Yesterday’s post was A-Mays-ing Progress at Zayo.   Over the next week or so, I will describe some of the benefits that this will provide to our employees, our customers, and our investors.

Let’s start with Account Executives, and by extension our customers.  First, Zayo Bandwidth’s embedded base of revenue is available to our account executives at a click of the mouse.  Our account execs will know just about all that we know about our customers’ existing book of business.  See all the orders that are active.  Click on an order and see all information pertinent to the order–A/Z location, contract term, expiration date, product, billing elements, etc.  We are exploring linking the actual orders and contracts to the site so that sales people can access the actual orders if the need arises.  This information feeds our billing platform–so it will be accurate and comprehensive.

In addition, account executives will see all orders in progress.  They are used to this already for orders that are moving through the sales funnel.  But now they will see those orders progress through the service activation (or de-activation) process.

Much re-keying of data will be eliminated as an opportunity progresses through its life cycle.  It starts as an opportunity, –at which stage an account executive believes Zayo might be able to provide a service to a customer.  It progresses to a quote and, if sales is successful, an order.  The order, once installed, becomes part of the base until, eventually, a change order or disconnect develops.  As the life cycle plays out, data persists…in a single database….accessed with minimal need to re-key or reconcile data.

Most of our account executives have not yet seen the full capability–but they will within a week or two.  As they do, I think they will feel better equipped to meet their quotas and take care of their customers.

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Sandi Mays posted “Wow! Look where we are Now” on Busines Tools Blog.   If you are not a subscriber to the blog, you should be.

Given the importance of the topic to the Zayo crowd, I have re-printed most of Sandi’s post below.  Many people within Zayo Bandwidth might not yet grasp the significance of what we are rolling out, as most of them have seen only small pieces of it.  In the next few weeks, more and more people within Zayo will have greater access to most of the key data associated with the opportunity to cash process.  Tomorrow, I will discuss why this will help us run the business better.  For now, please read through the re-post from Sandi’s site.

Zayo Bandwidth has completed more in two weeks than most companies accomplish in 2 years.  The following is a quick  laundry list of work that has been completed or is very near completion:

• Established a record for every recurring Billable Service (ties to Zayo Bandwidth’s run rate)
• Established a record for every Customer Billing Account
• Assigned Account Executives to every Account
• Created a product catalog for sales opportunities, that will track individual elements and product bundles
• Developed a systematic ICB (Individual Case Basis) quoting and Capital approval process
• Developed a Disconnect Funnel process
• Developed a process & reports to manage Revenue Commitments (take or pays)
• Replaced Excel spreadsheets with automated real time reports Sales Funnel, Net Sales, Install Pipeline, Net Installs, Revenue by Product/Vertical and Capital reports
• Created automated real time reports that show Entrance Criteria Met for new orders
• Attributed Network Expense to Billable Services
• Automated calculations for remaining Contract Term by service
• Developed a service order process
• Developed Salesforce.com training is available via Google groups

Sandi points out that Salesforce.com is at the core of how this was accomplished.  It lends itself to Agile Development. Also key is that we have a team in place who spent the last several months getting their arms around the data from Zayo’s 11 acquisitions.  This team showed how capable they are and how much good work they did though 2008.  As this has come to fruition over the past 30 days, the results have been amazing.   Thank you.

Please do not read this as a declaration of victory, as we are really just getting started.  But it is important to take time out and realize how much we have already accomplished.

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A few posts last week discussed Exit and Entrance Criteria for new orders.  One of the posts focused on the transition between sales and service activation.  The other covered the transition between service activation and billing.

The churn process should also be managed with tightly defined gates between organizations.  These gates contain unique information.

• When was the disconnect notice received?
• What notice period is required prior to disconnect?
• What was billing effective date?
• What was term (e.g., 3 year)?
• If still in term, what is early termination fee?
• Is there an off-net circuit?

Using Salesforce.com, Zayo is increasing the visibility of whether this information is gathered and whether it is being effectively used.  For example, disconnects shouldn’t be scheduled prior to the notice period being satisfied.  If under a term commitment, an Early Termination Fee (“ETLs”) should be billed.

