Mtn Nigeria: Telecommunication

MTN Nigeria is a well know telecommunication industry geared towards dealing with all aspect of telecommunication infrastructural development as it concerns GSM rollout. MTN Nigeria has its central head quarter in South African. MTN was incorporated in Nigeria February 2001 as the first none indigenous Telecommunication Company in the areas of GSM technologies. They have passion for excellence.

Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) is a digital mobile telephony system that is widely used all over the world. GSM is widely used in place of all other wireless telephony technologies among which are TDMA (Time division multiple access), CDMA (Code division multiple access). This uses a variation of time division multiple access (TDMA). MTN Nigeria GSM system operates at either the 900 MHz or 1800 MHz frequency band.

In today’s highly competitive business environment among telecommunications companies in Nigeria, MTN as organization know that Change Management is critical to their competitive advantage and long term success and survival. This reality have made MTN to invest huge resources on formulating and implementing organizational change for their success & survival and at the same time investing huge resources in training of their employees (both management and lower-level staffs) on the knowledge of Change management.

As Tofler A. stated in the ilearn module (2010), module03, unit1, page2, “There is only one constant today and that is change” change is inevitable for a successful business achievement.

Based on this eminent quote, MTN Nigeria adopted a change program, MTN Nigeria Project office was enlarged to become Capital Programs Group (CPG) within the last five years.

Collection of materials on the enlargement of Project Office to Capital Programs group was done through personal contact with top management levels, Program Managers, Managers, Engineers, course material & relevant materials from the web.

MTN STRUCTURE PRIOR TO ENLARGEMENT OF PROJECT OFFICE TO CAPITAL PROGRAMS GROUP (CHANGE PROGRAMME)

As earlier mentioned MTN Nigeria has passion for excellence in areas like, Acquiring and retaining customers, Developing & Implementing Market Strategies, Stimulating increased usage of products and services, Generating revenue, Retaining Customers, Stimulating usage & Research.

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Prior to the enlargement of their project office, MTN Nigeria has only one technical unit that oversee all their network rollout & operation maintenance activities. This comprises of many divisions as showed below.

Network Implementation Division

Network Programs

Unit

Network Project Management

Network Operation

Division

Network Intelligent

Engineering Support Services

NMC Operation

Network Access

Division

Network Quality

Assurance

RF Planning

Unit

Wireless Bearer Services

RF/BT S

OPS

TX Planning

Unit

Network Group

Figure i: Structure of MTN Network group before the change program implementation.

The various divisions implement any given task as stipulated by the organization. Large numbers of sites built was not necessary because the need for expansion was yet to arise.

RESTRUCTURING OF PROJECT OFFICE TO CAPITAL PROGRAMS GROUP (CHANGE PROGRAMME)

MTN Nigeria having established their vision and mission statement, Vision: ”To be the leading provider of telecommunication services in Nigeria with a mission to provide first class network quality, customer service and value. Mission statement is ”To be a catalyst for Nigeria economic growth and development ,helping unleash Nigeria strong development potentials not only through the provision of world class communication but also through innovative and sustainable corporate social responsibility initiatives”

To be able to leave up this expectation & meet up with the new challenges associated with GSM companies within Nigeria & beyond.

After the end of the financial years 2003, the CEO & top management executives of MTN Nigeria came up with new structure that is deemed to alleviate and accelerate network expansion & quality throughout the federation. New departments were emerged, job responsibilities changed, new regions were created, new managers were appointed according to company policies.

The new structure that was created is Capital Programs Group,

CPG works in partnership with various technical suppliers and applies extensive project management skills to

rollout all elements of MTN GSM network to the highest standards.

The Department is comprised of the following Units:

Logistics

Core and Fibre Implementation

Site Build Rollout

BTS/Transmission/3G Upgrade

Network Rollout

Programme Support

The creation of the new divisions gave the company better visibility in managing and rolling out of a better network infrastructure in the areas of 2G & 3G networks at a very high speed to meet up with the present demand for customers expectation, and also generated serious revenue & increase in subscribers base to relatively 30,000 million.

