CASE STUDY
Telecommunications Provider
A model for future success: Simplus’s ‘pay-for-performance’ construct for a telco’s energy expansion project.
Facing an ambitious expansion into a new sector, this national telecommunications company needed to rapidly deploy a development team who could work independently, but remain accountable. Simplus was the natural choice.
THE CHALLENGE
When a national telecommunications provider decided to launch into the energy market with the intention of becoming a major player in retail electricity, they needed a system implementation partner with rich Salesforce knowledge and a deep understanding of how the utilities market worked.
Having previously worked with the organisation over a period of years on its wider digital transformation and shift from legacy IT applications to more disruptive technologies, Simplus was the logical choice.
There were two key aspects to consider:
- How could the organisation quickly build its technology capability in order to enter the energy market, without having to spend time and resources recruiting an in-house team?
- Was there a performance model that would ensure the implementation team was fully accountable for the timely delivery of outcomes, and also rewarded teams who took initiative and delivered ahead of schedule?
THE SOLUTION:
Overcoming lack of capacity and talent limitations
The telecommunications organisation knew that their current way of working and existing talent pool could not handle the scope and pace of such a project, nor were they in a position to source and recruit the number of expert staff they would need for it — an undertaking that would be costly and time consuming.
Simplus took on that task and created a set of five teams made up of both onshore and offshore business analysts, architects and developers.
Working with accountability
Part of the project framework saw Simplus arrive at a commercial construct, or pay-for-performance model, whereby fee payments would be aligned to quantifiable, measurable outputs they could present to the organisation.
In this way, Simplus was able to reduce the management burden for the telecommunications provider while still working in a fully accountable manner.
Simplus established three areas of focus: productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. KPIs were agreed to allow both Simplus and the client to measure the performance of the development teams.
To measure productivity and quality, specific KPIs were set, including:
- Story points — the quantifiable effort required to implement a piece of work
- Cycle times — how long it takes to finish a task
- Automation — good engineering practices such as automating code testing
- Defect leakage — reducing the number of potential defects discovered later in the project
- Test coverage — ensuring any coding is tested to
meet quality specifications
A second set of KPIs concentrated on customer satisfaction, including metrics designed to assess collaboration and ownership. These KPIs produced a ‘product owner Net Promoter Score’, or ‘pNPS’, which allowed Simplus to continually benchmark their success and aim to exceed expectations, while at the same time giving the organisation transparency into the project implementation.
“There can be an issue with an Agile methodology when there are no commercial implications and teams are just given the flexibility to work on whatever is achievable. But in this case, it was essential that we overlay a commercial lens on top of an Agile approach to ensure accountability and delivery on productivity, quality and customer experience.”
DEBASHISH MUKHERJEE
PRACTICE ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, SIMPLUS ANZ
THE OUTCOME
Ultimately more than 60 Salesforce development/ QA specialists were onboarded in a span of just two months. These teams consistently met or exceeded their KPIs within the prescribed time frame.
The pay-for-performance model has also been successful in creating a work environment in which every team member is highly motivated thanks to the results-focused team approach. It’s a strategy that effectively allows the implementation partner to have “skin in the game” which results in far lower levels of attrition than on other projects and cultivates a “roll-your-sleeves-up” attitude to addressing challenges.