What is it that marks the difference between success and failure for a business technology implementation? The media is too often full of tales of major IT implementations gone wrong, of millions of dollars wasted, and of companies left high and dry by IT failures. Stories of IT successes are not quite as easy to find — and particularly not stories that dig a little behind the PR to outline what really happened. Is success a question of luck? Or is there a blueprint that should be followed which can really make a difference in IT delivery?
Some months ago now, Verizon outlined the six factors that organizations all around the world are looking for to secure their future business success in a series of postings on its News Center (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). It wasn’t rocket science — rather common sense. Organizations are asking for help in improving their efficiency and performance; for assistance in establishing firm, but flexible governance; end-to-end security, compliance and control; savings and risk sharing; mobilizing capabilities for increased competitive advantage; and innovation and know-how. There is an expectation that technology will be able to deliver these criteria. How an organization uses technology to achieve these goals is increasingly integral to its future business success.
What we didn’t emphasize enough in this discussion was the importance of attention to detail. When it comes to service implementation, it really is a question of doing the little things well – the details are absolutely imperative when it comes to the grand design. But can we give any evidence of Verizon’s success in this space? The answer is a resounding yes.
Tesco recently embarked on a major Global Wide Area Network (GWAN) project - in essence, migrating to a single global network infrastructure, which would underpin its ongoing application, security and infrastructure centralization program. Verizon now provides secure connectivity to link Tesco’s colleagues in 12 countries around the globe, which will shortly be extended to include suppliers, partners and customers as well. Importantly, the new network infrastructure also offers a solid foundation from which Tesco can deliver key business applications consistently to all stakeholders. This enables Tesco to roll out new technologies and services more quickly and effectively, while also achieving significant cost efficiencies.
But the story of the Tesco GWAN project delivery is much broader than this. It’s a story of strong collaboration between the Tesco and Verizon teams, a story of flexibility to keep the program on track, and a story of keeping the end game in mind. But the key factor to note is that Verizon has now achieved an unusual state of affairs for an IT implementation — delivering against all key objectives to achieve a faultless performance scorecard.
The implementation all began with the network design. This needed to be resilient and diverse, to ensure that Tesco would be able to maintain connectivity at all times. For Verizon, this meant leveraging the power of our global mesh network, but also spending time upfront to identify any potential points of failure, so that failover could be accommodated into the network design from the very beginning. It was, of course, all about focusing on what the customer needs — but for the Verizon team, it was also a point of pride. Delivering on service level agreements is not just something Verizon pays lip service to – it’s at the heart of its business.
Critical in this design phase was the establishment of a core project team — involving both Verizon and Tesco colleagues — who worked together to develop the plan. Great communication, great collaboration, great program leads — all are obviously critical elements in forming a strong team. But in this case, all of these were in place, and the team was also physically present, in that Verizon became fully embedded in the Tesco team on site. But the focus on collaboration ensured that the entire team was able to really focus on the detail of the design. This is where the full participation of the Tesco technical team was absolutely crucial — their extensive knowledge of their own business had a vital role to play in helping move the program forwards. Finally, strong project governance was also established from the word go, with regular meetings, and the upfront establishment of key targets and measures of success being something espoused by the entire team.
We’ll continue the story behind the GWAN project next week. Watch this space!