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INTERNAL & EXTERNAL DRIVERS FOR CHANGE:

INTRODUCTION

MTN Nigeria came into the country not anticipating that the population in terms of their subscriber’s base will seriously increase after 3-4 years of operation. The rate at which call drop happens became erratic. MTN Nigeria needed more sites to fill the dead spots that bring about the high rate of call drop. The challenges on GSM technology expansion is seriously increasing in Nigeria. There is need for new technology advancement and new business models. This is a critical path in which top level management, program managers & their subordinates needs to focus in achieving a better productivity. MTN conduct a survey through employees and consultant after the 2003 financial year ending with the origination for the CEO and top management.

With reference to ilearn module (2010), module03, unit1, lesson 1, page2 & internal & external drives for change in MTN, the following factors are the primary drivers of MTN organisational change.

Rapid technology advances.

Weak business performance

Poor customer satisfaction

High rate of project failure

Lack of innovation

Mergers & acquisitions

Collaborative partnership models

Outsourcing

Greater agility in customers responsiveness

New business models

RAPID TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENT

This is a significant driver for organizational change. Rapid development in technology motivated for technology innovation in MTN Nigeria. The increase in new technology advancement in GSM industry in Nigeria gave rise to the need for equipment upgrade in order to integrate the old equipments that may be obsolete in the near future with the new equipments. This was considered by the change agents in order to meet up with the new technology required to make them not to face a diminishing market share to competitors & lose capital invested, most importantly bring about a reduction in their CAPEX capital expenditure to a reasonable value.

POOR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Due to the high volume of traffic been carried my MTN, customers started experiencing poor quality of service which gave rise to great number of call drops, capacity congestion, low voice quality, inadequate coverage area. Customers were unable to enjoy the real benefit of GSM using MTN Nigeria network.MTN saw the need and acted in that line to avoid losing their customer base to other competitors.

WEAK BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

There is a perceived threat from customers regarding the performance of the MTN network. When MTN started in Nigeria many people were in eager to purchase MTN sim card and other various products that meets customers expectation. There was high rate of product acquisition from customers within and near the neighboring countries. The demand for sim cards became tripled it became obvious that the present network capacity can’t handle the demand for lines. The rate at which network rollouts were done could not meet up with the new challenging factors. This contributed to a great lose in their revenue generation.

HIGH RATE OF PROJECT FALIURE

The rate at which project failure occurs within the project office gave a concern to the entire management, this contributed to low number of sites rolled out per quarter & yearly. There was no close supervision of site build contractors (SBCs) in other to achieve the desired quality on area of the infrastructures. The introduction of turnkey solution not properly managed also contributed to the failure, site build contractors having insufficient funds to finance their various projects.

LACK OF INNOVATION

Project office was made up of Engineers & Project managers who are pioneers of MTN from South Africa. This group of people are expatriate who operates without processes and procedures, there was no lay down procedure. Virtually all projects where handled and micro managed by them, this gave birth to having most of the site build contractor been none indigenous companies. Projects became very slow because of inadequate man power to operate and handle various assigned works.

NEW BUSSINESS MODEL

There is need for MTN Nigeria to embrace new business models. The inadequate Transmission capacity became a hindering factor in terms of adopting new business models that will be profiting to the company. Before the restructuring of the project office to capital programs group’s new business models like providing E1 solutions to customers couldn’t be achieved. But after the restructuring MTN Nigeria started providing E1 solutions to various banks industries in the country which also increased their revenue.

MERGER & ACQUSATIONS

When MTN Nigeria merged and consolidated operations with VGC communications limited sometime in October 2006, significant reengineering took place. To align the management objectives restructuring was the main drive in this factor. The integration of MTN and VGC created a major challenge in streamlining and integration of existing satellite operations structure. After the merger & acquisition, some of VGC staffs left the organisation due to change in portfolios, change of project task. This shows that a careful, committed & dedicated planning should have been adopted in bring this to realization.

OUTSOURCING

There is need for MTN Nigeria to adopted outsourcing in some of their business areas. This is expected to improve flexibility and services to their customers. Initial when MTN started in Nigeria, recharge cards where been produced from South Africa, subscriber in the remote area where there is MTN coverage experience difficulty in purchasing the required air time for their business. After the restructuring some of the air time denomination was outsourced and transferred to other parties, along with personnel and other resources to increase the production rate.

