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The Challenge

A European investment consortium without telecom operating experience acquired an Eastern European cellular company with more than a million customers. Local management offered a list of priority activities and a capex budget, but the new owners wanted to know what an internationally-experienced telecom management team would recommend as priorities for improvement. In addition to operations, they were also concerned about governance techniques. The owners also sought implementation plans for those high priority improvements, and coaching for certain key managers in the acquired company.

The Solution

TEG provided an operations review/opportunity analysis team of seven consultants for one month, including three who would become coaches for IT, Operations, and Network after completion of the initial analysis.

The team’s report included recommendations on governance, network, IT, processes, operations, finance, marketing and sales, and staff development. It also included a revised capex budget, a prioritized list of nearly 100 recommendations, and implementation plans for the most important recommendations. The report also included examples of critical tools and concepts such as mission/vision/values, project planning, process mapping, business case preparation, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Reporting, and Management Skills training.

The Results

The company proceeded to implement the projects recommended in the report. TEG provided coaches for the leaders of Network, IT, and Operations. Implementation proceeded on schedule. Actual results are consistent with the TEG predictions.

To assist with implementation, the company hired a TEG consultant to be the Program Manager, and also hired TEG people as CFO, as Marketing Director, and as CIO. As the projects were implemented, TEG provided ongoing support in:

- Facilitating an executive off-site meeting to define vision, values, goals, and corporate policies
- Training the staff on business cases, project management, process mapping and process improvement, and profitability analysis.
- Developing draft corporate policies such as schedule of authority, system procurement, vendor management, calculation of key performance indicators, standard board meeting agenda, employee handbook, and others.
- Creating and implementing customer loyalty programs.
- Leading the process definition/improvement teams which defined processes prior to SAP implementation
- Analyzing the manual interventions designed into the company’s IT systems
- Developing a regulatory strategy in view of liberalization planned for 2003.
- Advising on interconnection and roaming agreements.
- Auditing the IT function and its progress toward implementing its transformation plan.
- Developing a complete new pricing plan and implementation plan.
- Creating a new product strategy for the convergence of wireless and wireline, and assisting with implementation.
- Creating a new distribution channel strategy, and assisting with implementation.
- Assessing the internal audit function and personnel.

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