Changing the culture of Service Operations to be Service based and Customer focused.
Customer Profile:
Vodafone is the world’s leading international mobile telecommunications group with equity interests in 27 countries across 5 continents
Sector: Telecommunications Geography: Global See: www.vodafone.com
The Customer Issue:
Vodafone’s business growth has been rapid and Vodafone recognised the importance of being driven by customer need to continue to grow their success. Vodafone’s Technology function had already experienced significant change in support of these business drivers but further development was needed. The opportunity to position Service Operations as a leading force within Technology to support Vodafone’s customers presented itself as part of a strategic initiative. The foundations for success existed – great people! However a strong ‘technology’ silo culture remained. A programme was required to change the way people work and transform the culture to become service based and customer focused.
The Solution:
The BSMimpact team developed a programme of work using a range of best practice (e.g. ITIL, ISO/IEC20000) to deliver a coherent number of sustainable improvement activities. Customers and employees were engaged at the earliest opportunity and feedback was collated from across Technology and the Business. High level accountabilities for services and processes across the whole of Technology were agreed with the CTO and the leadership team. In conjunction with key stakeholders a functional organisation was designed and validated against agreed criteria including the collated feedback and a number of key scenarios. To implement this organisation successfully the following were identified and delivered:
- A document describing each role in the organisation
- A process description for each process owned by Service Operations
- A governance manual describing the key activities in place to effectively govern the Service Operations department
- A roadmap outlining the capabilities for each area detailing the capability development initiatives planned over an 18 month period
- A balanced scorecard process to inform decision making and provide the mechanism by which Service Operations performance is measured
- A structured service management training programme to meet the needs of the individuals in an effective and appropriate manner
“Service Operations have taken responsibility for owning the operations of the services that are delivered to the customer” – Director of Customer Management
The Benefits:
Employee engagement scores increased as a direct result: People clearly understood how their role contributes to the wider organisation and overwhelmingly stated that Service Operations was more customer focussed. Customers responded positively commenting that Service Operations was more aligned to their needs and employees now want to join Service Operations which is attracting new talent. While there is a proven link between employee engagement and financial return, benefits of cultural change is never easy to measure. It was however possible to demonstrate financial benefit using the improved performance metrics. The consolidation of previous silo projects with the agreed and aligned capability roadmaps also allowed investment to be optimised.