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our approach

our approach

large projects management: focus on your business

We now offer you a flexible engagement model to accompany you in your large and complex ICT projects, leveraging and directing our standard Orange capabilities and third parties. With this new model, we are very well positioned to help you address your critical business needs, such as the successful execution of large IP transformation and convergence projects, gaining visibility and control on your costs or consolidating your ICT infrastructures. You will also benefit from full end-to-end accountability from our dedicated account business units throughout the contract life cycle, from proposal through execution.

end-to-end integration

We manage the integration of your telecoms and IT services, leveraging standard Orange capabilities and third parties. In order to keep ahead of competition, your enterprise must be agile and your operations must be streamlined, utilizing emerging services more effectively. Your telecoms and IT infrastructure has to constantly evolve to keep aligned with your business processes. We at Orange Business Services integrate your services and consolidate your infrastructure over time, accompanying you in the transition to the new environment that is required to keep pace with the changing marketplace. We may also take over your existing third-party services and integrate them in the overall solution.

end-to-end management

With the large projects management solution, we have got the unique capability to manage your infrastructure from end-to-end, across the different services provided but also along the complete migration towards the target infrastructure. Our service management processes are aligned with ITIL, ensuring that the right processes, people and technology are in place to keep your business and IT aligned. As part of the end-to-end management solution we provide, we may also manage your third-party services.

end-to-end accountability

Our dedicated teams accompany you from the very early stages of your complex telecoms and IT project, analyzing your business needs with you, designing the solution together, deploying and integrating the services and finally manage them on your behalf during the life-time of the project. Having the same teams accountable for the design of the solution and its later management guarantees the highest standard of service delivered to you.

transformation programs

We accompany you in your transformation programs to achieve the flexibility and agility that your business requires. Transformation programs can be of different nature, such as the migration to a new technology, the integration of a new acquisition into your ICT framework, the migration of IT services into a harmonized framework following a merger or the migration from a myriad of third-party providers to a single service provider. Typical and frequent examples of technology-driven transformation programs are the migration from switched voice to IP telephony or server consolidation projects.

10 golden rules for success with large projects

 
rule number one:
set the right objective
It may sound obvious that the number one requirement for bundling one's telecom sourcing into a large project is the strict amount of savings that can be achieved from it. Yet, most of the outsourcing contracts which are being renegotiated before the end of contract deadline are not failing because of unrealized savings, but for other reasons. Thus one has to set the right level of expectations for this kind of large and complex projects, including qualitative criteria such as the sustainability of the provider, the quality of the relationship, and the provider's ability to evolve the current offering on behalf of your organization.
 
rule number two:
allocate sufficient resources to the assessment of the project
It is absolutely necessary that the candidates for a complex project or a new outsourcing project devote enough resources, time and funding for the definition of the project itself. As it happens, large projects often involve complex cross-organizational relationships, not only at provider end, but also and mostly at client end. As a matter of fact, in this kind of projects, the service provider is not just merely responding to telecom provision requests and needs. Its role has to extend way beyond that of a sole provider, as the project itself is very much related to change management. As a consequence, the project has to be very well positioned across the board from the client end, in order to ensure that all the geographies involved are identified, well defined and that all the stakeholders in all the various countries are prepared for this important change. Failing to allocate the right level of resources at the beginning of a large project would jeopardize its future success and catching up with resource allocation at a later stage would prove both costly and less effective in the long run.
rule number three:
rigourously assess the baseline of your telecom spend
One of the most common issues encountered in large telecom projects is related to the limited understanding a company may have regarding its current telecoms spend. As a result, initial cost baselines are often underestimated and lead to the wrong sizing of an outsourcing deal (experience shows that most clients underestimate their spend rather than over-estimate it). ICT specialists can actually support you in doing this. There are two main ways of appraising one's current telecoms baseline: either by resorting to an external consultancy which will carry out the audit of your current spend or by working closely with your preferred provider. This will help you to evaluate real costs and derive plausible estimates of the types and amounts of savings that can be achieved through the wrapping up of your telecom provision into a large project. Such a preliminary engagement (often called a joint opportunity assessment) is also the right forum for eliciting the project objective and key success factors. The more these objectives are set up in common with the provider, the fewer chances one has of running into problems further down the road.
rule number four:
set the right expectations
Excessive optimism in large projects often leads to the overlooking of potential future issues: large projects or outsourcing are in essence difficult and complex. They require a lot of focus not only from the provider but also from the client. It is customary in this kind of complex projects to advocate management by Murphy's Law. Large and complex projects indeed imply that one foresees 'everything that could go wrong because it probably will'. Predictive project management is a must in this area and requires special skills which are mastered by our Large Projects experts. As a consequence, large projects management implies very thorough and predictive project planning as opposed to excessive optimism.
rule number five:
allocate resources with appropriate know-how in your project team
It is absolutely necessary that the client project team comprises a significant number of experts who will be able to interface positively with the service provider. As a matter of fact, it does not just benefit the client itself but the entire relationship, and would make the large project or outsourcing project a lot easier and faster to implement. It is also necessary that the client team does not only consist of technical people, but it should also encompass sourcing, legal and managerial experts. This multifaceted team is what is going to make the large or outsourcing project succeed. As it happens, a lot of candidates for a new large project or outsourcing project choose to resort to external consultants specialized in outsourcing to support them with the preparation of the future project.
rule number six:
properly assess the human factors surrounding the change management aspect of a large project
Should there be asset transfer from the client to the future provider, human aspects of the project are really paramount. Overlooking these human issues or taking them into account too far down into the project life would most probably lead to its cancellation or postponement. But the human factor in a large project is well and truly important even when there is no asset transfer plans involved. In essence, such a project implies that there are a number of different teams (both within the client's and also the supplier's organization) who have different objectives who will have to work together. As a result, as always in project management, one has to take the human factor into account, over and above any technical issue that may arise. At the end of the day, the project is about people working together, and has very little to do with technicality.
 
 
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