They have to adopt a new foundation that implements automation into their structure, integrates existing systems, and provides an innovative approach to operational support systems and business support systems (OSS/BSS).
Accenture’s report ‘B2B Growth in the Communications Industry: From Network to Net Worth’ says: “Transforming the operating model toward customer centricity and agility, and injecting automation (Robotic Process Automation, AI) into the core culture, will provide a future-proofed foundation for communications companies to scale, de-risk and orchestrate the end-to-end execution of large network programs across complex delivery ecosystems, anticipating expectations and providing a seamless experience.”
The question is, where to start?
OSS/BSS innovation and automation is vital for creating telcos that are ready to adapt, pivot and grow now and in the future. It enables telcos to continually adopt new technologies, applications and business models, and is the starting point for rapid telco transformation.
Addressing the Pain Points Behind Telco Transformation
The transformation that telcos need to commit to doesn’t just revolve around moving applications to the cloud or deploying digital platforms. They need to refine their existing solutions, recognise challenges within their organisation, and come up with solutions that can evolve their business in the long-term and provide an optimised end-user experience.
Without looking at the bigger picture, telcos are limiting their ability to transform on a larger scale and may instead just be focusing on a single challenge. They just need to recognise the challenges and pain points in order to move forward with agility:
- Gap Between BSS and OSS – A gap between BSS and OSS influences far more business aspects than just an IT system. It spans to the mindset of the organisation and creates a silo effect. There are two separate teams: customer-facing business departments and network-facing engineering departments, which do not communicate effectively with each other, and their productivity suffers.
- Insufficient Operational Visibility – The gap between BSS and OSS worlds can result in poor data quality or a lack of integration. This can make it nearly impossible to answer even the most basic business questions.
- Commercial Service Catalogue Intertwined with Technology Catalogue – The constantly changing market requires product offerings to be adjusted frequently. Marketing should communicate mainly the customer-facing aspects of a product, and technical or operational departments should focus just on the network-facing aspects. These two sides are often confused in the catalogues, which later introduces interdependencies between marketing and operations and may have a negative impact on the flexibility in launching new products.
- Customer Services Not Mapped to Network Resources – Telcos often find it challenging to determine which underlying network resources are supporting particular customer services. This makes it difficult, time-consuming, and costly to perform root cause analysis in the event of a network outage.
- IT Projects Fatigue – This can often happen when organisations are tired of endless IT projects aiming to revolutionise their operations yet failing to deliver tangible results. Starting new projects that are organised using a traditional approach are very difficult due to inefficiencies limiting success.
Transforming with OSS/BSS Innovation
Recognising these challenges creates an opportunity for telcos to adapt with a new approach. They will not be able to evolve their business if their underlying systems remain the same. By creating a new, innovative approach to OSS/BSS, telcos can complete the first steppingstones to a new and improved path forward.
OSS/BSS automation can drive innovation and bring new value to how a telco functions. By removing manual processes, it enables the business to see available inventory, rapidly provide customers with quotes and deliver seamless end-to-end experiences. Here are six capabilities that telcos need to deploy to enable rapid digital transformation:
- Order Management and Service Provisioning – Automate provisioning workflows to move faster to deliver services to customers. Receive, validate and execute orders, then measure the process against KPIs to improve overall performance.
- CRM with Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) – Make it simple to produce accurate and highly configured quotes with a centralised model and in real-time. Otherwise, disparate systems will be operating without consistency.
- Unified Product Catalogue – Create, modify and launch new products from a single platform and at the click of a button. Adapt rapidly to changing demand and offer new bundles to meet changing customer needs.
- Self-Service – Empower customers and give them control over their own services with self-service capabilities. This enables telcos to rapidly scale while delivering a consistent customer experience.
- Service Assurance – Reduce fault resolution time thanks to the automatic creation of cases by incidents affecting the network and equipment, so-called network trouble tickets.
- Analytics – Easily connect data from OSS/BSS stacks and create automated dashboards. This data-driven reporting helps businesses to make better and faster decisions.
A Foundation for the Future
Through an innovative approach to OSS/BSS with automated processes, telcos are able to operate with greater agility and quickly adapt to changing customer demands. By creating a digitally enabled experience for customers, it provides the support needed to seamlessly guide them through their digital journey.
Improving customer service and efficiency is always going to be at the top of the list for businesses. By utilising a comprehensive OSS/BSS solution, telcos can focus on gaining the insights and structure they need to rapidly transform their business and make smarter decisions into the future.
