If you haven’t transformed your network in the last 24 months, you will almost certainly have to in the next 24 months. That’s the harsh reality facing almost every organisation today, but how did we reach such a brutal place?

Let’s start by defining what network transformation means:

The key to understanding network transformation is that it means that EVERY technical, operational, and commercial aspect of the network is on the table for change.

There are a number of drivers for this scale of change:

– For most organisations, the network is becoming increasingly mission critical, driving the increasing need for the network to be available, performant, and able to flex and develop to meet the changing demands of the organisation

– Meeting these demands typically requires deploying new technologies such as SD-WAN, SSE, and the wider suite of services to deliver Zero Trust Networking. To gain the benefits of these new technologies, organisations are finding they need to update their operating models to become more agile, to break down barriers between different teams etc.

– Developing the business case for this transformation increasingly requires organisations to consider a broader pot of expenditure – not just replacing one wire with another wire, but looking at how new network tech enables cloud adoption, enables enhanced security etc.

What Drives Network Transformation?

Now we are clear on what network transformation is, what’s driving the urgent need to transform? In reality, there are multiple reasons, including:

– Hybrid working looks to be the accepted post-pandemic normal, meaning your network needs to connect users who are almost anywhere, rather than just in the office as used to be the case

– More and more workloads are heading to the cloud, meaning it’s not only your users who aren’t where they used to be – now your data could be almost anywhere as well

– Demand for network functionality and bandwidth is through the roof, with every increasing use cases, more and more bandwidth-hungry applications, and of course the spectre of AI looming ever closer

– Securing your organisation from cyber threats is a continual arms race, meaning you need the latest tools and approaches to mitigate vulnerabilities and reassure your board

The sum of all these reasons is that almost all organisations are finding that their older network solutions just can’t meet their demands, and they need to lean into new technologies and new approaches, and increasingly that isn’t just an incremental change – what’s required is a full network transformation.

The question therefore ceases to be “do I need to transform my network?” and instead becomes “how do I transform my network?” and, of course, the first step to making your network transformation successful is to develop your new network strategy, and build the crucial business case.

Here at TNC, we’ve analysed dozens of network transformation programmes and have identified 5 key steps you should take to build your business case – let’s dive in!

Step 1 – Know Your Baseline

Let’s start super-simple – if you need to transform your network, you need to know exactly where you are starting. This might sound so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said, but TNC’s experience is that as many as 50% of organisations don’t build a proper baseline before they start their transformation programme. The issue often seems to be that building the baseline can be quite hard, and is definitely pretty boring, and people naturally want to get into the exciting solutioning stage as quickly as possible. However, skipping the baseline stage will always bite you in the end – eventually the CFO is going to want to know how much all this is going to cost, and ideally how much it is going to save, and if you haven’t got a handle on what you spend today, your business case will never fly.

As part of building the baseline, you also need to ensure you understand your contract landscape – nothing will de-rail a transformation quicker than finding out you’re tied into an existing contract for longer than you thought, or the costs of exit are higher.

Step 2 – Cast Your Net Widely

In the olden days, building the business case for your new network was as simple as working out how much your old network cost, getting a quote from a supplier for a new network, and if the new one was cheaper than the old one, happy days.

That approach simply won’t fly today. Almost certainly your transformed network is going to use some of the awesome new technologies coming into the market – whether SD-WAN, SSE, Zero Trust etc. Whilst these technologies can do amazing things, almost certainly they cost more than your old MPLS network.

However, these technologies are also much more functional than your old MPLS network, very often meaning you can retire adjacent technologies such as firewalls, indirectly enabling the shift to cloud-based technologies, allowing you to support your solutions with fewer people, avoiding the costs and risks of security breaches etc.

In TNC’s experience, building a successful business case for network transformation relies on leveraging these wider commercial benefits to offset the increased costs of the new network technologies. Therefore, TNC would recommend thinking as broadly as possible about the benefits your transformed network will deliver and using all of these inputs to build out your business case.

Step 3 – Incremental Change is Often Better than “Big Bang”

Here’s a shocking stat – organisations are finding that it is taking so long to transform their networks that over 40% of organisations surveyed report that the new functionality no longer meets their requirements by the time it is delivered.

There are two main reasons these organisations cite for this horrible stat:

– Most network transformations take 2-3 years from strategy to full deployment, but most organisations are finding their demand patterns are changing much quicker than that

– The tech they are using across their network, or they are using in their network, is also changing faster than every 2-3 years

This speed of change means many organisations are focusing on change that can be incremented and can adapt to changing demand patterns, rather than an “all or nothing” big bang.

Step 4 – Build in Contingency

While we are talking shocking facts, here’s another: the average network transformation takes at least six months longer than planned. If we stick with our average transformation duration of 2-3 years, that means the average transformation overruns by 20-25%. One of the increasing drivers of these delays is skill shortages – for example, this report from CIO.com suggests that 67% of organisations surveyed are finding skills shortages are delaying their network transformations.

The big impact of these delays is sizeable cost overruns: you’ve got to keep your change team stood up for longer, often at expensive day rates; you’re often dual-running solutions for longer; and you probably need to extend your old contracts, with the outgoing supplier taking the chance to ramp up their prices. All of these things can really hammer your business case, and make your CFO very unhappy.

TNC’s research strongly suggests that the best solution is to build significant contingency into your business case – costs will be higher than you expected and savings will take longer to land. The more conservative you can be, the more likely you are to land your business case.

Step 5 – Track, Track, Track

Final horrible stat: the average organisation surveyed reported nearly 50% of cost savings were lost between developing the business case and the end of the transformation. If we thought a six month overrun would make the CFO unhappy, let’s not even imagine what a 50% decrease in cost savings might do. Suffice to say, no-one wants to see that.

In addition to the advice above to make your business case as conservative as possible, TNC’s research also shows that those organisations that really focus on tracking their business case throughout the transformation tend to deliver the greatest cost savings.

The reason seems to be that those that track the numbers see the issues arising most quickly and can take steps to address them, keeping their cost savings closer to the original projection. By contrast, for those that make the fateful mistake to only look at the cost savings at the end of the transformation, it is almost certainly too late to remedy any issues.

So, track, track, and keep tracking – hold your suppliers to account, and your internal stakeholders, and be prepared to take action if the numbers start to go south.

How Can TNC Help?

Here at TNC, we are proud to have become the trusted network and telecoms transformation partner for many of the UK’s largest and most demanding organisations for over 20 years. Over that time, we’ve built a wealth of experience in how to successfully develop and execute industry-leading strategies built on the most solid business cases, and with the people and tools to help you deliver the best possible outcomes.

Whether you are contemplating network transformation, or you’re in the thick of it right now, chances are that TNC can help you, so get in touch here.

TNC holds over 4.3m active market data points covering WAN, data networks, fixed voice and mobility

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