When I was in high school, most of my friends had jobs flipping burgers, mowing lawns or bagging groceries. My high school job was a bit different. I worked for Rochester Telephone. I may not have had perks like free soda and burgers, but I was fascinated by the behind-the-scenes technology that allowed people to talk to a relative on the other side of the country. It seemed like magic, and I loved the work.
The sheer scale of telecom infrastructure was amazing to me: thousands of miles of phone lines strung on millions of poles and switching equipment that fills up massive rooms sends electrical signals from Rochester to every corner of the world. I was hooked, and I have been in the telecom industry ever since.
I have always gravitated toward implementation-focused roles where I have one foot on the technical side and one foot on the customer side, working to make sure that the technology delivers what customers need. That continues today in my role overseeing cloud transformation initiatives for telcos who are moving their core communications infrastructure to the cloud. Transitioning to the cloud is a critical step, it’s a significant shift that affect every aspect of a telco’s operations as well as every one of their employees and customers. For that reason, the most important ingredient for these cloud transformations isn’t technology. It’s not a rollout plan. It’s trust.
To understand why, we need to acknowledge how significant the scale of change is in our industry today. For decades, legacy voice infrastructure drove telco’s success. When I started at Rochester Telephone, our focus was delivering phone and fax services via copper to our customers. Then, from the mid-1990s to the 2000s, telcos invested heavily in broadband, betting that high-speed connectivity was the way to go. But there was a problem. All of that investment chasing higher speeds and feeds for broadband was supposed to lead to another profitable era for telcos, but that never panned out. Telco revenue has stagnated for the last decade, and profit margins have plummeted.
Today, the situation is even more dire. The legacy voice infrastructure that was the engine for profits for so many decades is now a threat to telcos’ futures. That technology is rapidly going obsolete as critical technologies are being discontinued by vendors. And telcos are under siege by OTT cloud-based service providers who are stealing their customers. Given that threat of technical obsolescence and the competitive pressures in the market, telcos urgently need to transition to the cloud.
After two decades of massive upheaval in the industry, there are questions, worries and fears – all of which are natural in the face of any large transition. Operations teams who have been responsible for keeping legacy equipment up and running for so long want to know that their jobs will be safe in a cloud-centric industry. Customer-facing employees want to know that their knowledge and skills will translate to the new cloud platform. Employees across the organization want to feel certain that their input and suggestions will be heard during the course of the implementation, what success looks like, and what is being done to avoid setbacks. And end users want to know that they will continue to have their needs met not just after the transition but during it.
To be successful with cloud transformation initiatives, telcos need to address those concerns and questions. You can’t just tell employees and end users to trust you – you have to utilize an implementation strategy that is designed not only to address the technical rollout, but also to build trust with each set of stakeholders inside and outside the organization.
Here are some key principles and best practices for ensuring your cloud transformation builds trust at each step in the process:
- Bring Employees to the Table Early – Oftentimes, large, technical initiatives are dropped on employees by surprise. But cloud transformations are too big and too important to be delivered in this way. Instead, employees need to be brought into the process as early as possible. This provides an opportunity for individuals to escalate any issues that need to be resolved and provide suggestions or insights that can improve or accelerate implementations. Additionally, bringing employees to the table early establishes a greater sense of trust. When employees have a voice – and that voice is heard – trust grows.
- Give Employees the Tools They Need for Success – With massive transformations like cloud integration, sometimes the details can get lost. However, it’s important that employees are equipped with the tools and information they need to understand the impact of these changes and how they can support the rollout. Ensuring employees have what they need to drive success not only helps to build trust, but it also can help improve relationships with end-users that may have questions during the transition. Telcos should have a cloud transformation plan in place that addresses the questions and concerns of employees, includes a track of activities from Day 1, and the information, training, and tools needed to be successful. This can establish trust with the employees who will drive the organization forward.
- Establish Opportunities for Career Advancement – For workers whose entire career has been maintaining the legacy infrastructure that is becoming obsolete, cloud transformations are especially scary. After all, if equipment becomes obsolete, don’t the people who work with it become obsolete too? The answer is a definitive no. However, telcos need to do a better job of encouraging continued education, providing a clear, compelling roadmap of training, and clarifying how these new skills align with the telco industry over the coming decades. Employees who trust that this transition is positioning them for stable careers will help drive the success of these rollouts.
- Focus on Consumer Communication – If it’s not clear already, communication is a running theme in these recommendations. It’s the key to creating trust in any relationship, and it’s massively important with end users. Don’t keep information about cloud transformation close to the vest, it keeps end users in the dark. Instead, help end users understand why this transformation is happening, how it will serve their needs, and how their experience will improve.
These cloud transformations are critical to the future of telcos, but these initiatives will not be successful if telcos don’t establish trust, both internally and externally. The importance of trust was evident back in the earliest days of my career with Rochester Telephone, and it is even more apparent today as our industry undergoes a massive transition that will power the next 100 years of telecom.
