Asset Assurance: Bridging the Gap between OSS-BSS

Fig 2: ROC Asset Assurance – Bridging the Alignment Gap

Asset Assurance leverages network intelligence throughout the asset lifecycle to provide both Finance and Operations with the analytics they need to promote more efficient use of capital. Network intelligence provides critical information to complete the asset picture, helping to answer questions including:

How much time elapsed from the purchase of an asset until it was installed in the network?

How much time elapsed from the installation of the asset until it first carried revenue traffic (i.e. became productive)?

Which assets are deployed in the network but unknown to ERP?

Which assets that appear utilized in inventory are actually un-utilized as reported by the network?

Are spares efficiently distributed based on locations of deployed assets and counts as reported by the network?

The answers for these questions come from capturing, analyzing and comparing large data sets over time from multiple sources (including the network, OSS and BSS) and equipping Finance and Operations with insightful and actionable information.

Fig 3: The Asset Assurance Ecosystem

With ROC Asset Assurance solution, operators can manage their telecommunications network assets across all dimensions of the asset life cycle and substantially reduce network CAPEX. The solution is built on the ROC (Revenue Operations Center) product suite, which provides integration not only with existing Subex solutions (Revenue Assurance, Fraud, Partner Settlements, etc.), but also external systems (billing, order management, ticketing, accounting, CRM, etc.). The solution acts as a bridge between the OSS and BSS functions within the telco and successfully blends decision making (actionable intelligence), accountability (purchase controls and gates), and process controls (case management and alerts); all in a comprehensive package that enables operators to reduce their capital expenditure and manage the capacity needs of their networks with precision.

Subex has competency and expertise in asset lifecycle analytics and network intelligence and is leading the Asset Management group in TM Forum. Subex has successfully demonstrated the value of ROC Asset Assurance to help maximize the return on invested capital for its customers and help build competitive advantage, having recently executed a pilot at a Tier 1 operator. With the help of this solution, the operator was able to track visibility of assets across all stages, detect nearly 400 high-end network cards which were untraceable for a specific part of their network, and established a correlation that over a 9 month period there is a direct correlation between increase in repair and corresponding increase in assets. ROC Asset Assurance highlighted that the Operator was spending more capital on keeping buffers to manage increase in defective assets rather than looking at proactive interventions to manage and thereby influencing mean time to repair.

Yet another operator employing ROC Asset Assurance found USD 62 Million in underutilized assets (unknown to the inventory) in the network. This number is still growing.