Alsbridge looks at the decommissioning of telecom services through the use of robotic process automation
Entropy can be defined as the “lack of order or predictability, or the gradual decline into disorder.” The concept applies to natural states (think water without gravity holding it down) as well as to business processes designed by humans.
A good example of the latter is the way service additions, moves, changes and decommissions are performed in telecom companies. Telecom providers constantly switch circuits off in response to service changes by customers – a move, merger or acquisition, an updating of legacy systems, or simply because the customer got a better deal from a competing carrier. The customers in question can be end users as well as other telecom providers leasing circuits to gain access to geographies where they lack infrastructure.
While seemingly straightforward, in reality the process to decommission a circuit is exceedingly complex and prone to costly errors and delays. First, an account manager or network operations worker receives a notice of a change in a customer’s set up. The worker then locates customer account information in both provisioning platforms and billing platforms, typically accessing multiple applications.
The next step is to determine whether the service is ready or scheduled for termination and what internal and third-party services are impacted. If the change can be made immediately, the worker identifies all circuits and facilities and performs the change in the network provisioning system. If the change is to be delayed, the worker may have to create a future event reminder.
Another consideration is third-party involvement: If required, the worker must use the prescribed method of communication with that third party. Moreover, if a field service engineer is required, the worker will create the dispatch case.
All of these actions must be noted in both the billing systems and the customer relationship management. And, for follow-up and pending actions, a tracking item will be created. This may be a case status or simply a calendar entry or note to self.
As you might imagine, all of this gets very complicated very quickly. To simply confirm that a third-party circuit exists often requires that an administrator look in multiple systems, none of which are owned by the administrator’s company. An administrator who relies on internal sources of customer information and gets burned once or twice quickly learns to conduct a thorough search to check and double-check multiple systems for every change event. What does “getting burned” involve? Envision a painful discussion with management – discussions that happen all too often in telecom firms across the globe – around why a $5,000 per month facilities fee to a competitor has been in place for 20 months after the customer terminated.
Bottom line: the process for decommissioning a circuit – defined in theory as a relatively simple path of activity – rapidly devolves into fragmentation, characterized by complex one-to-many interconnections between myriad channels. Each swim lane of activity comprises multiple handoffs and checkpoints, each with the potential for delays, fall outs and errors. Managing these processes has traditionally been a time- and people-intensive undertaking requiring multiple steps and checkpoints.
Enter robotic process automation – software robots that use rules-based logic to execute specifically designed tasks in much the same way people do. A digital robot that replaces five to 10 human administrators costs as little as $10,000 to $15,000 per year, which includes license fees, deployment and maintenance. Because RPA applications run as allocated resources on local servers, they have minimal impact on information technology-managed infrastructure or technology resources, CPU performance or network traffic. Bandwidth, storage and compute capacity requirements are similarly unaffected, and existing change management protocols are still applicable. RPA can reside on cloud or traditional platforms and, again, require no change in underlying systems or databases.
What should be especially interesting to telecom carriers is that the processes around circuit decommissioning – while convoluted and complex – are also very clearly defined and repeatable, making them ideal candidates for RPA. For example, in a typical circuit disconnect, an agent starts with a shared email inbox by opening a specific disconnect mailbox folder, then selecting and opening a specific disconnect email and performing a series of specific steps. These consist of actions such as opening an email, entering account information, clicking a link, extracting data and entering a login code. Because these actions are all logical and rules-based, they can be structured to be programmed and captured as clearly defined, multiple steps for a robot.
A number of industries are leveraging RPA capabilities to reduce costs, improve data quality and gain insight into customer requirements. The complexities of circuit decommissioning represent a critical opportunity for telecom providers to use RPA to drive significant improvements in operational efficiency.
As director of robotic process automation for leading independent sourcing and advisory firm, Alsbridge, Raun Kilgo has extensive expertise and proven success helping companies implement robotic process automation, desktop automation and workforce analytics. He has a proven track record of driving dramatic improvements in these areas for key sectors, including banking, health care, insurance and telecommunications, both in contact centers and back-office operations environments.
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