Page 577 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

4-108 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

General Manager

Information
Finance
Technology
Logistics and
Marketing
Facility Management

Human Strategic
Resources Planning

Operations, Administration
and Maintenance
FIGu RE 4.6.1 Organizational structure of an average telecommunications provider.

4.6.1 Organization Structure of the Average Provider
It is very difficult to create an organizational model that fits all providers. But there are certain attributes
that can be identified with each provider. With a few exceptions, the following organizational units can
be discovered with telecommunications providers: (Figure 4.6.1):
• Finance (enterprise resource management, revenue assurance, fraud management, credit analy-
sis, etc.)
• Marketing (customer, care, customer relationship management, products/services portfolio man-
agement, sales, order processing, billing, etc.)
• Human resources (salary accounting, administration, recruiting, training, career management, etc.)
• Logistics and facility management (order management, physical inventory, asset management,
logistics, transport, energy management, security management, investments, purchase, etc.)
• Strategic planning (new technology, design, development. Infrastructure optimization, etc.)
• Operations, administration and maintenance (provisioning, deployment, change management,
service configuration, maintenance, tests, monitoring, quality and service assurance, support
systems, documentation systems, management systems, etc.)
• Information Technology (application management, vendor management, software purchase, intra-
net, documents management, e-mail, groupware, knowledge management, Internet access, etc.)
The list of functions and responsibilities is not complete. At this stage, they are examples, only.
Depending on the size of the service provider, both centralized and decentralized structures can be
observed. Operations, Administration, and Maintenance are departments of a distributed organization
with many regional managers. Central control should be combined with decentralized dispatch. Sales and
marketing, and all customer-facing activities should be distributed, as well. Other organizational units
may be organized centrally. Using state-of-the-art communication technologies, the physical presence of
certain functions is not relevant anymore. To a certain limit, teleworking may be supported as well.
How an IT organization responds to the challenges of the competitive environment may become the
key differentiator for the provider. Within this IT environment, network and IT managers continually
struggle to find methods to cope with:

• shrinking headcounts
• tightly controlled operational budgets
• increasing needs for new applications and services