2015 Asia-Pacific Gold Winner – Globe Telecom

Company: Globe Telecom, Taguig, Metro Manila, Philippines
Category:  Support Department of the Year

Entry Title: Order Management Department

As the challenger brand in the Philippine telecommunications industry, Globe Telecom had to constantly differentiate itself from the market leader. One of its approaches to differentiation was to establish an Internal Order Management (iOM) department.

The iOM department was unique in that it served as Globe’s own credit bureau, and it processed applications for all Globe products and services from all over the country. With the Philippines not having any consumer reporting agency, Globe had to assess new postpaid line applications using its own tools and processes to check customers’ credit worthiness.

Before the iOM department was established, application review and approval were separately conducted in each Globe Store, and credit checks had to be done manually. Employees assigned to review applications were sales people, which may have made them more inclined to approve applications just for commissions and hitting sales quota. There were no set procedures or system for application assessment, no tracking mechanism that would ensure applications were reviewed end-to-end, and no measurement of quality and staff productivity. All these contributed to a negative customer experience, as many applications were either lost or left untouched for days or even months. Potential clients had to wait a long time to know whether their applications were approved or not.

The formation of the iOM department addressed these issues. The department’s structure was based on a maker-checker setup, similar to that of a government credit organization. New service level agreements and critical metrics relevant to scope and function were introduced to ensure the correct execution and consistent adherence to company policies and procedures when evaluating, approving and activating new postpaid lines.

To ensure that applications went through all critical legs of operation (background check, approval, activation), the iOM department started using the Centro tool. iOM specially created this tool after identifying the need to track applications end-to-end. Through this tool, service level tracking became possible, and no application ever fell through the cracks again as employees could see the status of every application and work on pushing them forward to the next stage.

iOM personnel were also trained in fraud detection, enabling them to make informed choices on which applications to approve and which ones to deny.

Within 2013, the iOM department consistently exceeded the service level agreement set for every critical leg of operations. Background checking was completed in 48 hours, approval given within 4 hours and activation took 2 hours, 100% of the time. This meant that the turnaround time from new line application to activation became shorter. While other telco customers had to wait 3 to 5 days to know whether their application was approved or not, Globe was able to provide feedback in just 2 or 3 days.

In addition, the iOM department continuously achieved 0% error rate in terms of application evaluation and approval. Previously, the error rate was more than 60%. Quality monitoring became possible because operations were already centralized in one group.

To date, the iOM department remains consistent in meeting, and even exceeding, targets. With the iOM department behind the verification and approval processes of Globe, the company was able to provide its clients with fast and efficient service, which gives Globe a tremendous competitive advantage today.