MTN OBJECTIVES IN MAKING THE CHANGE

MTN Nigeria has passion for excellence in following areas, acquiring and retaining customers, Developing & Implementing Market Strategies, Stimulating increased usage of products and services, Generating revenue, Retaining Customers, Stimulating usage & Research. MTN Nigeria also ensures that the human organisational structure is consistently aligned to business goals in order to achieve organisational effectiveness.

The below objectives where considered by MTN Nigeria adopting the change process.

To set up a body(Capital Programs Group) that will effectively project manage the accelerated rollout of MTN Nigeria site build rollout

In order to meet up with high competition of mobile networks in Nigeria, MTN Nigeria decided to create structure and culture that will be imbedded in operation for operational efficiency

Network Rollout at a cheaper cost while achieving same target in terms of quality and service

Clarity of responsibility and Value Addition

To drop entire operational cost(OPEX)

Improve top down and down top communication between executives, managers & their subordinate

Greater Client and Stakeholder Orientation

There is need for MTN to reduce call rate to an affordable value.

Network expansion to provide adequate capacity to customers.

Increase speed of rollout figures by adding up more regions in order to overcome terrain and distance complexity.

Removal of bureaucracy in order to boost up implementation time

Empowerment of region for faster decision making

Market differentiation by having wider network coverage in the country

Maintain Checks and Balances Consistent with Effectiveness

Offering different customer choices in terms of broadband, 2G & 3G, enterprise solution, Wimax, rural telephony etc.

Expanding subscribers base in order to generate more revenue.

Environmentally friendly mode of operation example, Safety and health activities (SHE), Nigeria civil aviation authority (NCCA), Environment impact assessment (EIA), building permits approvals before implementation.

HOW MANAGERS COULD IDENTIFY THE CENTRAL ISSUES & PALN THE ACTION REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE OBJECTIVES.

INTRODUCTION

Managers must embarrass the fact that people mind set constitute of environment and culture (ways of doing things). Major factor that must be considered for a successful organisational change still lies with environmental, people & technology issues. Mangers should also consider people’s issue which has some constraints namely social political & cultural factors, these two constraints will go a long way in helping managers identify central issues & plan for action in achieving their various objectives.

There are always bottle necks in managing the affairs of organisational change by managers, by applying the Seven Ss model such issues will be address and optimum result achieved by managers.

EXPLAINATION OF SEVEN Ss MODEL

The 7Ss model is the management model that has seven interconnected factors that is used in organizing a company in a holistic and effective way. McKinsey 7Ss model ensures that organization works effectively and well once they reach the desired endpoint.

Managers should ensure that 7Ss model is being used in a wide variety of situations where an alignment perspective is useful, this will also boost the performance of MTN Nigeria managers helping in identifying the central issues and project proper action plan,

The seven Ss factors are mentioned below:

– Super ordinate goals

– Strategy

– Structure

– Systems

– Style

– Staff

– Skills

Figure 2 below depicts the interdependency of the elements and indicates how a change in one affects all the others.

Super ordinate goals

This is one of the factor that comes from the top level management, e.g. CEO, this determines the organizational stand for what MTN believes in the “Can Do Spirit” , share values characterizing the principles & aims which should pull it towards successes of MTN Nigeria, core values, the corporate/team culture,

Strategy:

What is our strategy?

How do we intend to achieve our objectives?

How do we deal with competitive pressure?

How are changes in customer demands dealt with?

How is strategy adjusted for environmental issues?

Structure:

How is the company/team divided?

What is the hierarchy?

How do the various departments coordinate activities?

How do the team members organize and align themselves?

Is decision making and controlling centralized or decentralized? Is this as it should be, given what we’re doing?

Where are the lines of communication? Explicit and implicit?

Systems:

What are the main systems that run the organization? Consider financial and HR systems as well as communications and document storage.

Where are the controls and how are they monitored and evaluated?

What internal rules and processes does the team use to keep on track?

What are the fundamental values that the company/team was built on?

Style:

How participative is the management/leadership style?

How effective is that leadership?

Do employees/team members tend to be competitive or cooperative?

Are there real teams functioning within the organization or are they just nominal groups?

Staff:

What positions or specializations are represented within the team?

What positions need to be filled?

Are there gaps in required competencies?

Skills:

What are the strongest skills represented within the company/team?

Are there any skills gaps?

What is the company/team known for doing well?

Do the current employees/team members have the ability to do the job?

How are skills monitored and assessed?