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Procedures, supply chains, smart contracts and how they save costs

This week we've discussed standard operating procedures, dynamic / variable operating procedures and touched on how they impact a future supply / value chain that is far more digitised and potentially has far more actors involved (eg freelance resources). The digital trust mechanisms of blockchain open up opportunities for smart contracts to change the way businesses operate. Smart contracts have the potential to remove the need…

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12/01/2017 No Comments

Working on the business rather than in the business of OSS

Blogs from the last two days have covered the dilemma of dynamic operating procedures and why the standard operating procedures of the past are perhaps too idealistic a concept. Despite this, I still try to build repeatability into the various aspects of OSS delivery - initial installation, documentation, demonstrations, training, testing (and regression testing), etc. This concept was one of my key take-aways from the book,…

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11/01/2017 No Comments

Standard Operating Procedures… or Variable Operating Procedures

Yesterday's blog discussed the importance, but (perhaps) mythical concept of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for service providers and their OSS / BSS. The number of variants, which I can only see amplifying into the future, makes it almost futile to try to implement SOPs. I say "almost futile" because SOPs are theoretically possible if the number of variants can be significantly compressed. But given that I…

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10/01/2017 No Comments

Standard operating procedures… or are they?

Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) have been pivotal in codifying and standardising the use cases of service providers for many years. The theory goes that if you can standardise a process, then you can produce repeatably high quality and streamline it in a cycle of continual improvement. The repeatability objective is one* of two primary recollections from a book that I read many years ago called The…

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09/01/2017 No Comments

Buckeye Broadband selects CSG International

Buckeye Broadband Selects CSG International to Launch New Services and Enhance Customer Experience. CSG Systems International announced that Buckeye Broadband will use CSG’s market-leading revenue and customer management solutions to power the next evolution of its services and overall customer experience. Buckeye Broadband is a full-service provider of cable, internet, and phone services for more than 170,000 residential and commercial subscribers across Northwest Ohio and Southeast…

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07/01/2017 No Comments

Comptel receives order in the Middle East

Comptel Has Received a Significant Order from a New Customer in the Middle East. Comptel has received a significant order from a new customer in the Middle East.The deal includes licenses and services for the convergent mediation software solution embedded with analytical capabilities for Operational Intelligence. The value of the deal is approximately 2.6 million EUR. “With our consolidated Data Refinery platform our new customer can…

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05/01/2017 No Comments

Comptel receives order from European wholesale operator

Comptel Has Received a Major Order from a European Wholesale Operator. Comptel has signed a new multi-year contract with a European wholesale operator. This is a new customer for Comptel. The contract value is 1.9M EUR, and it comprises FlowOne Fulfillment licenses and related services. “Capability to manage complex orders from multiple operators and the flexibility to adapt to their processes and their customer’s processes are…

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01/01/2017 No Comments

Nokia Motive deployed by KDDI

Nokia Motive Service Management Platform deployed by KDDI in Japan to deliver superior customer care. Nokia announced that Japanese communications service provider KDDI has deployed the Nokia Motive Service Management Platform (SMP) to deliver superior customer care by streamlining and improving the resolution of issues for its millions of mobile subscribers. Nokia Motive SMP allows KDDI to improve the detection, troubleshooting and resolution of issues during…

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28/12/2016 No Comments

Nokia, Vodafone and Telit collaborate on IoT ecosystem

Nokia, Vodafone and Telit collaborate to expand the IoT ecosystem using NB-IoT technology. Nokia, Vodafone and Telit, are collaborating to expand the Internet of Things ecosystem using Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) technology. Nokia has deployed a fully integrated NB-IoT system at Vodafone's 'Open Lab' in Dusseldorf, Germany using its radio access network and elements from its Cloud Packet Core solution. The system leverages IoT technology from Telit and…

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24/12/2016 No Comments

Bimodal demographics represent a challenge and an opportunity for CSPs

Yesterday's blog spoke of the challenges faced by traditional service providers to simplify their product stacks when compared with their OTT counterparts. Unlike the OTT players, removal of product lines tends to be revenue dilutitive. The other challenge facing the traditionalists is the demographics they serve compared with the OTT players. The OTT players tend to serve a digitally-savvy demographic. Take Amazon for example. They service…

