Challenge

A leading cable MSO was experiencing serious impediments to progress with its voice rollouts due to a local exchange wholesale supplier’s inability to execute expeditiously on its commitments to provisioning services to the MSO’s customers. It decided to replace its existing provider of landline interconnectivity with a new Tier 1 service provider and a contract that imposed serious financial penalties it if failed to meet contracted targets.

With tens of millions of dollars in potential penalties at stake, the new service provider’s executive management concluded that outside expertise would be needed to assure execution on all of the steps essential to meeting those targets.

The communications service provider selected TMNG Global to provide that expertise. The initial engagement with the service provider was to advise them as they negotiated the terms of the new agreement with the MSO. The MSO demanded an aggressive agreement that required the service provider to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid serious penalties. Thus, TMNG helped the service provider ensure that its interests were protected also with appropriate penalty stipulations for under-performance on the part of the MSO.

Because the communications service provider lacked a local presence in most of these new markets, the agreement required that they build connectivity into the affected rate centers much faster than it was equipped to under normal circumstances. They had to meet aggressive target dates for having the facilities in place at each rate center, and they also had to meet migration targets for transferring existing customers from the previous carrier onto their facilities.

TMNG Global Solution

Over the course of the two-year engagement, TMNG Global provided the expertise essential to ensuring that the service provider fulfilled all its obligations as a supplier of wholesale local exchange services to cable VoIP operations. These requirements included completion of an accelerated build out of facilities across hundreds of local market rate centers to accommodate a migration of cable VOIP customers away from the former wholesale provider. (See sidebar for explanation of cable’s wholesale rate center service requirements.)

The service provider and TMNG agreed on an approach to managing the execution of these requirements which entailed setting up a “mission control” Program Management Office to be staffed by TMNG experts. The TMNG PMO responsibilities included expert contributions to strategies, methodologies and oversight that would ensure comprehensive planning for all aspects of the project, development of all systems essential to execution of project goals, maintenance of the project schedule, adherence to customer service requirements and coordination of all activities essential to minimizing contract penalties.

The PMO had the responsibility to oversee all aspects of the transition which included the build-out of local facilities, the cutover of existing MSO subscribers to the new service provider, and the process of setting up the provisioning and service assurance processes so that once the transition was complete, new subscribers could be placed directly into the new service provider’s transport network.

The Expert Team Advantage
All of the PMO experts were cross-functional personnel with experience in program management and primary expertise in telephony. The latter was of primary importance in selecting the right supplier of program management support.

The PMO team functioned in an advisory role as observers who tracked performance of each party involved, measuring that performance and reporting to executive management at both the communications service provider and the cable MSO senior executive management.

The TMNG team employed its proprietary program management methodologies to ensure that every aspect of the complex transition to the new carrier would be carefully planned, monitored and measured so as to prevent any development from impeding adherence to performance targets. TMNG created and managed the master project plan, including all aspects of the end-to-end migration process. Process planning encompassed the procedures for managing all migration issues and for making adjustments necessitated by non-compliance on the part of the previous wholesale supplier.

To ensure a successful on-schedule build out of all the rate centers required careful collaboration between the TMNG team and the MSO’s staff, including system paths connecting different working groups across company lines.

The Change Management Challenge
Constantly shifting circumstances affecting fulfillment on the part of the MSO and its new service provider from one market to the next comprised another difficult challenge to keeping contractual agreements on track. TMNG had responsibility for planning and executing on the change control database and system that was used to ensure all contractual adjustments were smoothly incorporated into the plan and operational elements at all levels. Penalty calculation metrics were tied to changing market conditions and actual facts on the ground.

Over time, the MSO’s expectations for the volume of voice subscribers in different rate centers and even the actual service footprint would change many times. In all, the TMNG team accommodated 258 change requests affecting 57 percent of the rate centers.

Cost Savings from Improved Forecasting
To minimize changes and disruptions to the workflow, TMNG developed a method of forecasting subscriber growth to assist the MSO with calculating the capacity and number of provisioning requirements would be required for each rate center. At the outset, the parties learned that the MSO’s projections could be wildly off the mark, resulting in over-building of capacity in some areas and under-building in others; wreaking havoc with the penalty assessment process on both sides. By developing sophisticated forecasting models, TMNG was able to provide the means for predicting migration schedules that were consistently on target.

Metrics and Reporting
An essential component to the entire program was the reporting metrics and processes through which the TMNG team kept everyone informed. The PMO monitored progress on all fronts and provided detailed multi-level reporting on development phases, timelines, adherence to requirements and other key facets.

To set up the reporting program, TMNG identified all the service level areas that were associated with contractual compliance and designed metrics for monitoring and trending compliance to these service level agreement terms. Along with developing the basic reporting system, TMNG assisted IT teams from the carrier and its vendors with completion of interface, data element and reporting requirements that fed into the migration tracking database.

Through every stage of the engagement, TMNG applied the methods and metrics it had developed to keep a running assessment of the risks to the carrier from any potential contract penalty issues. This included identification of resource shortages, potential bottleneck areas and shortcomings in automated processes. At the same time, the PMO team provided the day-to-day analysis and recommendations required for mitigating such risks.

Various types of reports issued to CEO, director and manager level clients were generated to provide updates on the daily, weekly and quarterly status of the project. There were summary versions for senior executives and detailed reports that allowed stake holders to review performance against the master agreement on a line-by-line basis.

An immense volume of performance detail had to be tracked to make sure everything essential to meeting project targets and milestones were covered. Once the build out was complete, TMNG tracked everything that went into assuring the carrier was maintaining a ‘five 9s’ level of performance for cable VoIP customers.

The TMNG team regularly reported on overall network uptime, percentage of calls completed, percentage of new subscribers that went through provisioning without falling out and much else. The 911 process alone required extensive monitoring to validate the address of each new subscriber.

The reporting system also tracked all the usage data that went into the billing process between the carrier and the MSOs it served.

Benefits to the Client

Over the course of the two-year engagement, as the service provider developed relationships with other Cable MSOs, many new projects were incorporated into the initial project mandate, leading to an expanding involvement of the TMNG PMO team. At the end, the effort was hugely successful, resulting in all goals being met with a zero net penalty cost to the client.

With the successful conclusion of the original PMO engagement with TMNG, the communications service provider realized that its expanding cable solutions business would benefit from a continuing presence of the TMNG expertise. As they signed up more cable companies, they continued to call on TMNG to help them meet the performance requirements of the new agreements. Further, TMNG is continuing to assist with various IT challenges that had arisen during the engagement.

Despite the lack of a formal PMO structure post-engagement, TMNG became an integral part of the carrier’s services to cable companies and remained engaged for another year beyond the scope of the original project. This allowed the communications service provider to develop a mature cable solutions business that has become a major force in the ongoing success of cable VoIP operations across multiple MSOs.

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