Posted: June 9th, 2016 2:02pm +00:00

Telefonica UK – Case Study

JCAD’s risk management software provides greater visibility of all business risks allowing for quick strategic decisions to be made and proactive assessment of business activities possible.

Telefonica is one of the leading integrated telecommunications providers in the world with a total customer base of 101.8 million as of June 2013. Telefonica Europe’s operations are undertaking a deep transformation of the business to build a more sustainable model to strengthen its market position and to increase profitability amid a challenging macro and highly competitive environment.

In the second quarter of 2013, Telefonica Europe started to see positive signs through the refreshment of its commercial offerings, recently implemented across all countries, with a common tariff approach based on an innovative simple data-centric proposition away from subsidies.
On top of this, Telefonica Europe continued to drive the internal transformation of its operational model to adapt it to the new market conditions, building new capabilities to become a digital telco, focusing on cost discipline across the board, and looking to rationalize resource allocation with the aim to make market dynamics more rational, fostering initiatives such as network sharing agreements.

Background

‘Most of the challenges we face today are around the complexity of data that needs inputting into the system. However, it is the introduction of the software itself that has helped us understand the information we need to capture. As we move into 2014 and the tool is used in earnest it will become easier for us to overcome these challenges. We are continually learning the best way to manage our risks. Whilst no one system can solve your business risks as this is a cultural challenge as opposed to a software one, the right solution can support you in making the change. I believe we have found this in JCAD’s risk management software.’ – Liam Callaghan, Risk & Compliance Manager.

The European operations are currently undertaking a deep transformation of the business to build a more sustainable model to strengthen its market position and to increase profitability amid a challenging macro and highly competitive environment. As part of the Telefonica governance programme, Telefonica UK are required to provide quarterly risk updates and reports to the senior management team in Madrid. Prior to the procurement of JCAD RISK, Telefonica UK managed their risks by department using a combination of various tools such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint to capture and document the required information. These risk registers were owned and managed by dedicated ‘Risk champions’ within each department, where the risks captured were specific to the objectives and challenges faced by each individual team. This process meant that reports didn’t always follow a standard template and therefore a variety of disparate information needed consolidating and formatting in order to produce the meaningful management reports created for Madrid. Not only was this approach time consuming, it also harboured inter-department ‘risk silos’ and left itself open to error as well as raising numerous questions and queries which needed answering before gaining approval of the final report.

Business Situation

With Madrid & Telefonica Ireland already using Risk based software to support their risk management practices, Liam Callaghan (Telefonica UK Risk & Compliance manager) decided to search the market for a dedicated Risk management solution for the UK operation. Telefonica embarked on a robust tender process building their specific software requirements from existing reports, internal processes and input from the IRM (Institute of Risk Management). Liam searched the market for the top risk software providers, then scored the selected RFP responses against their specific criteria including cost, system functionality & implementation process. Following this process, JCAD RISK was chosen by Liam as the best system to fulfil the business needs meeting the specific challenges of ease of use for the end user and a cost effective solution. Subsequently, Telefonica has upgraded to our new JCAD CORE Risk Management system.

‘It was the simplicity of the solution that impressed me. Many systems are overly complex and have the unfortunate habit of promising the world whilst at the same time disenfranchising the very people who need to be engaged in order to make the implementation a success.’ JCAD’s consulting team worked closely with Telefonica to establish business requirements and additional system configuration necessary and as a result implementation took a relatively short period of time. Field and table names were updated to be consistent with Telefonica’s terminology. The Risk Matrix was modified to meet their own system where the heat map drivers and categorisation and impacts of risk were updated. ‘The chosen solution needed to aid the management of risk, not just improve the reporting of it. We needed a solution that could be configured to meet the requirements of the corporate team, without costing the Earth. JCAD CORE offered a simple user experience with the required flexibility to support our specific business needs, for an off the shelf price.’

Benefits

The introduction of JCAD’s risk management software into Telefonica UK has driven huge efficiencies in the centralized coordination of Telefonica’s corporate and departmental risks and risk based activities. Rather than relying on individuals within each department to manage the collective, relevant risks, it is now possible for any number of individuals at all levels of the organization who have ownership of a risk to access the system to upload or extract information in a uniform and structured way. This drives ownership and accountability of the risk and the associated activities required to mitigate the risk which all helps to support and drive a stronger risk based culture.

Visibility of all business risks has been improved allowing strategic decisions to be made faster and proactive assessment of business activities possible. Furthermore, awareness of risk management has been improved providing greater ‘buy in’ from the board and enabling risk related decisions to be made faster. Previously unidentified risks are now being captured, impact assessed and assigned to owners. All activity is becoming tracked which is increasingly important, especially within such a competitive and fast paced environment.
The reduction on hours and workload required to collate information and produce reports means that the risk champions are finding they have more time available for analysis of business risks.
This is helping to create a proactive risk culture where risk triggers can be identified early and risk management processes can be reviewed and tightened.

‘Today, a consistent view of risk is held centrally, easily accessible and easily understood. Instead of me pursuing people to identify threats to their business, they now bring risks to my attention.’

With the introduction of a customized report in June 2012 (incorporating hard coded filters specific to Telefonica’s needs), means it is now possible for MI to be readily extracted and presented in a clear and informative way for the quarterly management meetings in Madrid in both a tabular and graphical format. Within the system, the users have a broad range of responsibilities such as control & action owners, risk owners and those with directorate level oversight.

The Future

Telefonica has recently upgraded to our latest release of CORE and is benefitting from the introduction of new features and functionality such as enhanced management reporting and Compliance and Audit tracking modules.

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