Stuart Corner
Monday, 09 October 2006 09:11
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
When he ran through his assessment of Telstra's progress in the six aspects of transformation, during the investor day, Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo rated IT transformation at 15 percent complete, but it's clear from his comments the Q&A session that the high risk phases are yet to come.
And without the planned IT transformation few of Telstra's hoped for gains from new technology, such as Next G, and new services will be achieved. So it was not surprising that the first question in the session, from Ian Martin of ABN Amro, zeroed in on this topic.
"It seems to me the biggest, riskiest part of the transformation, the IT component, is the least developed...I just wonder if you can elaborate on what the different tasks are over [the next 12 months] in the IT transformation and a little bit more detail on what the risks might be and the consequences, if that does take a bit longer or costs a bit more."
It's not the "bit longer" and "cost a bit more" that are the real issues here. With such a massive project as this it is the risk of a major failure to deliver the functionality needed in the time frame expected of just one of many interlinked and interdependent components.
And while Trujillo and his COO Greg Winn were full of re-assuring words, explaining how Telstra was relying greatly on the expertise and experience or prime systems integrator, Accenture, they made it very clear that the work done to date was the low risk part: assessing what is there today, determining what needs to be done and mapping out a plan to do it.