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23/12/2016 No Comments

NFV has the potential to amplify the OSS pyramid of pain

In two recent posts, we've discussed the changing world order of OSS with NFV as a catalyst, and highlighted the challenges posed by maintaining legacy product offerings (the pyramid of OSS pain). These two paradigms (and others such as the touchpoint explosion) are dragging traditional service providers closer to a significant crossroad. Network virtualisation will lead to a new array of products to be developed, providing…

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22/12/2016 2 Comments

NFV as the catalyst for a new OSS world order

"operators that seek to implement NFV without preparing their OSS to support it are unlikely to be successful in capturing the new revenue-generating and cost-saving opportunities. OSS should not be an afterthought; it will continue to be central to the operational efficiency and agility of the service provider." James Crawshaw in "Next-Gen OSS for Hybrid Virtualized Networks." The quote above comes via an article by Ray…

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21/12/2016 No Comments

Communicating the OSS faith

"Sometimes communicating to someone that you have faith in them and believe they can succeed is all they need to actually succeed." Keith Cameron Smith. As you might have guessed, I spend a lot of time working in and analysing the OSS industry. I've also worked in many countries and organisations on OSS-related projects. This all leads to the obvious - I've worked alongside many, many…

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20/12/2016 No Comments

Your OSS, but with an added zero!

"We're woefully unprepared to deal with orders of magnitude. Ten times as many orders. One-tenth the number of hospital visits. Ten times the traffic. One-tenth the revenue. Ten times as fast. Because dramatic shifts rarely happen, we bracket everything on the increment, preparing for just a relatively small change here or there. We think we're ready for a 1 inch rise in sea level, but ten…

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19/12/2016 No Comments

Comptel wins new deal in Denmark

Comptel Has Won a New Deal for Monetizer in Denmark. Comptel has won a new deal for the Monetizer policy and charging control product in Denmark. The deal is a continuation of a long customer relationship and it includes licenses and services. The value of the deal is approximately 1.3 million euros. With Monetizer, operators can create, configure, launch and modify dynamic contextual packages as well…

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17/12/2016 No Comments

Nokia acquires Deepfield

Nokia to acquire Deepfield to power network and service automation with real-time, big data analytics. Nokia announced plans to acquire Deepfield, the US-based leader in real-time analytics for IP network performance management and security. The acquisition will extend Nokia's leadership in real-time, analytics-driven network and service automation, providing customers including communications service providers, cable operators and cloud, webscale and large technology companies with greater network and…

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17/12/2016 No Comments

NetLink Trust selects Amdocs

NetLink Trust Selects Amdocs to Implement Next-Generation B/OSS to Enhance Fiber Broadband Customer Experience. Amdocs announced that NetLink Trust, Singapore’s nationwide telecommunications infrastructure provider, has selected Amdocs to deliver a next-generation business and operations support system (B/OSS) to transform its legacy systems and fully automate order management, service design and delivery processes and service assurance. Amdocs’ solution aims to accelerate delivery time for fiber connectivity and…

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16/12/2016 No Comments

Sunrise selects Amdocs

Sunrise Selects Amdocs to Further Digitalize Call Center Operations, Improving Customer Service. Amdocs announced that Sunrise, the largest private service provider in Switzerland offering mobile, fixed, broadband Internet and TV services, has selected to enhance its existing Amdocs customer management solution to further digitalize its call center operations. Following rollout, Sunrise will be able to equip its call-center agent screens with a single, intuitive and process-driven…

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16/12/2016 No Comments

Mining OSS data for gold

OSS's reason for being is to deliver efficiency and insights (and monitoring). If we focus in on the insights component of that, where do we look for insights? In many cases, we hone in on particular insights because we're looking for evidence on something specific, to either prove or disprove a concept. In a way, it's like an investigator asking a range of different questions of…

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16/12/2016 No Comments

Do you have an OSS exit strategy?

"If I hear something where I want to put a gun in my mouth, it's that boring, I smell money. You wanna open a restaurant? You wanna open a fashion brand? You wanna start a jewelry line? You wanna produce movies? You better have a steady income, because you're not going to make a lot of money and you're going to work your ass off. Why?…

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15/12/2016 No Comments

The pyramid of OSS pain

The diagram below is a crass over-simplification of where the source of OSS pain (ie complexity) tends to originate from. If an organisation has complexity in the upper-most layer (ie products), then this is bound to flow downstream, amplifying along the way and culminating in increased complexity at support systems like OSS/BSS. If there are many products, with many different variants of features, bundles, offers, incentives,…

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14/12/2016 No Comments