Client Example — Consulting across all four areas and their inter-relationships

For a large cable system operator, the company's CEO sponsored System Dynamics Inc. as a member of their team chartered with deciding whether and how to enter the high-speed data services market.. Our long-term engagement spanned all four activity areas, continually integrating the impacts of decisions in one area on all the others. The following is a sample of our activities within each area.

• Recommended SOHO market as initial target
• Created detailed plan for SOHO pilot project
• Created research plan and materials, including focus groups, market survey, pilot customer interviews and analyzed results
• Analyzed current and likely future competitors

• Designed end-to-end architecture
• Assessed and recommended technologies for pilot and rollout (including cable modems, server complex, SONET ring)
• Determined cross impacts of data services technology plans with those for hybrid fiber coax plant re-build and recommended "order of battle"
• Worked with prospective vendors to determine suitability of their products
• Arranged meetings with other cable operators to learn about their technology approaches, choices and vendor evaluations

• Created detailed models of adoption by market segment, pricing, traffic growth and bandwidth usage over time
• Provided executive analysis of risks in the plan and recommendations for ways to reduce them
• Developed impacts of technology plans and speed of market penetration on the business
• Recommended traffic data collection methods for pilot users and provided data analysis
• Evaluated impacts of "make vs. buy" decisions and recommended actions to reduce financial exposure

• Developed RFP requirements for plan elements
• Worked with potential vendors
• Created job descriptions for key personnel
• Provided preliminary requirements for physical implementation (space, power)
• Developed detailed plan to coordinate HFC rebuild and data services rollout
• Provided draft customer materials for pilot, e.g., customer agreement, selected Web site content

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