Partner content: Automation transformations may attract the boardroom’s attention, but are often risky, expensive and rarely completed: micro-improvements can deliver results fast and support macro-projects in future
Many operators consider automation and optimisation to be ‘all-or-nothing’ activities. Such an approach can involve an army of consultants, require significant investment, and bring considerable risk. The risk being pitted against the benefits of increased automation, reduced costs, enhanced agility, improved efficiency, and reduced human error.
McKinsey[1] calls this ‘rewiring’ – any form of digital transformation that requires the organisations to change the way it operates. Risk is the main concern here. According to the TM Forum, for example, 70% of such ‘big bang’ transformations fail in one way or another[2].
Transformational projects can be risky and prone to failure
While they capture the interest of company leaders, and often gain executive buy-in, many are never fully completed, which is where most of the risk exposure (financial, security, experiential, and so on) is likely to reside. After a certain point, such projects are considered ‘good enough’ or the result is not as anticipated, and focus turns to the next ‘transformation’ looming on the horizon.
Of course, they capture boardroom attention – but surely it would be easier, and less risky, to find targets that are more easily achieved, require less investment, and have less chance of failure?
When it comes to automation and optimisation, this is most certainly the case. An incremental approach is the answer. Operational optimisation can be pursued at a macro level but there are many more opportunities to deliver value with a micro-focused approach. That’s because any change that enables a reduction in manual tasks and interventions represents a degree of optimisation.
Incrementally extending automation to gradually eliminate more manual activities delivers growing savings and benefits. What if not everything can be automated? Does that mean we should defer the whole exercise until the full benefits can be realised? Not at all.
In fact, in this case, it’s still possible to automate what is possible, while building in exception visibility into the process. This involves identifying points at which human-in-the-loop automation and orchestration interventions are required.
With visibility of these gaps, the automation can be future-proofed, because they can be closed in the future, when it is possible to remove them. It’s just an extension to the process created, so we can secure immediate optimisation while keeping the door open for future enhancements.
Taking a micro-based approach also empowers teams to take their own decisions and to focus on points of friction that matter to them. Take the BSS as an example.
Building in reusability and portability to support future macro projects
One operator customer of We Are CORTEX was using a legacy billing system that required significant manual intervention to ensure that data was correctly captured and entered into the system.
However, with the introduction of the CORTEX automation platform, the majority of these tasks could be processed automatically, covering data entry, mediation and validation – which includes re-entering data when required to complete the process.
The result? End-to-end billing processes are now 98.5% automated – but the gap is known and can be addressed in the future. Consequently, benefits have been secured today – 18 FTEs have been liberated from these essential but repetitive tasks and reallocated to other, more fulfilling roles that drive further value. In turn, this has improved morale and reduced employee churn.
This example is one of many that highlight that focusing on a specific problem, based on the experienced insights of a dedicated team, can yield exceptional results. But it’s also important to note that, even if the transformation extends to a macro-level and, say, the operator retires multiple legacy platforms to modernise, these micro automations do not need to be discarded.
That’s because the We Are CORTEX platform is based on reusability and portability. This means that, because automation is focused on the process, not the underlying system or technology, automations created to solve micro problems can be reused when replacing the legacy solutions by linking them to new systems and technologies.
Are you interested in learning how your team can deliver optimisation benefits today through micro automation and incremental process enhancement? You can find out more by downloading our new paper: Optimising your network and operations, part 3 in our series on Getting ready for Level 4 automation.
[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-digital-transformation
[2] https://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-opinion/five-pitfalls-that-sabotage-telco-transformations
