LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!

The only acceptable speed in implementing e-business practices is top speed," says Franz Cornelis, manager, Commercial Office, KPN Royal Dutch Telecom.

Even for a large and Net-sophisticated telecom, the dynamic growth of e-business prompted a dynamic response.

"Somewhat over a year ago, KPN reorganized itself completely to cope with the future challenges in Europe," Cornelis says. "We already had medium-sized businesses helping our customers to 'get on the Net.' Therefore, a 'telecommerce' business unit was formed to leverage the skills and knowledge developing in those businesses. This unit is now one of the fastest growing parts of KPN, with a turnover of hundreds of millions of dollars."

Forming that unit was only one phase in an ongoing process, one that quickly came to involve all aspects of the Netherlands-based company.

"Our decision was to start from the customer end," Cornelis explains, "and to integrate the separate initiatives into a logical e-business front end."

That focus proved invaluable in reinforcing KPN's perspective. "All units faced the fact that customers increasingly do nor want to deal with our organization chart, but want to be recognized across the various channels they may use," Cornelis points our. "The advent of one-on-one marketing techniques and customer relationship management thinking led to a desire in most units to be able to use state-of-the-art systems to serve the customer regardless of where he 'belonged' on the organization chart."

Other aspects evolved as the plan was implemented. Cornelis explains: "Our own business plans changed in that the new platform also turned out to be a major catalyst for some long overdue rethinking of our internal supply processes."

Simultaneously, KPN faced the challenge of ensuring that the strategies implemented were capable of keeping up with both the continuing evolution of technology and the growth of the e-business marketplace.

"We scoped the project to be easily scaleable to up to 100 times current traffic and transaction levels," says Cornelis. "The technology and the markets evolve so fast that any implementation period of over one year makes your volume projections unreliable and your technology outdated when you are just starting. Therefore, we started on an 'ideal' time frame of seven months."

KPN saw to it that since every area of the company would be affected by the transition, every area was involved in making the transition a smooth one.

"A lot depends on keying in different expert groups into the project group at different times," Cornelis says. "Meanwhile, the executive sponsors and the project team leaders have to spend a lot of time communicating with the various stakeholders in the customer base and in our organization."

KPN did not rely solely on its own resources during the implementation.

KPN makes extensive use of a coalition of outside partners, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cornelis says. "That is because of the speed we need to achieve. Many of the initial foundation platform design and implementation activities are a one-time effort. Finding and training these people ourselves would take time that we do not have."

Attitude also plays a part; Cornelis refers to mindset as "the most important item to watch in order to know if KPN stays future-proof." He says, "Our mindset must be that this is not so much an e-business strategy, but a business strategy. It is even more a marketing necessity than a technology trick, For our businesses, the times that you could sell 'any color, as long as it is black' are over. The customer, corporate or individual, wants to be put in control of his orders. KPN intends to achieve this, and to teach others how to do the same."

While KPN has taken every care to approach the implementation of its overarching e-business strategy prudently, guided by sound business practices, the company nevertheless understands, and even embraces, the boldness of its approach.

Says Cornelis: "There is no slow and careful way to join a revolution."