Performance measurement of a Telecom Service Company Supply chain: A balanced score card - ANP approach

摘要

The objective of this ongoing research paper is to analyze the performance quality dimensions of a telecom service company supply chain in the Indian context. Currently a rapid boom has been experienced in telecom sectors. While dealing with more and more sophisticated technologies and better change management schemes, one of the crucial problems faced by the top management is the comparative evaluation of various alternatives in the telecom service supply. Current decision makers and researchers witnessed the power of an extended Thomas Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique namely the Analytic Network Process (ANP) as an improved solution for this evaluation problem. ANP model structures the decision problem in a hierarchical form and links the determinants, dimensions, and enablers with alternatives available to the decision maker. In the proposed model, an attempt has been made to examine links of the financial and non-financial, tangible and intangible, internal and external factors, thus providing a holistic framework for the selection of an alternative for the telecom service sector. Therefore in the current study undertaken in a public sector unit in India, the dimensions of telecom service sector were captured in four perspectives viz. customer, internal business, innovation and learning, and finance, which mimic a balanced score card. Three services of the public sector telecom organization that were analyzed are (ⅰ) Consultancy (ⅱ) Project Execution (ⅲ) Training and quality control. Here the determinants, dimensions and enablers were derived based on the combination of literature review and insights gained through exploratory interviews with the appropriate experts/ professionals. It was observed that criteria, sub-criteria, determinants, etc. were interrelated. ANP is a powerful multi-criteria decision-making tool to consider interdependencies among and between levels (extension of AHP) of decision attributes. The comparative evaluation between alternatives was done based on the feedback of ten relevant executives. Geometric mean of their response was considered as the combined evaluation score. Later super matrices were formed. Thus, the ANP-based approach for enhancing the performance quality of telecom service proposed in this paper provides a more realistic and accurate representation of the problem. This helps the telecom service providers for periodic monitoring of quality level within their organization. Further, a quantified value named as overall weighted service index, which would give an indication of the performance of an organization and provide directions to managers where the improvement efforts has been derived. This was highest for consultancy and lowest for training and quality control.