Anatomy of Classical Stovepipes

By Amol Kulkarni, Product Portfolio Manager, Tecnotree corporation

Volatility in the communications industry, especially in the last decade, has thrown in a myriad of prophesies around the future of traditional Communications Services Providers (CSPs). On one hand, the technology of conveniently staying connected has reached masses. On the other, the demand-driven, subscriptions-based business models of CSPs were taken to task by rapidly evolving alternate communication media. Then, there came the advent of social-and-ever-so-powerful consumer. This has entailed a paradigm shift for CSPs with the demands of future-driven operational constructs, which are lean, well lubricated and always on-their-toes.

Those who have to manage it often take the adage ‘Change is good’ with a pinch of salt. For the breath of fresh air and the prospective future it promises, it also brings the upheaval and tribulations should you struggle to manage that change. Just ask any CSP executive about changes they have faced over last few years in the way they do business. They would say they have seen it all. On the business front, they have come through monopoly, regulation, de-regulation, privatization, competition, globalization, liberalization, diversification, consolidation et al. The other key factor in their lifecycle flux being the evolution of communications technologies and its proliferation to the masses. The needs and expectations from the industry have evolved from convenience of a chosen few to irreplaceable necessity of one and all. The blurring lines among the communications, commerce and technology businesses then further compounded this. The motley of challenges and their resilience to fire fighting on multiple fronts has been such that you would most likely be rewarded for lending them a sympathetic ear.

The separation of the network-related organization (which powered the products and services) from the business and customer-facing set-up was an easy and convenient strategy CSPs had for a long time. This served them well as the BSS (Business Support Systems) and OSS (Operations Support Systems) in terms of technology stacks to run the businesses developed almost hand-in-glove. But as the communications technologies evolved to extend the proliferation and reach of services, customer-bases swelled and services bundling opportunities exploded. The priorities required putting the customers first in the value chain as it wasn’t a demand-driven market anymore.

A fast-forward to where the industry is today. With the evolution, complexities in terms of managing the business have grown exponentially. And in contrast, the slow pace of strategic, operational and systemic infrastructure development required to handle these complexities gave rise to some of the major silos. Industry jargons may classify them as silos, stovepipes, incidental or accidental architectures, or just the need-of-the-hour and just in time constructs as illustrated by this graphic:

They essentially represent the known restrictions CSPs have had in modelling and managing their business information and structuring the operations during the evolution.

Typical Silo	Highlights	Organizational Constructs
Customer	Segregation of business operations to cater to Retail (B2C), Business/ Corporate (B2B) and Wholesale (volume and virtual business) segments	Organizational processes to serve various customer segments are modelled as distinct business units
Services	Business operations are organized around the various services that these CSPs offer and the way they are delivered across customers	Business units typically represent the various service lines and delivery
Functions	Well-defined separation of functions, for example, strategy, customer-facing units, back-office units, network operations	Business units represent the classical BSS & OSS ecosystem, with strategy and management units influencing their integration
Operations	Represents the operational realities in the form of multi-geographical presence of CSPs, the ongoing M&A scenarios, intra and inter-operational partnerships	The core business units drive the geographical operations, merged entities, partnerships and logistical alignments
Channels	Provides a view of operations where efforts are made to reach the customer through a combination of channels	Business units perform cross-functional operations for each of the channels
Buzz	Typical overlay based on any of the above silos to cash-in on the new-age advents of operational and technology paradigms	The traditional business units get a make-over with an overlay based on the strategy adopted by the particular CSP

As it’s said, you learn forward and grow wise in the retrospect. Tecnotree’s experience of working through such stovepipes with our global customers has helped us envision our futuristic solutions portfolio. Through our Tecnotree Agility^TM solutions platform, we endeavour to empower the CSPs to successfully navigate through these silos and avoid the pitfalls of getting stuck into one. Our convergent Customer Lifecycle Management solution helps the CSPs put their customers in the forefront of the strategy as the evolution demands it.

We continue to strive hard and devise effective ways to enable CSPs to respond to the market demands and transition to the future.