CASE STUDY

HANDBOOK

Taking a customer-centric
approach to strategic goals
Summary: A conversation with the CTO of a large European service provider changed Mohammed
Al-Hakbani’s approach to Saudi Telecom’s back office systems, from viewing them as a cost center to
seeing them as the key to achieving strategic goals. By using TM Forum standards, benchmarking metrics
and best practices, his company’s transformation project demonstrated their benefits in only 16 weeks.
As he says, “One of the most impressive aspects of this project is that, with the support of TM Forum,
we were able to determine which transformations were low hanging fruit – projects whose benefits
would subsidize follow-on work – so that early projects could become self-sustaining.”

Leading the investigation into the value of TM Forum’s
Frameworx for his company – Riyadh-based Saudi Telecom
Company (STC), the largest telecom company in the Middle
East – Mohammed Al-Hakbani, Operation Support System
(OSS) Director within the Network Sector, recalls a particularly
important day. “We had been introduced to the CTO of a large
European telecom provider, and he explained to us the strategic
importance of OSS/BSS systems to his company – indeed OSS/
BSS transformation was central to his company’s shift from a
technology-centric to a customer-centric organization. Now, I
had been thinking of OSS/BSS as a cost center, not so much
as a way to help us realize our strategic goals. So this meeting
became a turning point that has since guided the Company
towards significant benefit.”
STC was privatized years earlier, in 1998, marking the
beginning of a period of significant company transformation
that has included organizational change, strategic investments
outside the Kingdom, and technology and infrastructure
investments in all aspects of the business. Like most telecoms
operators worldwide, the move to a customer-centric focus
required changes not only to technology, but also to software,
culture, and processes. With the help of TM Forum, the
company is now able to adapt industry best practices to its
own unique needs; driving improvements in several customer-
experience related key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as
reducing implementation time for complex new initiatives.
Al-Hakbani, who was the program manager for the company’s
OSS transition, relied heavily on TM Forum. “The Forum gave
us access to the experience of hundreds of service providers,
providing best practices, benchmarking data, and specific
standards and data models that helped us to coordinate both
technical and process transitions.”
For example, explains Al-Hakbani, STC chose to introduce
a new Fiber to the Home (FTTH) product line. As part of the
design of new systems to support FTTH, STC was faced with
an important choice regarding how to orchestrate the various
systems that needed to be coordinated when provisioning
new FTTH service. STC’s options were to use orchestration
functionality inside its own inventory system – as had been
done previously for its DSL service – or to spend the time and
effort creating dedicated, centralized orchestration functionality.
Reducing risk, making informed decisions
“In retrospect, it is very clear that our choice to orchestrate our
process flows through a central information bus was the right
choice,” recollects Al-Hakbani. “But at the time, the benefit
was not so clear. The initial project was more expensive, and
required changes to systems that had worked for years.”
He adds, “TM Forum benchmarking data and Frameworx
best practices were critical in helping us make the right
decision. They helped us and our executive management to
understand the substantial downstream capital and operational
benefits that will be driven by this investment, as well as the
less tangible benefits to STC’s customers’ experience.”
Another example is STC’s trouble management process,
also enhanced through the company’s membership of
TM Forum. Increasing customer satisfaction by resolving
trouble tickets ahead of time resulted in saving cost and
improving STC’s brand perception. STC used the Frameworx
trouble management process to identify opportunities for
improvement, and then to demonstrate the potential benefits of
the improvements to managers responsible for implementing
trouble ticketing processes.
A final example is STC’s performance assurance management

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process, which also gained through the company’s membership
of TM Forum. With the introduction of a complex service such
as IPTV, where customer experience was essential in reaching
and maintaining the company’s customer satisfaction goals,
STC used the TM Frameworx trouble and performance process.
Frameworx and best practices
Al-Hakbani explains that his company values hard numbers that
quantify business benefit: “We are very pleased to have been
awarded the TM Forum’s prestigious Operational Excellence
Award in 2010 for a transformation project that demonstrated
benefit in only 16 weeks.” In this project, STC worked with
IBM, and began with an assessment of current processes,
applications, and architecture against TM Forum Business
Process Framework (eTOM). “One of the most impressive
aspects of this project is that, with the support of TM Forum,
we were able to determine which transformations were low
hanging fruit: projects whose benefits would subsidize
follow-on work, so that its early projects could become
self-sustaining.”
STC’s transformation team mapped all OSS processes to the
eTOM model, in Level 3 as well as some in Level 4 and 5. As
part of this project, STC also used the Information Framework
(SID) for data integration. Internally, all vendor proprietary
interfaces are mapped to the Information Framework. In
addition, STC is pushing its vendor partners to be compliant
with the Information Framework. STC uses TM Forum’s
Integration Framework (MTOSI and OSS/J) for inter-working
between different vendors, technologies, and systems in its
service assurance implementation. STC is also collaborating
with other vendors that comply with TM Forum Integration
Framework and its interface standards.
In addition to adopting Frameworx, STC is now involved
in the TM Forum Benchmarking Program. “Our use of the
Forum’s benchmarking data is particularly important at STC,”
explains Al-Hakbani, who now tracks several benchmarking
KPIs including: mean duration to fulfill service orders,
percentage of orders delivered by committed date, mean
duration to fix customer reported troubles, fulfillment process
cost as a percentage of operating expenditure (OpEx), and
assurance process cost as a percentage OpEx. By tracking
www.tmforum.org
these numbers and using them in its decision-making, STC is
able to become a more rigorously managed organization.
Results Summary
In summary, STC has realized a number of benefits from
Frameworx and the company’s TM Forum membership.
They are:
n saving significant potential downstream costs through
understanding, and then implementing, TM Forum
Frameworx architectural best practices including Information
Framework (SID) and TM Forum interfaces (such as MTOSI,
and OSS/J);
n cultural and process change management support;
n support in identifying low-hanging fruit transformation;
projects, which produced the maximum value in the shortest
amount of time, thereby optimizing cash flow;
n identification of which KPIs, of the many thousands that it
could have tracked, were the most valuable in converting to a
customer-focused business.
Future
As the benefits of TM Forum-inspired initiatives continue to
be measured, STC will use them to justify further investments
that incorporate Frameworx best practices, standards, and
benchmarking information. Al-Hakbani explains that “working
with the TM Forum is critical to our ability to cost-justify
ongoing investments in industry best practices. As our
thinking about the strategic nature of OSS/BSS investment
matures, understanding other service providers’ experiences in
recouping the cost of these projects many times over is very
important to us, because it will make the benefits of this work
very clear to our executive sponsors.”
Look to STC to leverage its excellent technical staff as well
as the passion of its OSS/BSS leadership to continue to push
new boundaries. Particular initiatives will include an increasing
use of software services, and continued development of its
business process management infrastructure.
CASE STUDY HANDBOOK 15