San Francisco, Calif. — The majority of communication service providers admit their businesses are suffering from inefficient business processes, a survey by Exigen Group has revealed. Most say budgetary constraints and lack of alignment between IT and the business are to blame.
Exigen, the business process specialist, surveyed 215 telecom professionals, including managers, VPs and COOs, and found that 87% have identified one or more symptoms of business process inefficiency, or 'corporate cholesterol', in their organization. The most common symptoms experienced include receiving repeat calls from customers, inconsistent distribution of work and a reliance on experience, rather than systems or processes, to complete tasks.
The survey showed that corporate cholesterol clearly has a negative impact on operations performance. Half of the respondents feel it reduces productivity and therefore increases costs. Almost half (48%) say it affects their organization's ability to satisfy customer demands or meet service level agreements. Respondents also indicated that business process inefficiency is affecting their ability to compete - 50% said that competitive pressure is the main driver for business process improvement.
Despite the negative effect of business process inefficiency, communication service providers still struggle to find budget for improvements. A third of respondents (30%) say that budgetary constraints are preventing them from addressing poor processes. Almost as many (28%) say a disconnect between IT and business goals is to blame.
However, encouragingly, the research revealed that communication service providers have done more to overcome legacy technology than other industries. In related surveys, Exigen has found that most insurance and lending executives cite legacy as the key reason for inefficiency, while for telecom professionals it was only third on their list. And, rather than implementing new technology, the majority of respondents said they were re-engineering business processes in order to drive improvements. Moreover, when investing in technology, more respondents said their goal was to drive growth (29%) rather than reduce costs (18%).
"This survey shows that telecom professionals recognize that the key to achieving operational efficiency improvements is to align IT and business goals," said Alec Miloslavsky, head of product development and strategy at Exigen. "This is especially important now, as convergent technologies in the communications industry continue to drive rapid change, and management is continually challenged with equal pressure to grow revenues and operate more efficiently. The successful communication service provider will implement business process technology solutions measured by clear business and financial targets, to eliminate process inefficiencies that attack their organizations' health."
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