Amdocs today announced that Mtel, the largest network operator in Bulgaria, has deployed the Amdocs master enterprise catalog. The outcome of this deployment is a reduction in internal IT complexity associated with new product rollouts resulting in a reduced time to market of more than 80%.
RCR Wireless News spoke with Horst Pertl, CTO at Mtel, during the Mobile World Congress event about the upcoming announcement. Mtel has been a mobile network operator in Bulgaria since 1995, and in 2005 became part of the Telekom Austria Group. Although its beginning was as a mobile operator, it expanded to include a fixed-line focus in 2010 via two acquisitions. As Mtel moved forward as a converged operator it became apparent that its BSS and OSS systems needed to be migrated to a single system from the eight that were currently in place. The migration began in 2009 with CRM, BSS and mobile OSS.
The situation was causing a great deal of customer confusion as well as a constant tailoring of offers. Bills were incorrect or non-existent and things had to change. Mtel is now working to reduce offer tailoring in order to meet competitive and cost challenges while improving customer perception.
When asked how technology was helping to solve those challenges, the answer I received may surprise you a bit. “Technology doesn’t solve a problem. To solve a problem you need the right concept and vision, technology is only an enabling tool,” said Pertl. He went on to say that “it’s all about the people. Technology is dumb without people to direct what to do with it.” I have to say I was pleased to hear this view on technology and especially from a technology executive. Too many times we tend to get mired down in what the technology can do to solve our problems and forget that people and a strategy are also a main ingredient of the solution.
What were the lessons learned along the way? There were many starts and stops, as with any project of this scale. Every week there were new surprises as to the complexity of what had been undertaken. The key takeaway is that without discipline, projects of this type cannot be successful. In fact, 60% of large IT projects fail due to mismanagement. Top management must be fully aware of the “why” and manage within its teams the end goal and requirements to achieve it. Simplification is key. Take the nice-to-haves off the table and focus on what really needs to get done. How did Mtel finally find success? They created a small team whose job is to manage the project. This enabled the correct level of focus and eliminated possible varying requirements within silos.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
