Page 552 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

Network Organization and Governance 4-83

• Significant investment in business process automation and application integration to establish
enterprise processes
• Emphasis on process modeling
• Gradual reduction of unnecessary variety in applications and data centers
• Telecommunications infrastructure as corporate and global service

4.5.2.1.4 Loosely Coupled Governance Pattern
Despite the rational appeal of centralized processes in CMA settings, the complexity of the task and the
time required to implement such projects will always leave room for the most common CMA gover-
nance pattern—loosely coupled organizations.
In loosely coupled (e.g., city-state, franchised) organizations, post CMA organizations are man-
aged and governed as a conglomerate or holding structure of individually strong organizations (see
Figure 4.5.4). In this governance model, central corporate instances play only audit and control func-
tions, while local geographies and LOBs retain full execution and operational independence, as long
they comply with established group performance metrics (e.g., profit and loss, productivity, growth,
budgets). Local autonomy does not mean anarchy; corporate processes exist and are strong, but they are
indirect and less invasive.
During the next five to six years, Fortune 2000 enterprises with a distributed or holding structure
and culture will increasingly enforce stricter central control of local processes. Nevertheless, analysts
expect this control to be established through soft (noninvasive) integration methods that preserve local
responsibility and initiative. While noninvasive CMA integration models safeguard local/LOB entre-
preneurship and operational independence, they enforce corporate efficiency, consistency, and econo-
mies of scale through a stronger emphasis on performance metrics, negotiated targets, incentives, and
executive governance.
From an IT perspective, these organizations retain relatively autonomous (but not independent) IT
units within LOB organizations and geographies, while central IT plays a supervisory and advisory role
(setting standards, negotiating licensing contract frameworks, establishing common design principles,
encouraging sharing of information and resources). In these integration models, global processes are
not automated over local/global business applications, but rather through formalized person-to-person
workflows and manual processes. Effective deployment of noninvasive CMA operational integrations

LOB
Local

LOB

Reporting
Auditing
LOB
Control
Standards
Local
Local

LOB

FIGu RE 4.5.4 Loosely coupled CMA governance pattern.