In a previous blog, I discussed how a comprehensive, end-to-end OSS transformation program will bring tangible value to end customers. A key component in ensuring superior customer experience is naturally assuring the delivery and quality of the services the customers subscribe and pay for. After some hesitation in the service assurance market for a couple of years, there are signs of an increasing importance of SA, demonstrated by its investment priority in Communication Service Provides (CSPs).
In the recent report by B /OSS World “Service Assurance Moves Up the Priority Ladder”, 68% of respondents said service assurance was a high priority, while a full third indicated it as their highest priority.
This trend is also validated by a large number of new SA customer projects we have won in HP recently. These service providers tell us they see several opportunities from transforming their operations and investing in new SA solutions, such as:
- Compete more efficiently by transforming the OSS to gain agility, improved customer focus and reduced costs
- Reduce churn and meet growing customers expectations by understanding, measuring and improving the customer experience. For example, at DTAC, Thailand: “dtac introduces dSmart solution to improve customer experience”
- Fully realize the benefits from new technologies, and M&A, by removing inefficiencies through consolidation and automation of operational processes. For example, at Sasktel, Canada: “SaskTel does it right with new resource management platform”
- Meet the challenge of complexity and diversity of devices, services and networks by consolidating management across telecom, IT, and IP. For example, at UNE, Colombia: "HP Helps Colombia’s UNE Improve Service Quality for Telecom Customers"
- Take advantage of new business models (e.g. Clouds, xaaS) with solutions meeting new operations requirements, such as massively scalable, full life-cycle SLA management
Further, it’s interesting to note that the majority of the respondents in B /OSS World’s report share our vision of the type of SA model they see as ideal: A customer centric approach (45%), or a combination of customer-centric and network-centric (49%). Further, only 1/10 of the respondents plan to maintain separate SA silos, using some sort of analytics engine to manage correlation, while 60% share our view that the most efficient SA solution is one that consolidates operational silos across processes, tools, and organizations. It might be that the ones in favor of silos see the scope of SA differently, and don’t consider correlation to be part of it, which would explain the divergent views.
We also believe that successful SA requires understanding and visibility of how services are used down to the individual user, according to multiple dimensions (including individual and groups of users, handsets being used, generated traffic, regional aspects, and network generation) to be able to deliver improved customer experience and better customer support. Again, this is backed up by the B/OSS World report, where a large part of the respondents say they lack visibility of customer experience and of performance of converged services.
Another challenge is often the lack of internal skills to engage in the required OSS transformation. From our own study last year “HP Global Business Transformation in Telecoms Study” together with Frost & Sullivan, where more than 30 CSPs were interviewed, the respondents said that the key success factors when choosing transformation partner were: Proven transformation experience, telecom as well as IT expertise, an end-to-end life-cycle and governance capability, and the ability to choose from a comprehensive OSS software portfolio. Watch the video “Surviving and thriving transformation”.
At the end of the day, what counts are tangible business outcomes. In the B/OSS World’s report, 42% say their SA solution has helped them improve the customer experience and reduce churn. In HP, our customers have been able to realize important business benefits after implementing our SA solutions. Some examples:
- $1B return via operations center consolidation (Large American operator)
- Reduced time required for incident isolation by 60-70% (Softbank, Japan)
- Resolve 70%+ of issues in first call (DTAC, Thailand: see link above)
Read more about how our OSS solutions can help CSPs increase agility, improve customer focus and reduce costs www.hp.com/go/oss
