AL-NOOR RAMJI, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT and CIO of Qwest Communications International Inc.
(NYSE: Q) is busy looking at project proposals. As a matter of fact, he has just finished developing an innovative process for identifying, prioritizing, selecting, and approving IT projects. Each project is put through a strategy-driven prioritization process wherein it is scored based on five metrics. These metrics directly reflect Qwest’s corporate strategy to reduce cost, increase customer satisfaction, and grow revenue.

Ramji notes, “In the past projects having less impact would get pushed through. But with the company’s fragile financial situation, we need to make sure that the money is being spent in a way that has the most significant impact on the business. The metrics that we have developed, ensure that we are investing in projects with the highest impact.”

In addition to ensuring that only most impactful projects are funded, Ramji keeps abreast of emerging technologies and is ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing new technologies to help Qwest, the 4th largest regional bell operating company in the U.S., realize its business objectives.

One of the areas where Ramji has demonstrated his ability to reduce cost while increasing revenue is decreasing the DSL installation cycle time, while also decreasing the rework required. Qwest used to take an average of 12 days to install a DSL line from the time it was ordered until the time the customer could connect. Today, this cycle time is down to 4 days and over 60% more DSL orders are activated without requiring rework. The decrease in installation time means that for every new DSL customer, Qwest receives an extra eight days of revenue since the connection is ready eight days earlier. Ramji is aiming to eventually have phone and Internet connections installed within a day of being ordered.

What also differentiates Ramji from other CIOs is his ability to attack problems from innovative and novel perspectives. In the case of DSL, Ramji could have spent over $20 million fixing several critical systems in the DSL installation process. But Ramji looked at the problem from a different perspective rarely taken by CIOs. Rather than looking at only the systems involved, he took an end-to-end customer-centric view, focusing on all processes involved in delivering DSL, including both system and manual processes. By taking in the big picture, Ramji was able to determine that the most significant impact in the overall process could be made by addressing manual processes and the timing of the order flow. And, perhaps more importantly, these improvements allowed for a 67% cycle time reduction at less than 10% of the initially projected cost to achieve this.

The $17 billion Qwest was said in the same breathe as tainted companies such as Global Crossing, World Com, Enron and Arthur Andersen, because of questionable revenue reporting. Once at the brink of bankruptcy, Qwest has moved quickly to renegotiate debt covenants, cut expenses, raise additional funds. and get the breathing space it needs to refocus on serving the customer and growing “profitable” revenues. This means that all senior executives are working towards providing unparalleled customer service and dramatically bringing down costs. Ramji, as CIO, continues to be a vital cog in Qwest’s plan.

With over 20 million customers, Ramji relies on technology to increase customer focus. “Telco is a different ball game altogether. Regardless of all the jargons and fancy terminology, it really boils down to bandwidth. How the customer uses this bandwidth depends on what services we can provide,” says Ramji.

As he leads his employees through an exercise on enhancing customer-interfaces, Ramji is confronted with balancing operational costs and capital costs. “This is typical of the CIO of any telecom company,” he says, “because the operational costs are way too high compared to other industries.” It is even more of an issue for Qwest in the fragile financial situation it has been operating under. Ramji regards Qwest's current operational cost of 40 % of its revenues as too high and is trying to reduce it to 25%. The challenge for him is not only to get costs down but also to simultaneously improve service quality and customer experience.

Nowadays Ramji spends a large part of his time enabling Qwest applications face outwards, and self-served so that customers can be served faster and more efficiently. “By switching to the web we are not only providing increased customer-satisfaction but also cutting down on costs by at least 50 percent,” he notes.

“For instance, our customers often complained that they were shunted between different departments within Qwest before they got a solution for their problems. The best way to resolve such complaints is to have a standardized web-interface unit where customers can find solutions to most of their problems themselves,” Ramji reckons.

The web interface unit allows the customer to be served more efficiently and effectively in real time. The revolutionary service includes some user-friendly components such as eBilling and online customer service delivered via chat rooms.

The company is now experimenting with a new service feature that will enable customers who have problems contact other customers who have faced similar problems in the past. With this online community collaboration, Qwest gets real behavioral data to improve service further while also providing higher levels of customer service.

In addition to improving the customer experience, Ramji is focusing on significantly reducing operational costs. He predicts that Qwest may save $1 billion in its consumer operation over three years through a myriad of IT driven initiatives. For example, Ramji views outsourcing is an effective means to reduce costs in some areas.

With respect to Indian outsourcing companies, he believes they are focused today on getting piece-meal projects. In the longer run, they should look at creating new products through a deeper understanding of the business processes of their clients. “As the telecom industry moves from hardware to software, Indian companies have a huge opportunity, especially in the emerging Webservices arena,” he says. Ramji also advocates joint risk sharing between Indian companies and telcos.

Ramji’s perspectives on running an effective IT department have been well validated. Since joining Qwest in 2000, Ramji has reduced Qwest’s overall IT budget each year. “I think budgets should decrease. If I am successful in being efficient and decreasing costs, then I should need less money each year.” justifies Ramji, who’s budget today is just under $1 billion.

Ramji continues to keenly watch the changing telecom landscape. One of the industry changes that excites Ramji is the disaggregation of the telecom value chain. The vertically integrated model of traditional telcos is getting replaced with a more horizontal model where web-centric and customer-focused layers have been disaggregated. In the new model that is emerging, a telco need not own all the pieces. The new model calls for a focus on specialized integration and custom-based skills. This means the CIO of the telco has now a greater role than ever before.

“Technology plays a key role in bringing about this integration,” says Ramji who was instrumental in the creation of market-focused IT teams at Qwest. “Although the telecom business may be dramatically transforming over the upcoming years, there are other more immediate IT impacts on revenue and customer experience,” he notes.

His magic mantra? “Think customers, not technology as there is no shortage of new technologies.”