As part of a 2022 project to merge its two international backbones—one connecting large enterprise accounts, the other enabling interconnection of telecom operators and content providers—into a single international backbone, the International Networks Directorate of Orange enlisted the services of Sofrecom for a technical audit to identify the impacts of this evolution on operational processes. The expertise of Sofrecom's teams in process management and transformation, based on the ITIL standard and in the IP Backbone domain, made it a preferred partner for this type of project.
The Transformation Project
The objective of the approach is to:
- Establish standard procedures to manage client requests (internal or external) in a highly secure manner while respecting Service Level Agreement deadlines,
- Minimize risks and impacts on business activities (service interruptions/degradation, customer dissatisfaction, etc.).
In this domain, examples of change requests with varying impacts on the organization and especially on clients include:
- Upgrading/replacing a router (obsolescence, security, stability, functionalities): This type of change is classified as a major operation with impact. Such changes cause client traffic to switch transparently, but clients may experience latencies of a few seconds.
- Connecting a client's site to a Business VPN, increasing the bandwidth of a client's link: These changes are classified as standard operations without impact.
- Creating/deconstructing a POP site in a country: This type of change can involve around 100 individual changes (racking, cabling, configuration, connections, propagation).
The level of requirement is very high due to Orange's commitments in terms of service quality, confidentiality, and compliance with current standards and regulations:
- ISO 9001 Certification
- SOC 2 Compliance (System and Organizations Controls / Trust Service Criteria ~ Data Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality)
- Others like SOX, etc.
All of this brings significant constraints in the change management process (traceability, validation, rollback, service controls, client information, etc.).
The Methodology and Approach Proposed by Sofrecom
Over four months, the two Sofrecom consultants followed this approach:
- Interviews with around 40 people from about 10 client teams across 6 continents (an organization that allows Orange to know each region and operate in a "follow the sun" model (*))
- Evaluation of the current change management process, tools, adjacent processes (project, information, incident, etc.), and other points related to existing processes,
- Targeted questions to obtain factual answers and open questions to gather viewpoints and/or identify deeper issues.
- Analysis and recommendations in change management.
By following the implementation procedures (such as Six Sigma, demand analysis, preparation, implementation, reporting, recommendations, instructions, quality, information, etc.), Orange's commitments (enterprise contracts, SLA, SOC 2, ISO 9001, SOX, etc.), team organization, and tools (ticketing, workflows, impact analysis, change concurrency, KPI dashboards, etc.), the consultants were able to deliver the following expected outputs:
- The current change management RACI matrix,
- The change management workflow,
- The tools for managing this change,
- Change management KPIs: number, type, deadlines, compliance, etc.
- Finally, findings and recommendations.
Among the concrete recommendations, for example:
- Accelerate the merger of CABs (Change Advisory Board, an entity for validating and controlling changes with a cross-functional and end-to-end view of Orange Group changes) to centralize and optimize validations.
- Harmonize the language and definitions used by teams to eliminate duplicates in change types (expedite=mandatory, impacting=disruptive=degraded, transparent=without CAB, etc.), but also to communicate more effectively and facilitate the generation of SOC 2 dashboards and reports.
- Federate the "Golden Rules" (imperative actions of teams related to client requirements and Orange's quality commitments).
- Maintain existing interactions between the change process, client information process, and incident process, which already ensure service continuity and client satisfaction.
In conclusion, the approach implemented by Sofrecom's consultants and experts engaged the change process with all stakeholders to align our client's organization with its priorities. The recommendations provided supported our client in their decision-making process.
(*) As it is always daytime somewhere in the world, you need a way to assist clients worldwide, regardless of their time zone, without too much delay. The method literally follows the sun, so work is done during normal working hours around the world.
