Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 3

	This Month's Issue:
	Automation

Profiles in Automation

By Tim Young

Automation is a tricky topic for some. It's necessary, beyond question, and allows manufacturers and personnel from countless market segments (and for the sake of disambiguation, we are of course focusing on telecommunications) to streamline resources and maximize assets while, theoretically, providing top end services to customers of all stripes. On the other hand, automation is touchy in all fields because, in the short run anyway, it eliminates jobs and (it can be argued) increases complexity.

So what's the value of automation in the telecom world? Where is automation being utilized to its best effect? What are the potential benefits and problems associated with automation? In order to get a better look at the issue, we spoke to three OSS vendors about automation and how it affects the overall telecom picture. Here's what they had to say. It comes down to three major benefits of automation.

Tribold and the Efficient System.

First, we spoke to Simon Muderack, CEO of Tribold. The Product Management enterprise software provider has a considerable degree of first-hand experience with automation. Muderack asserts that automation is indeed important, for one thing, when it comes to reducing overhead. “If you look at the work in which we are involved at Telstra, those guys are looking to strip out 14,000 people from within their organization,” says Muderack, with regards to the Australian telecom giant whose employees number around 50,000. “A large part of that is driven by automation and consolidation in the back office.”

A reduction of some 30% of a workforce and its related overhead is reason enough to increase OSS and BSS automation, but the needs of Telstra go beyond that. “They're also looking to achieve a 75% reduction in time to market”, which can, of course, be aided by automation. Other major companies could theoretically see equally impressive reductions in size through automation, one imagines, because of the sheer number of processes currently involved in their models. “We're working with one tier 1 in the UK that has 155 billing systems”, says Muderack.

So how much room for consolidation is there within these organizations? “If you look at what we're doing with Telstra, they have roughly 250 employees who deal with new product data and inputting product data. Quite simply, they're data entry people. Since there is so much complexity in the data, they also have to be highly skilled people” says Muderack. Can automation be an adequate replacement for these skilled employees? “If you look at the car industry 30 years ago,” he continues, “you had pretty highly paid people screwing accelerator pedals into the floorpans

Automation is.... necessary, beyond question... allowing businesses to streamline resources and maximize assets while, theoretically, providing top end services to customers of all stripes.

of automobiles.” That has obviously changed, and has been beneficial to the industry as a whole.

Muderack does recognize that there is a limit to what automation can or should do. “There are some areas that cannot be completely automated. There are certain high-end enterprise services that must be delivered in an ad hoc fashion,” he says. “If you wanted a fiber connection between London and Singapore, you're never going to have that delivered in an automated fulfillment fashion. You want that type of connection for a very specific purpose and want a certain level of customer service and you're going to get that.”

Muderack also asserts that for a certain demographic, automation is very much the order of the day. “If you look at my family, no one under the age of 21 wants to talk to a customer service representative or shop assistant” says Muderack. “They want to play around with things and add services as they like. They want to do things on a per-usage basis.” Indeed, for a generation that has grown up with less and less human interaction associated with the purchase and use of goods and services, customer service from an actual human can be more of a pain than a benefit.

Axiom and the Customizable System

We Spoke to Jason Grant, head of Pre-sales at Axiom about the lessons Axiom has learned about the key benefits of automation. Grant says that, for Axiom, automation has been key in introducing the concept of componentization, and its eventual product, Axiom's Active Catalog.

The central question with automation, as Grant poses it is “Why do people want to automate?” His answer? “The utopia is to cut

article page | 1 | 2 |

© 2006, All information contained herein is the sole property of Pipeline Publishing, LLC. Pipeline Publishing LLC reserves all rights and privileges regarding
the use of this information. Any unauthorized use, such as copying, modifying, or reprinting, will be prosecuted under the fullest extent under the governing law.