Service Agility: You're Only as Fast as Your Slowest Process
Aside from squeezing more revenue from existing services and streamlining processes, the agile operator is also better positioned to take advantage of IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (Machine-to-Machine) services. The agile operator is positioned with reach, automation and provisioning required to monitor the farest flung railcar or weather balloon over Antartica. The agile operator also has in place the efficiencies realized through automation required to turn a profit with low-ARPU M2M services.
Robust support systems also position telecom organizations to integrate their services with other vertical business markets. From healthcare to mobile money, operators with the operational ability to interface with other organizations in other industries will likely determine the winners. The good news, according to Lenahan, is that the support systems demands of most other industries are likely to be far simpler than those required to deliver telecom services.
What is the path to become the agile operator? Most envision something like the network verison of the old reality show “The Swan” where women were starved and hacked on by plastic surgeons until they emerged reborn, as beautiful swans. The show, if you missed it in the early 2000's was just as freaky and scary as it sounds. Not so of the Agile Operator Makeover. What sounds like a rip-and-replace reinvention can actually be a much less traumatic, gentler affair, according to Ericsson's Lenahan.
“We try to emphasize you don't have to throw everything away,” he says. "You can put it in incrementally, and even make existing systems more modern.”
He adds that Ericsson's approach is modular and model based. You find what works and reuse those building blocks across the business.
Because, in the end, no matter how suped up your billing system is, if the entire system isn't functioning at the same speed, the entire operation suffers.
“You're only as fast as your slowest process,” Lenahan says. “So it's important to look at every process and figure out how to make them better.”
Even what he calls the “L” word, “legacy systems” can get an overhaul to function more efficiently. Other vendors, including Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent and new entrants like ItsOn, are focused on virtualizing OSS and BSS functions for maximum flexibility and efficiency.
The agile operator is one that has the business operations and processes in place to offer network access and complimenting services on demand, all the time. As operators around the world start to embark on the journey to becoming more agile, where will the rest find themselves in the next couple of years? From doing more with less to reaching out to new industries, the support systems of tomorrow will dictate what the business opportunities will be.
How fast is your slowest process? Is that fast enough?