Exit and Entrance Criteria can be used to ensure this information is gathered very quickly.  Other reports can be written to ensure disconnects don’t happen prematurely, ETLs are collected, and offnet circuits are disconnected.

These need to be required fields for a disconnect to be “accepted by billing”…we need to determine who has responsibility to fill this out…ideally, this would be done by Brad’s organization, not Alicia’s…if so, we should view it as acceptance criteria for Stage 5…with a separate report built for “Disconnect Entrance Criteria to Service Activation Met?”….and a similar one for “Disconnect Entrance Criteria to Billing Met?”, the latter of which should address only the info that billing requires to process a disconnect….Critical to be precise about what is in each report…for example, several items above might not be required in the billing criteria.

If John agrees with this, perhaps this is something that Jason L. can take the lead on implementing.

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Billing Handshake
Tight Handshake
Entrance and Exit Criteria
ZB’s Other Gaff: Slow to Identify Uptick in Churn
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Yesterday’s post was titled Tight Handshake. A big boost of Salesforce.com is that the process handoff between organizations can be strengthened.  The accessibility of Salesforce reports, combined with thoughtful process designers, creates this opportunity.  At the end of the post, I promised one more example.

Consider the handoff between Service Activation and Billing/Collections.  The Service Activation group manages the order through turn-up.  The customer accepts the circuit.   It is ready for billing.  Over the wall the order gets passed and the Billing team takes it from there.  How does this handoff occur?

Let’s define a stage in Salesforce called “Stage 8: Ready for Billing”.  This is the Exit Stage for Service Activation, similar to Stage 4: Sales Closed for Sales.  By moving an order into Stage 8, Service Activation is declaring that they have completed their piece; they have met all Exit Criteria and the Billing Group should take it over.

Let’s now define a stage called “Stage 9: Accepted by Billing”.  Like “Stage 5: Order Accepted”, this is Billing’s opportunity to agree that its Entrance Criteria has been fully satisfied, as only they can move an order into Stage 9.

Finally, write a Salesforce report titled:  “Billing Acceptance Criteria Met?“   The report would contain ONLY those fields that are required for Stage 9 Entrance Criteria to have been met.  No more.  No less.   At a glance, all will know the following:

• What orders are sitting in Stage 8, waiting to be accepted by Billing?  Do these orders have all the information that is required to exit stage 8?  If not, it is clear what the Service Activation Organization still needs to do.  If so, it raises the question of why hasn’t it moved on to Stage 9.
• What orders are in Stage 9, signifying that they passed Billing’s entrance criteria.  Do they have all the information that is required to have met the Entrance Criteria?  If not, why was the order accepted?

Again, Exit and Entrance Criteria become highly visible to everyone involved.  Moreover, the disposition of each order relative to the Criteria is transparent.  The result is an efficient and effective handoff occurs, eliminating much ambiguity and wasted time.  The handshake was tight.

Make sense?

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Tight Handshake
Entrance and Exit Criteria
The Gates of Churn
Arming your Account Executives
Opportunity to Cash

Yesterday’s post was Entrance and Exit Criteria.  The discussion centered around the Opportunity to Cash process, an area where much work is being done at Zayo.  The post ended with the questions: “How can this handoff be tightened?   How can Salesforce.com help? “.

One of the big benefits of Salesforce.com is that information is readily available across the organization.  As someone who has never written a report, I will get in trouble for the next sentence.  It is easy to design and write reports.   In the hands of thoughtful process designers, the accessible information combined with robust report writing capabilities can tighten the handshake between organizations.

Yesterday’s post used “Stage 4: Sales Closed” and “Stage 5: Order Accepted” to illustrate the role of Entrance and Exit Criteria in a process.  Stage 4 is the Exit step for the Sales Organization whereas Stage 5 in the Entrance step for Service Activation.

