sales, IT, and Executive

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management team periodically review the product/service lifecycle will keep

any projects that are not meeting their goals from being continuously funded

(Keil 1995; Davis and Venkatesh 2004).

Gap Analysis. To transition from the present base architecture to the

desired target architecture will require significant time investment to develop

a process for investigating new product and service offerings. However, the

benefits from enacting these changes can significantly increase market share

for the new products and services developed. Additionally, given the size of

the organization, Telco Inc. is very flexible in its ability to roll out new

products and services. This is one of the advantages to an organization of

its size - the lack of many large layers of "bureaucratic red tape" to go

through prior to developing a new product or service. With the creation of a

more formalized process for researching new products and service, Telco

Inc. can take advantage of the flexibility they have to quickly develop more

"out of the box" telecommunications service offerings to better position itself

in the market.

Issue 4 - Lack of Process Development and Documentation

Business Case. The decision to initiate a new product development

process has to be based on three key conditions:

• Strategic analysis of the company's situation to prioritize product

families giving better revenue expectations for the company

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• Market knowledge to develop a product targeting a specific group's

needs and requirements

• Foreseeable future trends of the market needs

Furthermore, various Information and Communication Technology

(ICT) tools and methodologies play key roles in modern innovation and

product/process development. For example, ICT can support

product/process development by supporting design tools for specific topics,

providing for the knowledge management needed for product/process

development, and providing for collaborative work environments for the

innovation process (Sorli and Dragan 2009).

The TOGAF Architecture Development Model (ADM) can also be used

to help define product and process development methodologies. The TOGAF

ADM includes a phased process for analyzing the current base level of an

architecture, in this case the process development and documentation

process at Telco Inc., projecting a target architecture based upon a needs

analysis, performing a gap analysis to determine how to get from base to

target architecture, as well as how to integrate the new architecture into the

organization (TOGAF 2008).

At Telco Inc., there is no formal or standardized structure for process

development and documentation. Although some processes and information

are documented, there exist various security problems with who has access

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to critical information, how information is accessed, and how they are

haphazardly developed and shared with new employees.

Base Architecture. The level of documentation in various processes

varies based upon what/how the manager of the department wanted to

document. The sales manager has developed fairly detailed process flow

documents for the sales process; however, the provisioning manager

developed a very vague process flow diagram. Both of these were

developed using Microsoft Visio. The technical support manager used word

documents to develop a written "quick check" guide for certain routine

troubleshooting issues. Furthermore, no detailed work instructions exist in

the organization. This results in customers being configured in different

manners based upon who the technician/project manager is, and also

contributes to the same situation being handled in different ways by

different people.

Target Architecture. Discussions with various stakeholders within

the organization have indicated that they wish to have an architecture in

place that will support a uniform customer deployment and configuration

model, as well as a standardized process for performing routine business

functions across all departments. This would indicate the need for inter- and

intra-departmental process flow documents, as well as detailed work

instructions for the various roles and processes that need to be performed

within the organization. This structure would not only ensure a systematic

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and timely process for provisioning and repairing customers, but would also

improve the quality control and assurance of the various processes to deliver

services, provide support to customers, and generate accurate invoices for

customers. The main goal of quality control, or more recently Total Quality

Management, is to maintain the stability of a process after process

development and improvement (Juran 1998).

Gap Analysis. As the base architecture is virtually non-existent, with

very few processes documented, a standard method for process

development needs to be adopted that will include both inter- and intra-

departmental process flow documents with visual references and detailed

work instructions that are step-driven so that quality control and assurance

methodologies can be applied. The TOGAF ADM model can be used to

determine the necessary structure for the software and business

requirements that will be needed to address the details for designing the

various processes within the organization. A sample business use-case

diagram has been included to show the current inter-departmental flow of an

order (Figure 5).

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