BRI helps telecom company
turn around a flagging IT department

Background

When a new CIO took the reins at a mid-sized media/telecom company he soon discovered that recent layoffs had left the IT department severely understaffed. As a result, talent was depleted and processes suffered a breakdown. Facing an uphill battle to rebuild IT capabilities, the CIO engaged Blue River International to help.

Challenges

During the discovery phase, our consultants found that back-end processes were severely logjammed. The company’s end-to-end process – from order to cash – was choking on trouble tickets due to insufficient staff.

With limited IT resources, employees were scrambling to fix problems just to keep the order-to-cash process working. Development staff had no time to improve client-facing applications. As a result, the company was unable to design and implement new product offerings in the market. Nor was it able to respond effectively to products and services introduced by competitors. The firm’s market share was eroding.

Our consultant also concluded that several IT departments, including Quality Assurance, were insufficiently staffed.

Solution

BRI consultants redesigned the entire order-to-cash process workflow, without disrupting existing business. Back end processes were redesigned. Enhanced processes for governance, controls and prioritization of trouble tickets were instituted.

Before these changes, IT service priorities were determined by which employees could shout the loudest, rather than by the true severity of the problem. The new governance rules and controls required that business units and IT resources determine priorities together, so the most pressing problems were resolved quickly. In addition, maintenance releases of software were deployed faster, with a release calendar published for the impacted parties.

With new processes and controlled software launches in place, IT staff soon caught up with lagging trouble tickets and the rate of fixes outpaced the rate of new tickets filed. Programmers were able to resume work on new software features and services, putting the company back on track to compete effectively in the marketplace.

Our consultants also redesigned the Quality Assurance unit and other departments, created job descriptions for staff positions and actively interviewed job candidates. The revitalized QA department helped software teams deliver stronger and more stable software products and services. In the end, the company was able to save money and resources and still deliver improved products to its customers.