Implementing BPM to drive profitable sales in TeliaSonera Finland

TeliaSonera Business Services is a part of TeliaSonera the telecommunications company formed as a result of the merger between Swedish company Telia AB and Finnish telecom operator Sonera Corporation in December 2002. With the number of subscriptions in 2009 reaching approximately 144 million in the majority-owned operations and associated companies, TeliaSonera is at the forefront of the adoption of mobile and internet-based services in the Nordic and Baltic markets. It provides high quality telecommunications services, including packaging and carrying audio, images, data, information, transactions and entertainment.

The Company’s aim is to be a world class service company offering quality network services and products cost efficiently.
The Business Services division works with TeliaSonera’s business customers selling a variety of telecommunications services. The marketing team of 300 sales people and sales support staff sell products to new and existing customers managing the process from market making and customer insight to order and delivery.

Driving profitable sales; Improving customer relationships
Changes in the telecommunications market with increased competi­tion have presented the Company with a number of challenges. Price erosion and eroding market share within the Finnish B2B markets have driven the need to review how the sales process operated and seek to improve the SGA (Selling, General and Administration) value per customer. The sales operation had a number of issues in terms of visibility, rework, operational costs and time delays.

It was identified that the sales representatives needed more face-to-face time with customers so that they could listen to their business challenges and help to reveal solutions. This would improve the customer experience and help to differentiate the Company from its competitors. For this to be implemented the processes needed to be in place to transform the perception of customer relations to a more holistic process-driven approach.

Analysis of the sales representative’s time usage identified that a disproportionately high amount of time was given over to managing the service fulfillment and service assurance functions once the sale was completed (approximately 40 percent). With a very small amount of time (relatively) spent on analyzing the prospect, preparing the offer, offering and negotiation; and managing the contract process. The aim was therefore, to reverse this ratio and more from a reactive to proactive sales approach.

The target—world class sales time usage
The Company recognized that business process management offered the building blocks to enable it to work to achieve strategic agility.

Starting with Sales, Business Services established its first business process management initiative. Its aims were clearly stated:
Full visibility
Capability to orchestrate the processes
Process metrics and dashboard in place

Using Lombardi Teamworks®, Business Services transformed the sales process from one which suffered from process variation, complexity and lacked measurement; to a system that has a clearly defined process, managed execution and measurable results. BPM brings standard ways of working to the whole value chain, enabling the Company to forecast more accurately the future revenue and orchestration of a range of tasks and activities (Human-to-human, human-to-machine and machine-to-machine).

Lessons—management, collaboration and action
This was the first introduction of business process management to TeliaSonera and as such it was a learning curve for all those involved. Some of the key lessons which the organization learned were that:
Strong management sponsorship is a must in order for there to be success. BPM in this context reflects a large-scale change management and business initiative which will not achieve its aims if it does not have support at a senior level as well as an effective communication strategy to encourage understanding across the organization.
Business and IT collaboration needs to happen so there is a core team working together which is empowered and has the necessary experience. The team must involve end-users and mid-managers from the beginning so that there input as well as their buy-in is captured.
It is easy to be delayed by overanalyzing rather than getting started. Focusing on a limited project and “right enough” as a starting point can be better than waiting for the perfect scenario. And finally, an iterative approach works best when developing new processes.

Business impact
Using Lombardi Blueprint™ collaborative process modeling and prioritization tool and Teamworks BPM suite TeliaSonera has designed and automated the sales business processes so that they are controlled and easily managed.

Gained full visibility
Sales cases (values, products) and customer visits
All support requests are routed automatically to the right expert
Managing the sales funnel phases, timestamps to all activities
Identification of process bottlenecks (when using Lombardi Teamworks Optimizer)

Built the capability to orchestrate
The BPMS tool has helped the business to renew the sales funnel process.
Internal Operation Level Agreement’s (OLAs) were established, enabling optimized resource usage.

Implemented process metrics and a process management dashboard
Real-time reporting and defined searches in place
Cost per sales and cost per transaction measurements implemented in further development

Moving towards funnel and activity management
Learning Curve: Migration from previous way of managing takes time
Focus on increasing efficiency and effectiveness

Standardization of sales process
Help units define and harmonize daily responsibilities and ways of working
Diminish variance

Reduced the time spent by sales on post-sales phases
Defining and connecting sales support activities and skill-based task routing provides management with the tools to reduce the time spent on post sales activities.
Further sales time reduction will come after implementing order processing, which will be handled in a current B2B transformation program.

Business Services business customers are experiencing improved efficiency and its sales people have seen a positive change as they are able to focus more on the sales relationship and less on administration. As TeliaSonera looks to achieve increased profitability and improved operational efficiency process visibility, management and improvement will be core to realizing those aims.

Why BPM from IBM?
Business Process Management (BPM) software and services from IBM help organizations optimize business performance by discovering, documenting, automating, and continuously improving business processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

For more information
To learn more about IBM’s versions of Lombardi’s Teamworks offering, IBM® WebSphere® Lombardi Edition, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following Web sites:

IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition: ibm.com/software/integration/lombardi-edition/

IBM BPM Blueprint: ibm.com/software/integration/bpm-blueprint/

IBM BPM: ibm.com/software/info/bpm/