Customer Focused Business
Building a Customer Focused Business
Background
Our client is a medium sized operator in the Cable TV/Telephony Industry. Their operations are vertically integrated including the bidding for green field franchises, design and construction of the network and operation of Cable TV/Telephony services. They provide a full range of telephony services to commercial subscribers and cable tv/telephony services to residential customers. Recently they have experimented with programming and the provision of consultancy services to European markets which are in the process of de-regulation. The business has grown rapidly from a single site to multi-site operation with incumbent issues around management control.
The client was concerned that the business was significantly behind expected performance levels. Penetration levels were low, customer complaints high, expenses were significantly above budget and cash flow was significantly adrift from that forecast.
Consulting Assignment
The client asked us to review the business operations in terms of their strategy, structure and management processes in order to put them back on plan. The brief was to: “Build a customer facing business supported by efficient operations”
Key Project Activities
The analysis revealed significant opportunities to improve performance as evidenced by the residential “Leaky Pipe”:
The resulting project focused on:
Strategic
Segmenting the customer base, re-designing the service offering to cater for the specific needs of the different customer groups.
Structure
Re-designing the organisational structure to support the customer facing strategy. Creation of work teams focused on the different customer segments. Clarity of roles, responsibilities and expectations.
Management Processes
Introduction of performance management principles utilising the Balanced Scorecard methodology. Creation of a balanced set of measures based on the key business drivers to create goal congruency between Engineering, Marketing, Customer Services and Finance. Operationalisation of the measures in a systematic plan-do-review process.
Operations
Co-ordinating the build activities with the marketing activities to reduce negative cash flow.
People
Introduction of personal development plans. Team based training on Customer First, Team Roles and Performance Management principles.
Client Benefits
The key benefits included:
