Challenges of Digitalization in Tower Companies: Addressing the Knowing-Doing Gap

The NEXSYS-ONE team dedicates significant time working with global Tower Companies to deploy our specialized end-to-end software platform. We also regularly attend industry events like TowerXChange meetups, gaining insights into the latest industry trends. As we prepare for TowerXChange Americas 2024, we take a good look into what have learned.

Tower Companies – as most companies do – aim at:

=> Leveraging efficiencies and operational cost saving potential
=> Replacing manual work processes with digitalized ones
=> Improving visibility on progress (PMO view)
=> Gaining comprehensive visibility on financial performance (Management view)

However, they also face industry specific pain points:

=> Initially, low tenant ratios lead to high investment volumes with low cash flow.
=> Efficiently being able to increase tenant ratio is accordingly crucial.
=> Leveraging operational efficiencies in a distributed infrastructure model at scale while facing new and legacy assets requires the software in use to have excellent structural data management and superior planning capabilities.
=> Project planning doesn’t create visibility, is complex, and difficult to operationalize

Using non-industry specific software often falls short in addressing these Tower Company specific challenges.

None of these points is new, numerous articles and whitepapers highlight what digitalization can and should achieve such as seamless data flows, optimized processes, and live visibility of progress.

However, implementation remains – as with most innovation projects in larger organizations -a challenge. We identify four key implementation challenges and provide best practice solutions for each.

Know-your-customer: Tower company workflows and processes are complex and industry specific, requiring software with structural capabilities like flows, templates, forms and multi-layer approvals.
However, having technical software capabilities alone is insufficient. An experienced team on both the customer and NEXSYS-ONE side is essential. Our combined team has decades of industry knowledge and hands-on experience. This ensures customers receive expert guidance and support throughout their engagement. Our seasoned professionals excel at understanding clients’ needs and tailoring effective solutions, often guiding the customer during the process.

Data competence: We have all have seen it: a new software has been purchased, the IT team is tasked with implementing it and … oh wonder … the output looks surprisingly like the old solution, failing to achieve the expected savings and efficiencies.
This happens because no one has asked the tough data questions, the existing data is migrated without changing the flows, structures, or underlying business questions.
With a deployment plan that includes experienced teams from both organizations asking these questions, the new tool can work effectively: What data do we need? Is the data available and ready for migration? Which data points should be kept, discarded, or newly collected? Can the existing data be synchronized with other ecosystem software, and how? Who approves, and what can be automated? And so on.

Implementation efficiency: over the years we have learned to tell early in the process if a deployment will be a success or not. Here are three success factors based on our experience:

=> A steering committee, comprising senior members from both organizations, meets regularly to identify and remove blocking points, speeding up the implementation process.

=> An agile deployment plan involves planning, building, testing, approving, and repeating. Focusing on the most urgent business needs, it delivers in small, layered batches. This approach keeps planners, developers, and quality control teams continuously engaged while providing early results to the business.

=> The ultimate objective of our deployments is to empower and enable the customer teams to self-manage the software. Built around a robust admin platform, the software comes with 24/7 support. We train customer master-users early in the process, who then train their colleagues. This ensures a well-trained customer team and involves them in the implementation process, increasing their willingness to use the platform.

To achieve the customer’s objectives and ensure successful software adoption, NEXSYS-ONE addresses the knowing-doing-gap in digitalization challenges for Tower Companies by combining industry-specific software capabilities with a highly experienced team. This approach ensures the software meets industry needs and integrates seamlessly into existing workflows. By focusing on thorough data management and efficient implementation practices, NEXSYS-ONE empowers tower companies to achieve their digital transformation goals, improving operational efficiency and financial performance.