Fragmented Investment in Telecom Subject Matter Experts

Importance of the Subject Matter Expert in Telecom Operations

Telecommunication Service Providers are presently faced with one of the most complex hierarchy of business process operations amongst other industries, with multi-faceted service offerings being delivered to retail and business customers over a large universe of complex business rules and technology platforms. With the advent of convergence and mobility, the varied world of technical and business rules are intertwined to form a complicated operations value chain where all individual functions are operationally intertwined. In translation of competitive strategies and business objectives to operational units on the ground, most service providers are faced with having to deal with data and knowledge from across numerous silos that have evolved over a period of time. The overwhelming complexity of operations, having evolved over an eon of merging and de-merging, results in an information melting pot and more often than no telecom companies incur costs significant effort and money to derive intelligence from.

It is in such a world that the keen need is felt for resources with the understanding of technologies, processes and business environments bringing a perspective that helps dissect and correlate multiple streams of information, viz. the Subject Matter Expert. In broad terms a Subject Matter Expert can be defined as professionals who have above average detailed knowledge of specific business, process or applications. SMEs are classified at various levels depending on the area and span of knowledge they support within the organization and hence we would have Domain Experts, Application Experts, Process Experts, etc.

It is quintessential that service providers invest in Subject Matter Experts in the current business environment that demands nimble footed change that often requires sizeable overhauls in business operations involving process, systems and evolution knowledge. SMEs can be leveraged to be able to make sense of complex business as usual world thus significantly reducing effort and time spent in understanding and making sense of operational and business challenges.

Current State of Affairs

While working with Telecommunication Service Providers, especially in the operations and IT playing fields, one often encounters professionals designated as Subject Matter Experts in respective pockets of operations & services. Typically the knowledge and scope of support of these SMEs is limited to an understanding of the immediate operations with limited perspective of business and end-to-end value chain. These SMEs are staffed based on their functional evolution through the organization and their knowledge and skills are based on passive experience of having grown bottom up.

For example, while doing an assessment in Trouble-to-Resolve support for consumer DSL, there were four different SME groups supporting the team that the author encountered. The structural definitions are summarized below.

• Technology SMEs: These were a team of 3 to 4 individuals who understood the network and switches that were used to provide services to the end consumer. Their function was mostly to support the operations team in handling severe escalations pertaining to intermittent and recurring DSL connectivity issues where all other aspects related to systems and customer premise equipment issues had been ruled out.
• Process SMEs: These were a team of 6 – 10 resources, each mapped to 2 or 3 teams based on their seniority (reporting to the manager of the teams they served), who served as the archives of the business processes, business rules and are typically the custodians of policy and procedure documentations. These individuals were responsible for ongoing training of teams, policy & procedure change management, process documentation and shadow supporting new entrants within the larger team.
• Systems/Applications SMEs: This group of 2 individuals were experts in the systems and tools that were used to service the customer, with detailed knowledge of systems’ fault lines and workarounds, where and how to get information from various applications, use and limitation of various tools (diagnostic and general), etc. These individuals support the teams for any system related queries and also were the channel of communication between IT and operations teams.
• Quality & Reporting SMEs: This was the only unified team of 10 – 12 individuals that were experts in Quality & Reporting (MIS) tools & methodologies. Typically their skills would include an understanding of quality methodologies like Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and above average understanding and working experience in tools like MS ACCESS/Excel. This team was typically involved in quality monitoring & feedback, data accumulation & reporting and other managerial support functions

These are precious resources to the organization but the fragmentation of knowledge led the author up the hill in multi-channel inputs and having to make sense of the big picture by interacting additionally with SME counterparts in upstream, downstream and IT teams thus consuming significant effort and time in information gathering.

There are three key factors driving the fragmentation of SMEs into functional groups where the respective individuals were prodigies in their specific functions and support areas.

2.1 Passive Development of SME Resources

Subject Matter Experts are typically resources who would have spent anywhere between 3 to 5 years in delivering a specific function within the organization in addition to having worked on similar roles in the past. Most of his or her knowledge is experiential rather that actively invested training. This results in the SMEs knowledge being limited to his experience of having dealt within a boundary defined by assigned team, process and business rules with a handoff to one or multiple downstream and upstream nodes for further analytics and escalation. The resulting impact is on customer experience, overstretched workflow and a seemingly impossible to analyze business problem.

For example, one of the Subject Matter Experts the author interacted with had the following career path before he became a Billing Disputes - Process SME for an FTTx service provider.

