Executive Sponsorship Key to KPN's Transformation

By Barbara Lancaster

IP services have stolen the spotlight throughout the summer of 2004. At Supercomm in June, the first few speakers at the IEC Executive Forum focused their remarks on the evolution, or revolution, of the network. Each executive laid out a program for moving to an all IP-future. Each also touched on transformation of their entire company and the importance of delivering services customers would value. Of them all, KPN's senior vice president of operations Han Wijns told a story worth repeating.

KPN Transforms Operations for IP
Mr. Wijns explained to the diverse audience that he was directly involved in transforming KPN’s operations to support all-IP services and had been for more than five years. He agreed with the other speakers that the drive to an all-IP network was critical to carriers’ success, but he stressed that KPN’s return to profitability was driven through operations. Improving operations, he said, was the key to improving customer service, satisfaction and loyalty.

Swivel Chairs and Love Affairs
KPN’s transformation was focused on service, product innovation, production innovation (or operations), and the IT infrastructure to enable them all. Wijns argued that a viable IT infrastructure would be the bridge between the old and new worlds for KPN. But it was a visit to the Network Operations Center that provided the initial impetus for Mr. Wijns’ quest to transform KPN’s IT capabilities.

He noticed that NOC technicians were working with many systems, different screens, multiple keyboards, and overworked swivel chairs. Being responsible for Human Relations at the time, Wijns did not realize that this was “situation normal” for most carriers' NOCs during the nineties. Talking with the technicians, he learned that it took three or four years to become an expert with all of the tools used to isolate faults, identify affected customers, and take a prioritized action to solve problems. He decided that if the NOC ran this way, and KPN couldn't meet demand for services, then significant streamlining and change needed to happen in operations.

Wijns turned to his IT colleagues and found many had strong personal attachments to the myriad systems in place. They had designed, built and evolved these systems for years. When Wijns asked if commercial solutions were feasible, the answers came back negative. The IT people argued that because commercial tools don't work well together, the cost to integrate them would outweigh the cost of internal development.

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