MPT

The Company 

With more than 20 million users, MPT is the first and leading telecommunications company in Myanmar, providing both fixed and mobile telecommunication services to the people and enterprises of Myanmar. Today MPT operates a nationwide network infrastructure with 96% mobile network coverage throughout Myanmar - the widest in the country.

Through its expansive network of retail outlets and points of sale, MPT aims to make telecommunications services more accessible nationwide. Together with its own workforce of over 8,000 employees as well as those of KDDI Summit Global Myanmar (KSGM), all of whom intensively support MPT’s operation, MPT is committed to continually driving the development of the telecommunications sector and moving Myanmar forward.

MPT was ranked as the most-loved brand in Myanmar amongst 42 key brands according to  brand research in Myanmar carried out in 2016 by Millward Brown, a British multinational market research firm.

The Challenge

The major goal of the project was to address key pain points related to MPT’s IT operations being decentralized, partially outsourced, and insufficiently or only partially supported by IT systems and tools. MPT decided to replace and decommission legacy systems that were outdated, unsupported, and not extensible enough in the given timeframe. This resulted in an inability to grow, measure and improve an immature ITSM environment, which produced a high volume of repetitive and time-consuming work because there was little to no automation. Moreover, related challenges concern some of the key aspects of a mature ITSM environment, such as a configuration management database (CMDB) that better serves IT Service Management processes, ITIL conformity where required and/or appropriate, centralized and optimized SLA/OLAs, centralized reporting and building an easily maintained knowledge base with high quality information.

The Choice

IT operations at MPT Myanmar is a complex multi-vendor environment. This complexity included different requirements and SLAs for services provided by internal staff and external vendors, dispersed unshared helpdesk systems and solutions, and disconnected approaches to internal end users and subscriber cases and requests.

“From the standpoint of a process analyst, the fragmentation of processes, the preservation of process and data exceptions required for various teams in different MPT departments was no longer sustainable,” said Izzet Erten, Process Analyst, IT Strategy Team at MPT. “Along with the implementation of the ServiceNow platform, we took the opportunity to unify and streamline process flows, activities and responsibilities, and to radically reduce the time needed to make the required adjustments to solutions. The flexible platform has even enabled us to implement a sustainable range of differences and exceptions required by different organisational teams,” Erten added.

This led MPT to a strategic decision - to choose a single powerful multipurpose platform, ideally operating in the cloud. The ServiceNow platform, a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant with comprehensive service offerings and a high customer satisfaction rate, was an easy and fast choice.

“From a strategic standpoint, this project was very important for MPT,” said Zay Yar Lwin, Platform Business Owner, IT Strategy Team at MPT. “We selected a strong platform that not only enabled us to unify and optimalise our helpdesk services, which were fragmented both from a process standpoint and in terms of the tools used, but also to introduce a new, well-arranged portal and service catalog for end users,” he added.

For the suppliers to deliver the solution, MPT decided to build on its long-term relationship with Magis Technology, their current system integrator, to play the role of the prime partner and to help selecting a delivery partner. GuideVision, an experienced ServiceNow Elite Partner with one of the highest CSAT ratings, was selected to become an implementation partner. Magis Technology and GuideVision fully complemented each other on the consultation, advisory and analytical levels during the project delivery.

The Result

The first of three major project stages started with analytical workshops to prepare the high-level design of the solution and initiate the first portion of the delivery. This stage delivered the first package of ITSM processes, namely Incident Management, Problem and Knowledge Management, and the most important integrations.

“The prompt handover of tickets and the correct initial assignment is crucial for us for providing fast and expert help desk services,” said Kyaw Thwe Oo, Solution Technical Owner, IT Strategy Team at MPT.

The next stage continued to focus on ITSM (Change Management, Service Level Management, CMDB and Asset/Inventory Management) and began the migration of tickets from selected legacy systems. Stage 3 focused on the Request Fulfillment processes related to the Service Catalog and implementation of the MPT End User Portal as a single point of access, enabling end users to submit and check their issues and service requests (such as password changes, preparing new reports, information updates or minor SAP-related changes).

MPT users and fulfillers benefited from significantly improved times both for ticket resolution and request delivery. This was achieved with the help of auto-assignment rules applied to tickets and request auto-routing based on the impacted business service, several other process automations and transparent timely reporting. Additional benefits include a breakthrough in service delivery acceptance by end users via the End User Portal and correctly calculated SLA/OLAs for measuring and evaluating external vendors with respect to business service, ticket priority and assigned group.

“As part of resolving individual cases, we involve external suppliers on the L2 and L3 levels. We check the quality of services and information provided at the L1 level. The ServiceNow platform has finally enabled us to unify and simplify processes, introduce transparent and clear reporting, and last but not least, the configuration and measurement of SLAs in line with supplier contracts” Kyaw Thwe Oo said.

Others on the MPT team appreciated the project’s overall approach.

“The simplicity and consistency of the implemented solution, agile project methodologies and the ServiceNow platform’s support for testing has accelerated and simplified the entire process of testing solutions,” said Hkaw Htang, Test and Training Coordinator, IT Strategy Team at MPT. “The technical documentation supplied, including detailed user manuals, minimalised the number of questions about solutions during testing and were positively received by both operators and end users during training. Hands-on training included enough exercises and real-world examples for sufficient knowledge transfer before putting the entire solution into operation,” Hkaw Htang added.

The project’s timing was very tight, explained Sergio Kaya, an external project manager at Magis, and work “had to be divided into multiple streams so that the solution could be launched by the scheduled time.”

The project progressed consistently, and deviations from the project plan and the risks associated with it “were resolved successfully ad-hoc at the project level without the need for further escalation. From this standpoint I appreciate the agile methodology recommended by GuideVision, based on the experience gained from numerous projects, which has proven to be very successful and has provided the client with ample room for further guided solutions,” Kaya added. “Last but not least, I truly appreciate the flexibility, the attitudes of the team, their hard work and trust.”

 

Next Steps

In order to further extend the scale of services being provided by IT, MPT plans to automate additional services and make them available on the MPT End User Portal. The IT department has already started to examine the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) with the goal of integrating it with additional configuration data sources and to tie it more to existing ITSM processes. MPT will also focus on selected ITSM processes to optimize and increase the maturity level to be more ITIL compliant and even more customer-oriented.

“On behalf of the MPT project team, we highly appreciated the great endeavour during the project implementation and training period, and further support as well,” said Zay Yar Lwin, Platform Business Owner, IT Strategy Team at MPT.

Key Highlights

The Client: Leading telecommunications company in Myanmar with more than 8 000 internal employees

Implemented Solution: IT Service Management, Service Portal, Integration with MS Azure

Duration: 5 months

Business Value:

> End-to-End provisioning for employees

> Centralized inventory management for personal equipment

> Defragmentation of ITSM, ITIL conform

> Centralized/optimized SLA/OLAs and reporting

> Decommissioning of legacy systems