Many telecom transformation programmes are set up to fail long before the software goes live, because the organisation has not clearly defined what it is actually trying to transform.
Telecom operators have spent the best part of a decade modernising the BSS and OSS systems behind billing, ordering, product management and customer operations. Budgets have been substantial, board attention high, vendor selection exhaustive. Yet results remain stubbornly underwhelming.
Boston Consulting Group estimates that more than 70% of transformation projects fall short of their objectives. The picture is similar beyond telecom: McKinsey research into digital transformation, based on a survey of over 1,300 senior leaders, found that organisations captured a median of just 31% of expected revenue benefits and 25% of expected cost benefits.
The natural assumption is that technology is to blame. Legacy systems too rigid, integrations too fragile. There is truth in that. But technology is often being asked to solve a problem that was never properly defined in the first place.
The decisions that happen before the RFP
Technology selection is often treated as the beginning of transformation. It is not.
Before an operator asks which BSS or OSS platform to buy, it needs to answer more fundamental questions. What business is it trying to become? Which customer journeys need to change? Which processes should disappear rather than simply be automated? What is the organisation prepared to stop doing?
BCG identifies “not looking at the big picture” and “waiting too long to bring in the business side” as two of five common recipes for failure in telco transformation. If those questions go unanswered, the RFP becomes a substitute for strategy and some of the most consequential decisions get made, or avoided, before the programme has even begun.
Transformation cannot be owned by technology alone
BCG notes that many telco transformations are IT-led, and that almost all such transformations fail. Successful transformation requires strong engagement between the business, IT and other functions. The issue, as Cerillion has explored in its analysis of why BSS/OSS transformations fail when IT leads alone, is one of ownership: modernising an entire BSS or OSS estate changes products, processes, customer journeys and organisational responsibilities. IT can enable those changes. It cannot define all of them.
The result, when that distinction is lost, is a programme that can be technically successful while being commercially unsuccessful. A system delivered on time and within budget can still fail to deliver the business case that justified it.
Sponsorship is not a courtesy
Prosci’s research on change management, which has tracked programmes for more than 25 years, consistently identifies active, visible executive sponsorship as the leading contributor to change success. Its data shows that projects with extremely ineffective sponsors had only a 27% likelihood of meeting their objectives, compared with 79% for projects with extremely effective sponsors.
Programmes with weak sponsorship rarely lack a named sponsor. What they lack is a sponsor who behaves like one once the launch announcement has faded from memory.
Don’t make the business case wait for go-live
Breaking a large transformation into increments that each deliver measurable business value changes the dynamic. It gives sponsors something tangible to own, and creates opportunities to adjust course before a strategic mistake becomes an expensive migration problem.
Telstra’s T22 transformation is a useful example: the operator reduced its consumer and small-business portfolio from around 1,800 products to just 20, reflecting former CEO Andy Penn’s view that a business cannot successfully digitise all the complexity of the past.
The increments should represent meaningful business capabilities, not smaller technology releases dressed up as milestones. The question isn’t “what can we deliver next?” It’s “what piece of the business can we make materially better next?”
The lesson is cheaper than it looks
Successful transformation rests on three disciplines: business leaders define the outcome and stay accountable for it; executive sponsorship is active rather than symbolic; and effective governance keeps individual workstreams aligned with the original objective. These disciplines do not depend on technology choices. They require decisions made before technology selection, not discovered during implementation.
The platform should be selected to deliver the transformation the business has defined, not allowed to define the transformation by default.
Who owns the transformation, what business outcome are they accountable for, and how will we know we are getting there? Get those answers right first, and technology selection becomes considerably easier. Get them wrong, and no selection process will compensate for it.
