{"id":32450,"date":"2023-01-19T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/copperleaf-test.majortom.dev\/?p=32450"},"modified":"2023-01-19T08:44:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-19T16:44:45","slug":"capital-planning-in-telecom-why-does-it-take-so-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/copperleaf-test.majortom.dev\/en\/blog\/capital-planning-in-telecom-why-does-it-take-so-long\/","title":{"rendered":"Capital Planning in Telecom: Why Does It Take So Long?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Copperleaf\u00ae<\/sup> provides enterprise decision analytics software solutions to companies investing in and managing critical infrastructure. <\/em>In this blog series, Bill Neill<\/a>, who leads market development for telecommunications at Copperleaf, shares insights from his 20 years of experience in the industry. In this installment, Bill explores some of the drivers behind the long planning times many telecom companies experience. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Why does telecom capital planning take so long?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Many of you were probably involved in building your organization\u2019s capital plan for this year. After months of business case development, reviews, prioritization, refinements, debate, bargaining, and back-and-forths, you finally have a plan in place\u2014at least, one that will last until you finalize last year\u2019s financials and spend January rebalancing it…<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll bet it took a lot of effort. And I\u2019ll guess that few of you enjoyed the experience.<\/p>\n

As we enter the new year, it\u2019s time to think about how you can make your next planning cycle shorter and more efficient, while still delivering executable plans that maximize the value to your organization.<\/p>\n

The Pain of Planning<\/h4>\n

One of the things that stands out from the results of our survey on capital planning in the telecom space is how dissatisfied people are with the process. I read comments describing it as \u201cpainful,\u201d \u201cconfusing,\u201d and even \u201cwasteful.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So why does capital planning require such heavy investment of time and effort, and what can be done about it? In this blog I\u2019ll share a little about what we\u2019ve learned about the drivers behind long planning times, how they\u2019re impacting the telecom business, and what can be done to improve the situation. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Annual Aggregation Process<\/h4>\n

With thousands of potential capital projects looking for funding, spread across multiple business units, groups, teams, and investment owners, the capital planning process has become more about <\/span>aggregation<\/span><\/i> than decision making.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This process includes aggregating investment requests for review, aggregating opinions and feedback on prioritization, and aggregating financial data. These steps repeat at the Director, VP, and SVP levels, and ultimately C-level. All this is made even more time-consuming when the process is built using spreadsheet templates and presentation-based checklists.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This cyclical, manual aggregation of information, and the work involved in actually generating it in the first place, takes TIME to:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n