Case Study - Network Management Centre

This is a case study from a transformation programme completed in the UK in 2005 by a senior X4MIS consultant.

The Business Issues 

The NMC had witnessed a great deal of recent change, including 

• Structural change - the reduction in the number of network management centres across the country and the amalgamation of work into the one remaining centre 
• Introduction of new systems and network monitoring tools 
• Network evolution and growth 
• Launch of 3G As a result the NMC was facing a number of challenges 
• Meeting service levels on the alarms 
• Improving the quality of the work produced and the level of fault diagnosis 
• Adherence to process - particularly as engineers had come from different centres 
• Matching the available resource to the alarm arrival patterns - the NMC was split into four teams each working 12-hour shifts and fundamentally, how do you analyse, improve and measure processes when everything is moving around you? 

Discovery Audit 

In order to baseline current performance and identify prioritised areas for improvement, a comprehensive Discovery Audit was completed including:

• Extensive work sampling, consultants sitting with engineers to observe the processes used to deal with alarms 
• Structured interviews - with a range of staff, managers and internal customers 
• Staff surveys 
• Management information, technology and process documentation review 

A number of key issues were identified:

• Processes were poorly defined and documented 
• Engineers were dealing with the diagnosis of faults in different ways 
• Local field engineers who received work from the NMC often had to do re-work or more investigation • There was no reliable management information 
• The technology used did not fully support the business processes 
• The teams had low morale but an appetite for change. 

Transformation Programme Approach

Potential benefits in the region of £400,000 were identified or 15% of capacity.  Potential benefits were documented and validated with senior management.

The benefits identified fell into four categories 

• People
• Process 
• Technology 
• Management Information 

        Read People, Process and Technology 

Each of the four NMC teams nominated a 'Champion' for each of these key benefit areas and four work streams were created - each work stream being led by a consultant with the objective of realising the identified benefits fully utilising the input of the Champions.  The consultants mentored and coached the nominated champions. 

For example, in the process work stream, the process champions identified the 5 key processes in the NMC.  The consultants coached them to define the 'as is' processes and then develop 'to be' processes taking into account internal customer feedback.  The process champions developed new procedures, then trained their own colleagues in the new procedures and developed processes to sample improvements going forward. 

Improvements

Improvements and Benefits Across the four work streams were made, including:

• Engineers developed a management information dashboard showing key customer, financial and process measures - the dashboard is now completed and circulated on a monthly basis 
• A number of improvements to the office layout were implemented by the team 
• Champions facilitated the completion of staff surveys and the identification of actions needed to improve survey results. 

Benefits

A number of benefits were realised as  a result of the programme: 

• The NMC speed of tackling critical alarms on the network has improved greatly - with 95% of critical alarms now being dealt with within 30 minutes - previously around 80% had been achieved. The impact of this improvement is a speedier resolution of customer impacting faults 
• There has been a 20% reduction in the number of locally based engineer call outs due to better fault diagnosis. This has reduced costs as more faults are fixed remotely as opposed to incurring the expense of engineers visiting the site 
• Regular sampling and coaching has shown month-on-month improvements in adherence by engineers to the new processes 
• Surveys completed by the internal customers that the NMC serve have shown ongoing improvement in the quality of work being passed to them, leading to less duplication in finding out where the fault lies • Regular staff surveys at the NMC have shown improved morale. 

The NMC manager said the programme created a huge amount of momentum for us.  The changes to our operational culture and processes will deliver higher levels of network availability and help establish us as the network of choice for the new generation of customers.  In addition, the benefits we deliver will enable us to expand our investment programme over the coming years.