Is it launch time yet?

Would-be operators of local multipoint distribution services seem to have everything going for them: plenty of bandwidth, relatively low technology risk, advantages over competing technologies in deployment and maintenance costs, and the market's healthy and growing appetite for high-speed data, video and voice services. It's a can't-miss opportunity-or is it?

Consider the many cases during the past decade in which telecom providers with similar "can't-go-wrong" opportunities to roll out new services had it all go wrong in the buildout and launch stages.

The greatest start-up challenge facing a prospective LMDS operator, or any wireless local loop provider, is to balance the need for a rapid and timely service launch with the need for fully customer-ready operations at the time of launch. There is little room for a misstep: Many potential customers will have numerous broadband alternatives to LMDS such as fiber and satellite, and LMDS operators will have to entice customers away from their current service providers, many of which have high brand recognition and decades of service-provisioning experience.

Seizing the advantages of being the first entrant into an LMDS market, prevailing in the broadband market over competing technologies and drawing customers away from established broadband competitors calls for a swift and surefooted market launch. Not only must the network installation be error-free, but all the supporting business operations must be ready to support and manage customers better than the competition.

It is hardly news that time-to-market speed is vital to commercially deploying any new technology. Study after study has demonstrated that the first company to introduce a new service successfully in a market obtains major advantages in name and brand recognition, market share and profitability. That company is also in a position to establish various competitive barriers against subsequent market entrants. One recent projection shows that LMDS will grow significantly in the next five years (Figure 1).

There are, however, pronounced risks in a first-to-market strategy. In their haste to be first, companies often release services that aren't technologically ready, or they release technologically ready services before all the supporting business and customer-interfacing processes are in place and working properly. More than one overeager company has done both.

The first failing often spells quick doom for the company-or at the very least gives it a black eye in the marketplace from which it is difficult and costly to recover. The second failing often results in a delayed but equally deleterious effect: customer dissatisfaction that smolders under the surface of an apparently successful first-to-market launch until a competitor arrives on the scene, triggering a massive customer defection.

Without a far-sighted and thorough approach to assessing the readiness of an LMDS launch, those combined risks are apt to become unmanageable.

In the burst of telecommunications service launches over the past five years, a select few examples of start-up service providers are achieving remarkable results in rapidly launching high-quality services under competitive circumstances similar to those that LMDS currently faces. A common thread running through those success stories is the application of new techniques for deploying and launching services-specifically, launch-readiness testing and assessment programs. These programs surpass traditional approaches to telecom service testing and deployment abilities such as:

* Determining the limitations and refining the capabilities of newly developed operations support systems (for example, order management, billing and customer care) before their commercial deployment.

* Identifying and resolving system and network interoperability and functionality issues early in the deployment process-before they develop into problems that delay or damage the launch.

* Assessing the readiness of all business processes, especially those customer-supporting processes that require cross-functional coordination such as provisioning.

* Providing hands-on experience for employees in customer-serving functions by having them help test customer-facing processes before the launch.

'Launch-ready' redefined At the foundation of a launch-readiness program is a clear picture of what the final product is and how it should perform from a customer's point of view. This entails not only the readiness of the network itself, but also the readiness of the business operations that make up the entire service, from selling a potential account to resolving a customer-reported network problem.

While a myriad of operational nuances exist among different telecom service providers, there are a handful of common yet critical business operations that all service providers must be able to perform-and perform well. Prominent examples include order management, provisioning, field support, customer service and network management. Excellence in performing these crucial customer operations requires an enormous amount of interoperability, coordination and proper timing across multiple functions. Therein lies the risk that LMDS operators run when they allow conventional deployment and testing approaches to drive their launch preparation and timing. Those orthodox approaches tend to focus efforts on the network buildout, a specific support system or an independent operation, leaving many key cross-functional business operations untested and ill-prepared to support customers when the service is launched.

Launch-readiness assessment techniques depart from traditional deployment and test approaches in that they focus on assessing the commercial readiness of systems, business processes and customer-facing employees from a customer perspective before the first subscriber is installed on the network (Figure 2). What makes these new techniques especially well-suited for service launches is that they allow companies to objectively determine how well all the attendant functions will collectively perform the end-to-end business operations that are vital to successful customer service, support and management. Moreover, launch-readiness assessment techniques allow providers to uncover and resolve potential problems before they can affect the launch's time-to-market performance.

Making a fact-based decision about the launch readiness of multiple functions in multiple markets requires a consistent mechanism for accurately measuring assessment results against a specific set of launch criteria for each function. Figure 3 illustrates a simple way for LMDS operators to deconstruct their critical business operations into measurable assessment categories.

For each category, the LMDS operator should establish specific and measurable launch criteria for each critical function from several perspectives. Using the functions in Figure 3 as an example, the sales function might be assessed on the basis of process (for example, sales processes defined and documented), collateral (for example, availability of brochures, promotional materials and sales contracts), transaction time (for example, the goal of processing sales orders in less than 30 minutes), and training (for example, knowledge of the sales process or the ability to articulate the value proposition). In a similar fashion, the LMDS operator should establish launch criteria for all assessment categories to create a measurement tool similar to a scorecard.

The critical issues identified by a launch-readiness assessment program still take time to examine and resolve. Efforts to assess the most basic functions should be conducted at the same time that the operator is defining processes, implementing systems and deploying the network. Of course, not everything will be available for assessment in the early stages of deployment. Assessments should be conducted in a series of consecutive stages, each stage linked to progressive releases of the supporting systems and the availability of equipment for use by assessment teams. For each new stage of assessment, more complex and cross-functional operations should be added.

At the conclusion of each stage, the operator should compare the actual readiness-assessment test results with the launch criteria. The results of the assessments should lead to one of three actions. In the first and best case, the particular function assessed has clearly satisfied the launch criteria set for the phase, and the function moves forward to the next stage of assessment.

The second possible outcome is that the function did not satisfy the launch criteria set for the stage. In that case, it moves forward to the next assessment stage only after its deficiencies are corrected and its performance is reassessed and found adequate.

The third possibility is that the function is simply not ready for the next stage of launch-readiness assessment. In that case, operators have no choice but to wait until the function is further developed and refined before conducting the next-stage assessment. Premature testing at any stage of a function's launch-readiness is meaningless and wasteful.

Personnel, especially those that deal directly with customers such as sales, customer care and help desk workers, can greatly benefit from participating in the readiness assessments as mock customers. By helping test the procedures, processes and systems from the customer's point of view, employees gain practical, hands-on experience with those processes and systems in a no-risk environment before the first customer is signed up. As the readiness assessments are carried out, information about the network, systems, business process and training is gathered and recorded by mock cu stomers and observers. Upon completing the readiness-testing activities, the readiness-assessment team compares the actual performance with the established launch criteria set for that stage.

Although several market factors are working in favor of LMDS market entrants, successfully establishing LMDS in the face of entrenched carriers and the many broadband alternatives will clearly take more than installing the network and signing up eager customers. It will depend heavily on early market entry, error-free network installation and the readiness of all business operations to seamlessly support and manage customers better than the competition. Readiness-assessment programs can ensure that those operations are truly market-ready before the service is rolled out.