May 13, 2008

Pipeline Profile: Scott A. Hatfield

The CIO Perspective

Title: SVP and CIO, Cox Communications

The CIO perspective of our industry is one that most of us seldom see. In an effort to correct that, CT published IT Executive as a supplement to our May issue. In it, Hatfield is joined by CIOs from cable operators large and small to programmers and vendors. - CT


Cable IT job descriptions vary widely, from company to company. What in a nutshell is yours?

I'm responsible for all of the information technology used at Cox Communications. This includes both the systems used to run our business, what we call enterprise applications, as well as those applications used to serve end customers. That latter part includes portions of our service offerings - like Cox Email, provisioning of all products, customer care technology, and all of our Web sites and portals.

Cox has developed a reputation for growing top-notch "cable IT" talent. Any thoughts/comments?

We would agree; I'm very proud of the team that we've built over the years. Certainly, much of the credit must be shared with our leadership team. In my 12-plus years with Cox, our leaders - Jim Robbins, Jimmy Hayes, and Pat Esser - have been clear that IT would be a key tool in delivering an integrated bundle of services and fulfilling our customers' expectations. At no point have we felt like an overhead, back-office, expense item. The crucial role of IT is not only recognized, but also met with continued support and investment. With this support, and a very consistent vision around integrated communications, we've been very successful - early achievements with phone, a leadership position in bundling, and numerous JD Power awards.

Has the line between cable operators and traditional telcos blurred sufficiently, or does there remain a distinctly MSO-specific set of IT requirements?

I think the businesses remain quite different. When I was hired, I was explicitly told that Cox wanted no part of the big-budget legacy environments that the telcos built for themselves. We saw the pitfalls of that approach and have instead focused on using much more modern and more flexible architectures to create a new communications ecosystem. Although we are offering similar services to similar customers, from an IT perspective, it feels like we're doing it differently. We have the opportunity to create true integration and real simplicity. With hard work, we're able to use one billing system and one provisioning system and one set of customer care applications to serve all of our products. I hope that yields a sustainable advantage. Compared to a phone company, we're not trying to hide all the complexity of our legacy. We have an integrated platform that reflects our product vision.

For several years, there's been an effort to get individual services out of their individual silos and into a more unified whole. Do you see this actually happening? If so, how has it affected your job?

Not quite yet, but soon. The technical platforms, until recently, truly were silos. The video platform was very isolated. The circuit-switched phone platform brought certain barriers. The evolution to IP, to IMS, and to service oriented architectures provides a common technical foundation that justifies realignment out of silos. I'd have to say from an IT perspective, our core applications are already cross-product and cross-platform. The last step will probably be an organizational realignment away from silos, something we'll look at as our internal customers realign.

Do you see other silos (billing, provisioning, CSR) that need to be combined?

At Cox, we have a couple major themes. One is around better understanding of our business processes. We want to standardize and simplify how we serve the customer. The other major theme involves being more customer-centric. We need to re-examine what we do and how we do it - and see it from the customer perspective. Now, it's possible that as we work on those things, we could determine that IT needs to be realigned in some way. But it would be driven by a desire to optimize our business operations or to give the customer a better experience.

What are the biggest challenges involved in working with OSSs and BSSs?

I'm afraid there are quite a few. First, they're complex. They bring together all the data elements, all the business rules, all the workflow sequencing, all the error handling, and impact labor management. Secondly, they demand a high quality level. There are very few "small errors." Minor misses in testing or change management tend to become very big problems. Third, they don't turn on a dime. Because of their size, because of how many users, because of the need for the highest quality, because of how they can impact business operations, changes take some time. Because as CIO, you want to minimize the lag time between sensing a need and meeting the need, it does mean that you have to be looking ahead. When you get it right, you can bring in new capabilities cost effectively and cleanly. When you miss one, it can be really frustrating for the business.

What are some of the trickier IT challenges involved in offering business services as opposed to residential?

It is a different model. Everything migrates from mass market to dealing in a one-to-one relationship. This is true whether it be defining the product offering, quoting the business, loading a contract, provisioning and implementation, billing, or perhaps most importantly, trouble management. A business that hasn't served businesses may have a number of rate plans, but be completely unprepared to implement a unique contract for each customer. Also, businesses have expectations around service levels. Those expectations are frequently embodied in contracts, usually with reporting requirements and frequently with penalties. The need to have precise knowledge of our network elements and topology, our service outages, the linkage from every element to every customer served, and then to the commitment level - that's a different model than the cable network of the 1990s.