• High School
• Company 1 -> 2 years working on Level 1 customer support
• Company 2 -> 2 years working on Billing Helpdesk
• Current Company -> 1 year working on Billing Helpdesk
• Current Company -> 1.5 years (and ongoing) as a Billing Disputes SME

I was interacting with this SME to understand how a Billing Dispute had resulted due to a Network Inventory Related issue. The course of my interactions went somewhat as below.

• In my interaction I was trying to search his knowledge on a particular dispute and was trying to understand what specific network inventory conflicts had led to the customer being overcharged for services. After significant questions the limit of information I could extract was that Granite (Network Inventory Tool) showed two units of particular CPE when the customer claimed there was only one installed and that he would refer to the Level 4 support specializing in Network Inventory to provide a resolution.
• In the same line of investigation I spoke with the Level 4 SME who did not have any level of access to the billing application. The summary of information I was able to extract was that the ordering process had sent a faulty CPE that was not returned and then shipped a working CPE hence the Network Inventory showed two units of CPE. The Level 4 team was now to interact with the Procurement team to set up a return label for the faulty CPE that was never returned and manually remove the additional CPE.
• In my subsequent interaction with the Procurement team’s Shipment Process SME, I was told that the return label had ended up at the wrong shipment address which was derived during the Ordering Phase and that the second CPE shipment was carried by the field technician and hence the address never got corrected.
• I had to investigate with a Provisioning Process SME to understand that the address was erroneous because the customer was living in a rented basement of the provided address which was not accurately captured by the Sales team.

This does not bode too well for customer experience! All the respective SMEs knew very well how and where to get their respective information from and who to approach for resolution. But no one person knew and therefore could own the resolution of the dispute or the frequent problem therefore.

But let us assume that there is an imperative to investigate the high volume of billing disputes and understand the information flowing in from the various corners of the value chain there would be a significant effort involved in deriving root causes and then implementing any developed solution.

Functional Definition of SMEs

In the example quoted at the start of this section there is a description of how SME roles are defined. The dominating approach to defining the SME role is derived from the passive approach to designating SMEs where resources are nominated bottom up and hence restricted in role definition mapped to the functional team where the resource in nominated from.

This restrictive definition impact the organizational view of Subject Matter Expertise to provide tactical functional support and this then acts as a hurdle against any inclination towards actively investing in training Subject Matter Experts to improve their knowledge of the broader value chain.

One of the reasons for this restrictive definition of SMEs is because candidates for the opportunity are often nominated to retain the team’s best resources from attrition due to absence of career movement.

For example, the Billing Disputes Process SME the author interacted with, his role was defined in providing knowledge & functional support along the following key tenets.

• Policies & procedures to be followed while handling billing disputes
• Handoffs that should be initiated in case of complex fallouts leading to billing disputes
• Document and impart refresher to the team around any system or process changes specific to BAU activities
• Support the team manager in any escalations pertaining to the respective process

Lack of Unified Subject Matter Knowledge Resources/Access

Most Telecommunication Service Providers have evolved from product & function based organizational silos that have resulted in disjointed knowledge resources. In addition to this the knowledge resources are access controlled for the core areas of operations.

In one of the US based telecommunication majors the author worked with to rationalize the business processes for one of their consumer service offerings, there were 3 knowledge platforms across various operational silos. Within each operations teams there was level based demarcation of document access restrictions and logically separated locations over the intranet. An indicative representation is shown below.

This demarcation acts as a proactive hurdle in restrictive discouragement towards Subject Matter Experts in specific and the supported teams in general to reach out across the organization to be able to gain a perspective of the end-to-end Business Value Chain. This over engineering of the KM system leads to some key symptoms that result in our silo view of SMEs.

• SMEs and their teams are discouraged from taking ownership of a customer and his/her issues hence providing a not so optimum customer experience
• When attempting to design & implement cross-organizational changes, SMEs have to be involved from across teams with added investment of time and effort in weaving together the end-to-end fabric of impact
• Change Management becomes a critical path activity in the testing & implementation
• There is significant duplication & redundancy in documentation with separate effort required in documenting procedures and policies at each level

Conclusion

Subject Matter Expertise is a key to a well structured and sustainable Knowledge Management architecture within Telecom Service Providers. This importance in not observed in the treatment of Subject Matter Experts as 1. transition roles between entry level roles and team leaders and 2. silo functional supporting roles. The case for investing in a unified SME organization as a shared service is convincing considering the costs of Change Management, Training & Knowledge Continuity. SMEs with end-to-end value chain knowledge and cross functional perspective add significant savings in reducing knowledge related costs of Service Providers and ease pains of knowledge management activities.