Bryan Fleming, Zayo’s SVP of Service Delivery and Mobile Infrastructure Engineering, has lofty aspirations for the company: He aims to position Zayo as the industry leader in service delivery by the end of 2023.
With 32 years of telecommunications experience spanning procurement, large project management, software development, designing, building, and operating wireless and transport networks, and leading digital transformation projects, Fleming is well-equipped to handle his latest telecommunications challenge.
“My favorite part about working in service delivery is having the opportunity to exceed customer expectations,” Fleming shares. With high hopes for service delivery in mind, the industry veteran aims to wow Zayo’s customers by providing the shortest delivery intervals in the industry by the end of 2023.
“My favorite part about working in service delivery is having the opportunity to exceed customer expectations”
A Challenging Road to Becoming the Best
While it’s exciting to consider the future of Zayo’s service delivery organization, there’s a reason the company is honing its focus on service delivery. When Fleming joined Zayo a little over six months ago, service delivery was in rough shape. The team faced antiquated systems and capacity constraints as Zayo worked through a series of network hardening initiatives. What’s more, the processes and systems in place were not setting the organization up for success.
“Service delivery was a siloed organization when I joined,” Fleming admits, “No one was working towards common goals and there was no prioritization of orders. Everything was channel-centric and really inefficient.” These inefficiencies meant handoffs between teams would get missed, causing delays in service delivery.
The Power of Rebuilding
For Fleming and the team, becoming a world-class service delivery organization meant first leveling the processes and systems in place and rebuilding from the rubble.
Fleming explains, “Basically we tore down every process and rebuilt it to make it simpler and easier for product managers, engineering, and everyone else involved in the service delivery process.” This dramatic process overhaul then informed how the company is investing in technology to drive efficiencies and increase delivery velocity.
Zayo is investing in more automation to streamline processes and improve the customer experience. For customers, this means pre-provisioned capacity will be available so they can buy their own service through a portal, enabling zero-touch service delivery.
On top of automation, Zayo continues to invest in fiber inventory systems and tools, workflow engines, project planning tools, training and upskilling the workforce, and hiring team members to assist with complex projects.
And while challenges still lie ahead, the hard work has paid off already. Since the rebuild, Zayo saw six consecutive quarters of over $2 million in gross installs and the largest install quarter in company history in Q4 2022.
But the hard work doesn’t stop with the first few wins. “When we give you an order commitment date, at the absolute minimum we want to hit that date 90% of the time,” Fleming shares. Becoming a market leader means both hitting these critical dates and, ultimately, having the shortest service delivery in the industry.
Fleming acknowledges that being the best in the industry for service delivery doesn’t just lie on his team’s shoulders, “It takes a lot of different functions and teams to deliver service for our customers – trying to do that in the most efficient way possible is something we’re attacking every day.”