What was the scope?

A major Australian telco made a strategic decision to subcontract the service delivery component of its contractual arrangement with approximately 60 customers countrywide. This comprised the pre-sales consulting, implementation, project management and maintenance for a particular product line of VOIP telecommunication systems.

The transition of these service delivery functions to a third party had to be completed by a specific date and within a very short timeframe. Failure to achieve would have resulted in a breach of the VOIP customers contractual arrangements and potential legal implications. This was clearly unacceptable to the telco.

The telco realised that they did not have the relevant skills to confidently tackle this project and when Wired Consulting was engaged, the project was at Red Flag status. The scope of this project was as follows:

• Transition all VOIP service delivery functions from the telco to the third party with zero impact to operational performance and customer satisfaction.

What was the challenge?

Aggressive completion date. From the time of engagement, Wired Consulting had a 6 week time frame in which to complete the transaction. Similar such assignments have required a 3-4 month duration.

Incomplete operational and commercial models. The final details of the third party’s operational delivery processes had not been confirmed at the time of Wired Consulting’s engagement. Additionally, the commercial arrangements had not been finalised. This meant that the end “target” was movable, making the development of a robust project plan extremely challenging.

Motivation of personnel. The core of the project team was to be formed with subject matter experts from the telco, who had very recently undergone a series of redundancies. Staff morale was understandably low, creating even more of a challenge for Wired Consulting given that these people were working on the project over and above their day jobs.

How did Wired add value to the client?

Relevant skills available for immediate start. Given the aggressive project timeframe, Wired Consulting was able to have a suitably qualified and experienced senior project manager on site within 4 hours. For this particular assignment, commercial savvy and motivation skills were particularly relevant and our competency profiling process enabled us to identify the appropriate resource for the job.

Get the project back on track. Our experienced project manager swiftly pulled together a project team and steering committee with senior representation from each company. A sense of urgency was created and a plan developed. All relevant focus and buy-in was achieved within 5 days.

Flexibility. The project plan and resourcing requirements needed to be continually altered, as the commercial and operational models were finalised. The ability of our senior PM to remain flexible, work with and understand the client’s changing requirements helped to ensure a successful outcome. We understand that we can’t always work in a perfect world.

Seamless transition. Taking into account the requirement for zero operational degradation and customer satisfaction impact, we designed a soft transition plan that allowed for multiple fallback scenarios in the event of any failure.

The result?

A project that was off track was rescued and a potential legal issue averted. The seamless transition ensured that customer satisfaction and operational integrity were maintained.

Would you like to know more? Please contact us now for a discussion.

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