For service providers to prosper they have to rapidly respond to customers’ needs by developing the right service packages at the right time. And this is where automated provisioning can help, says Gareth Senior, chief operating officer at Axiom Systems
It is now widely recognised that automated provisioning of new customers is massively beneficial to operators. The ability to quickly configure the series of tasks necessary to provision data services is critical to an operator’s ability to drive revenues from their service offerings.
The operators that have already made the leap to automated provisioning must shudder when they think back to the old, labour-intensive processes that sucked up time and revenue.
But here is the interesting part: once a robust, end to end provisioning system is in place, the core software becomes the focal point for every future service they deliver. And, indeed, what the most progressive service providers are now asking for takes them way beyond traditional OSS.
Right now, the rush to design and deliver new services is at fever pitch. As the mobile data services market continues to grow, it can only become even more competitive, with each operator bidding for more and more customers by offering more attractive and tailored packages on top of basic voice. Therefore, to keep up with competition, today’s operators must be able to create new services quickly and simply.
In the past, service providers accepted that it could take months of design before a new service could be brought to market. In fact sometimes what was promised by sales and marketing could not even be met by network and service operations in terms of design and delivery. In 2005 that situation is no longer tolerable.
Now, when the key components required for provisioning — such as Order Management, Inventory Management and Service Activation — are all in place and working together — an incredibly straightforward way to create and deliver new services is at the operators’ fingertips.
Already, some of the world’s largest and most progressive service providers are now working with a system, based on core provisioning technology, which gives them a complete platform for design and delivery of new services. The way that this can work is by giving network engineers the ability to model network capability, so that separate components are created. These components can cross multiple technology and vendor domains without requiring complex technical validation and implementation. The network engineers can create a library of working components and put them together to publish new products and packages.
In this way, the service creation capability is working as an extension of the core provisioning technology. The good news about this approach is that, quite automatically, all the order processing, inventory management and network activation systems are securely in place prior to launch of new services. So, effectively, the core OSS infrastructure has extended its reach out of the back office Operations department into the front office and beyond, all the way to the customer.
Towards design and delivery
In this co-ordinated, integrated fashion, the provisioning technology has evolved to become a design and delivery solution, bringing together all the people and processes involved in the design, launch, ordering and delivery of mobile data services. This ensures that what is offered to and ordered by the customer is what they want and that it is delivered to them as promised time and time again.
This new way of thinking about data services represents a major step forward in helping service providers design and deliver new and updated data services at the speed of customer need. The benefits to service provider are numerous:
* Reducing the time taken to design, test and introduce new data services
* Providing customer self-service and the flexibility to tailor the service to suit their specific need
* Automating order capture and subsequent utilisation of the multi technology access and core IP networks required to provision the service
* Managing all organisations involved in the design and delivery process, including dynamic selection of the best wholesale service providers when and where appropriate
* Monitoring service performance and providing valuable information to improve the design of new services into the future
Right now the focus for many service providers is to survive and prosper in this incredibly competitive environment. Exactly what the market will look like in three or five years time is anyone’s guess. And the exact services that will drive customers’ interest years from now, again, we can only guess at.
But one thing is for sure: evolution is the watchword for this industry. No service provider can afford to stand still. The service providers that will prosper in this market will be those that can rapidly respond to their customers by continuing to develop the right service packages for the right time.