Sprint Canada Technology Services Uses PSA To Support Strategic Processes

"As the general telecommunications industry began to implode, Sprint Canada Inc. had begun to focus on cost savings and more intelligent ways of investing capital," explains Zoran Stakic, Vice President of Information Systems and Technology Solutions (ISTS). "We also introduced management and planning practices designed to streamline operations and make our people and systems more effective."

The Toronto-based company is now one of the only three surviving active Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) in Canada. "The company is now actively pursuing business growth in a number of key strategic areas in Canada," Stakic says.

Sprint Canada is a wholly owned subsidiary of Call-Net Enterprises Inc. a leading Canadian integrated communications solutions provider of local and long distance voice services as well as data, networking solutions and online services. Sprint Canada and Call-Net Enterprises are headquartered in Toronto, owns and operate an extensive national fibre network and have over 134 co-locations in nine Canadian metropolitan markets. For more information, visit the Company's web site http://www.sprint.ca/

Aligning Technology Services With the Business

The Sprint Canada Technology Services group (SCTS) comprises several functional units, which includes ISTS. All of the functional units are responsible for both new product and infrastructure delivery, as well as support of existing products and services. The technology organization has taken decisive steps to weather the industry malaise. It has significantly changed how it interacts with the company's management and business units. One of the important components of the new approach is the implementation of professional services automation (PSA) software.

"Previously, different business units and their functional groups would define upcoming projects and then, once all the high level requirements were in place, hand off the project lists to the technology organization for delivery," Stakic says. Our charter was to build the product or complete the project using, whenever possible, the existing technical infrastructure. But, because there were always questions and different ideas, the hand-off was actually the beginning of a tennis game between the business units and technology organization. In the new economic environment, which calls for dramatically decreased time-to-market with new products and product enhancements, the old process was too time consuming and prone to error. The company knew it had to continuously introduce operational efficiencies, increase customer satisfaction and shorten time-to-market in order to remain competitive."

One of the groups that report to Stakic is the Project Control Office within corporate PMO. This organization is responsible for project portfolio management at the corporate level including project prioritization and resource allocation. This organization is also responsible for project portfolio sensitivity analysis and project portfolio reporting. Stakic said that with their new approach, a primary goal was to change the role of IT and other functional units that are critical for project delivery by making them a part of the corporate planning process from the very beginning.

The five-stage process includes:

• Develop an overall strategic plan
• Establish and prioritize the project portfolio at the corporate level
• Project delivery
• Project/product post-launch evaluation
• Take action based on the evaluation (e.g. ramp up the product/project, make mid-course corrections, or kill the product/project).

"Previously, IT and other functional units that are critical for project delivery only became involved at stage three," Stakic says. "But, as part of a major overhaul of the new corporate planning process, IT and other functional units now become fully engaged at stage 2. This makes it possible for the senior team involved in planning activities to thoroughly assess the technical requirements as they relate to the viability of the project. By making the transition from a job shop to a partner in the business, the technology organization is helping to translate corporate strategic plan into products that can be quickly and cost effectively brought to market, and applications that will improve operational efficiencies.

Finding the Right Tools

"To embrace this new way of working, we had to have tools to manage resource allocations and utilization, project communication, and project portfolio timelines, as well as reporting results to our project teams, executive sponsors and top management" he continues. "That's where the Changepoint solution comes in."

Stakic says he and his team evaluated five different applications before settling on Changepoint. "We wanted to buy off-the-shelf products that need little customization in order to be up and running quickly. Changepoint met those criteria. The software offered the key components we needed and, after we completed the front-end work, the initial implementation of the resource management/allocation and project management modules took only three months. The Changepoint software replaced several less effective packages that were in use."

The Changepoint software provides the organization with a central repository for project and resource information. It allows project managers and cross-functional project team members to allocate project resources and log the time spent on each project, monitor project status, and search for skilled resources whenever needed. Changepoint will also be used for project cost management and lessons learned database.

"By reviewing the estimated required resources to deliver all the proposed projects, using Changepoint we can evaluate if we can meet the corporation's goals with the existing staff and consultants, or whether we have to go back to management with a request for additional people, consultants or funding. This process allows us to spot potential bottlenecks and based on corporate priorities decide which projects to initiate immediately, which projects to delay and which ones to cancel. In addition, at any time during the life cycle of the project, we can examine our actual resource utilization against our original estimates. This allows us to make mid-course audit and quantify our predictive skills. The PSA tools give us the capabilities we need."

Calculating Risk

He notes that PSA software not only allows Sprint Canada to track resource utilization for each project stage within the project life cycle, but provides an added bonus in risk management. "For example," Stakic explains, "We sometimes discover that resource demand for a particular project is greater than anticipated, but the project does not seem to be delayed or derailed in any way. That probably means that resources are being pulled from other projects and that could cause delays we had not anticipated."

Stakic says that Sprint Canada is in the final stages of rolling out the Changepoint project management and resource management modules. "In the next stage we will capture all lessons learned throughout the project life cycle for each project within the portfolio. Then, when we kick off similar projects in the future, we can apply what we have learned to our up-front assumptions, resource planning, solution architecture and interaction with internal groups or customers. In other words, we will not reinvent the wheel with each new project. Another bonus will be to use the same database to track vendor performance and leverage their strengths to maximize our use of their products and services. I estimate that we will reduce the time spent on our up-front planning process up to 30 percent."

"We are also planning to use Changepoint to capture comments on the project - what worked, what did not work, where we had major difficulties, what new technology we had to introduce," he adds. "By capturing our project experience, we can build a comprehensive knowledge base that will help us work more effectively and more efficiently. We will be better able to anticipate the risks associated with similar projects. We will use the knowledge base for building more accurate budgets and better plan the timing and resources needed for all corporate cross-functional projects that are flowing through the technology organization. If we are going to be short of people, we will know it up front. If we have to buy new equipment, such as additional workstations for running test data or ramping up network capabilities, we'll know that too. One of the next steps will be to automate the project portfolio capital planning and project cost management processes by integrating our financial systems with Changepoint.

"As we move through the process of automating our project management and resource planning activities, we are getting more and more interest in the PSA approach from various entities within the corporation", Stakic says. "The people and departments that are traditionally focused on automated management tools - such as IT - have already accepted Changepoint. Now, other units are talking to us about implementing Changepoint in their organizations. That will result in some substantial internal benefits - as other groups adopt the PSA software, they and technology organization will have a common point of reference as we work together on project portfolio planning and delivery of their projects."

Based on his own experience, Stakic feels confident that the PSA software will find increasing acceptance throughout the company. His team did a full business case study before adopting the software. The business case accounts for both tangible and intangible benefits and shows the discounted payback of less than two years after the PSA software implementation.

From Cost Center to Value Center

"Implementing the Changepoint software yields returns that, in the long run, can be more important," Stakic says. "For example, our senior executive team and middle management will be able to make better quality decisions based on more readily available and more reliable information. We as a company will be able to make more informed strategic project decisions that are helping to position the company better within the new telecom landscape. When the market begins to grow again - and it will - we anticipate that Sprint Canada will have the tools, systems and processes in place to take full advantage of every opportunity.

"As far as technology organization is concerned, we have attempted to transform ourselves from a cost center to a value center," Stakic concludes. "We are now an integral part of the corporation's business processes."