Picture a Salesforce report titled:  “Order Acceptance Criteria Met?“   The report would contain ONLY those fields that are required for Stage 5 Entrance Criteria to have been met.  No more.  No less.  The beautify of Salesforce is the ease in which this report can be pulled up by anyone in organization, including me.  At a glance, I will see the following:

• What orders are sitting in Stage 4 waiting to be accepted by Service Activation?
• Do they have all the information that is required to Exit stage 4?  If not, it is clear what the Sales Organization still needs to do.  If so, it raises the question of why hasn’t it moved on to Stage 5.
• What orders are in Stage 5 signifying that they passed the entrance criteria of Service Activation?  Do they have all the information that is required to have met the Entrance Criteria?  If not, why was the order accepted?

Exit and Entrance Criteria become highly visible to everyone involved.  Moreover, the disposition of each order relative to the Criteria is transparent.  The result is an efficient and effective hand off occurs, eliminating much ambiguity and wasted time.  The handshake was tight.

I’ll highlight another important example tomorrow.

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The Gates of Churn
Arming your Account Executives
25% of $X + 50% of $Y + 75% of $Z = Murky

Yesterday’s post introduced the topic “Opportunity to Cash” process.  This process is mission critical to every telecom service provider.

The Opportunity to Cash Process involves multiple organizations throughout the business.   For the sake of this post, I will break it into three major groupings:

1. Getting the Order
2. Activating the Service
3. Billing and Collecting the Revenue

Ownership of the Opportunity is handed off as the opportunity progresses through these various phases.  An Account Executive owns “Getting the Order”.  A Service Delivery Owner owns “Activating the Service”.  And a Billing Coordinator owns “Billing and Collecting the Revenue”.

Entrance and Exit Criteria, if well defined and religiously followed, ensures proper and efficient handoff of the Opportunity as it passes responsibility. I will use Zayo as an example to illustrate Entrance and Exit Criteria.

At Zayo, we define Stage 4 of the sales funnel process as “Sales Closed”, which is the Exit Criteria stage for Sales.  That is, Stage 4 signifies that they believe they completed a sale and have satisfied. They question is “Have they satisfied their Exit Criteria?”  Well, the idea is that the group they are handing-off to–Service Activation–gets to answer this question.  How do they answer it?  That is where Stage 5 comes into play.

Stage 5 is defined as “Order Accepted”.  This stage is controlled by Service Activation.  It means that they agree that Sales has satisfied their Exit Criteria, else Service Activation should not have pulled the order into Stage 5.  It means that the Entrance Criteria to the Service Activation phase has been met.

The important principle here is the handshake between the two organizations.  One organization declares they are done with their potion of the process–their Exit Criteria has been met.  The other organization agrees–their Entrance Criteria has been met.

How can this handoff be tightened?   How can Salesforce.com help?  Tomorrow…

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Billing Handshake
Tight Handshake
The Gates of Churn
Opportunity to Cash
Arming your Account Executives

Two of the most important aspects of running a telecom company are efficient processes and accurate data.    In particular, Opportunity to Cash is one of the most important processes.  At Zayo, we are doing a bunch of work to cement our opportunity to cash process. Over the next few days, I will discuss what we are doing, how we are doing it, and why.

Today, I want to focus on one point.  Usually this process is called “Order to Cash”.  I am referring to it as “Opportunity to Cash”.  What is the difference?

An Opportunity is a potential sales whereas an Order signifies that the sale has already been made.  The transition between Opportunity and Order sets the tone for the overall efficiency of the process. By defining the process as Opportunity to Cash (instead of Order to Cash), the transition from sales to service activation is more likely to be smooth.  Why is this?

Sales and Service Activation are more likely to use the same “language”…that is, the terminology they define for attributes of an order will more likely be exactly alike.  Also, they are more likely to use the same tools and methodology.  This allows better communication throughout the process.  Finally, and related to the last point, the feedback loop is likely to be crisp.  That is, service activation (and later billing) will use the same terminology to communicate status or roadblocks to the sales team.  Less time is wasted on sorting through the nuances that each group uses to describe an order and its status.

For those not involved in Opportunity to Cash, this post might seem sophmoric.  For those who have lived in any telecom company, they will have a sense for what I am talking about.  Over subsequent posts, I will be more specific.

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Entrance and Exit Criteria
Tight Handshake
Billing Handshake
Calculating Opportunity Cost
Arming your Account Executives