Frictionless Provisioning In A Fractured
World
BY GLEN HELLMANN
These days, frictionless or "zero-touch" provisioning is a
red-hot issue in the telecommunications industry, and it's no wonder why.
Service providers must now provision multiple services -- voice, data, and
video -- over varied networks with unprecedented speed, ease, and accuracy.
If the service provider doesn't do a good job at provisioning services in a
timely manner, ramifications range from the alienation of some customers to
going out of business completely. Frictionless provisioning, when
accomplished via the Web with minimal human intervention, is the most
practical, scalable, and cost-effective way for service providers to avoid
these pitfalls.
Frictionless, Web-based provisioning requires far more than a pretty
interface on the Web where customers can order their own services or make
changes to existing services. Customer self-service on the front end is only
the beginning. More importantly, a sophisticated back-end infrastructure
must be established and maintained in order to ensure that the order is
accurate, flows through automatically from department to department within
the service provider, is accurately provisioned, and, ultimately, informs
the customer. If the provider does not notify the customer that the service
is activated or the service change carried out, the customer's perception
will invariably be that the work has not been completed.
THE FRACTURED WORLD
There are two primary reasons why provisioning is a tough proposition.
First is the explosion of available services -- from VoDSL and VoIP to
broadband wireless -- the list of potential services that are available to
both business and residential customers grows every day. Second is the fact
that services must be provisioned over networks of seemingly insurmountable
complexity. A service provider's network typically consists of legacy
circuit-switched, broadband, and packet-switched (IP) networks. Each network
will often incorporate equipment from a variety of vendors running various
versions of software, each with their own rules for service activation and
deactivation.
Unfortunately, most of today's operations support systems (OSS) -- the
software-based nerve center of any service provider -- cannot automatically
handle this level of complexity. Nor can most service providers afford to
deploy their highly skilled network engineers solely on the relatively
simple, unfulfilling task of programming network elements to turn on new
services. Success requires delivering hybrid, cutting-edge services that are
end-user focused, yet are managed and provisioned automatically by
"flowing through" the service provider's OSS. This is the only way
service providers can optimize use of their networks, maximize customer
satisfaction, and eliminate costly manual tasks.
REALIZING ZERO-TOUCH PROVISIONING
A back-end infrastructure is available today that makes frictionless or
zero-touch provisioning a reality. It allows customers to place orders on
the Web, but instead of going into a "holding tank" for subsequent
phone follow-up by a salesperson, orders are automatically transferred to a
rules-based engine residing at the service management layer of the service
provider's infrastructure.
The rules engine has open interfaces and contains the carrier's complete
catalog of services, an up-to-date inventory of all the network elements
(including their brands and versions of hardware and/or software), and the
associated rules for supporting various services. The customer's order is
automatically checked against the service provider's catalog of services and
the required network elements to determine whether or not the service can be
provisioned.
When a customer requests a service online, the service provider's Web
site can make an API call to the rules engine in order to ensure that a
requested feature configuration is valid. If during the process a problem is
detected, the rules engine will pass back to the Web page, via the API, a
message that will assist the user in resolving the problem. If the rules
engine detects a problem with the order -- perhaps the customer wants call
forwarding but already has voice mail -- it will automatically relay
information, via e-mail, to the customer asking whether the customer wants
to resolve the problem by dropping the request for call forwarding in lieu
of voice mail.
Once the rules engine gives the green light that the service can be
supported and that there are no problems, the order is automatically
processed and provisioned by an intelligent activation system. The
activation system translates the service request into a network element
command, and programs the service on the necessary network elements, even if
they reside on IP, circuit-switched, and/or broadband networks. Thus,
service providers can continue to leverage legacy network systems while
phasing in new elements that support state-of-the-art services.
The rules engine makes frictionless provisioning a reality, so there is
no need to print out a service order or have a network engineer enter the
order information into an element management system. The process is handled
quickly and automatically, and the possibility of costly, time-consuming
data entry errors is eliminated. Then, the system automatically confirms
that services are operational. If there is a problem, the system sends an
error report to an appropriate employee of the service provider.
A STREAMLINED PROCESS
This type of system enhances provisioning both today and for the future
by delivering important benefits to service providers and customers. For
example, the system gets "smarter" each time it encounters an
error. Once the system "knows" about an error and the
corresponding solution, it can proactively query a network engineer when the
error next occurs, asking whether the problem should be fixed automatically
or not.
Customer satisfaction is increased because customers can check the status
of their order online, at any time during the process. Because more
customers are satisfied, call volumes drop to the service provider's call
center. This, in turn, reduces the service provider's support costs.
Customer satisfaction is also enhanced because once the service is turned
on, the system follows up via voice mail or e-mail to confirm service
activation and may offer training on how to use the new service.
This proactive outreach reduces billing disputes because customers are
told exactly when the service is activated. This, too, reduces calls to the
call center. Up-selling is also possible as customers are given the
opportunity to learn about related services that might be beneficial through
these voice and e-mails.
Together, the rules engine and activation system prevent the processing
of orders that have improper information or cannot be supported by the
network. They also free up expensive engineering talent to focus on more
challenging tasks, such as optimizing the network to deliver value-added
services. Since the time needed to provision services is accelerated, the
service provider realizes or receives additional revenue from the customer
sooner. In addition to dramatically reducing order-processing errors, the
rules engine and activation system offer the ancillary benefit of optimizing
network utilization.
Low flow-through occurs when a large number of orders require manual
intervention. A primary cause of low flow-through is the fact that the
service provider has an inaccurate inventory of the components of its own
network. The rules engine can be customized to automatically query network
elements to ensure that the rules in the rules engine are always in sync
with the actual network inventory. By actively entering network changes in
the rules engine, service providers can reduce provisioning errors and
further improve flow-through and network utilization.
While residing on the service management layer of the network, the rules
engine and activation system can physically be managed from anywhere within
the network. The rules engine, or knowledge base, has an open application
programming interface (API) based on CORBA (common object request broker
architecture) and XML. It comes pre-populated with the rules for most common
network elements, covering about 70 percent of the equipment that comprises
most service provider networks. Rules for additional equipment can easily be
added to the system.
Instead of building their own rules engine from scratch, carriers can
take advantage of an off-the-shelf system, pre-configured to include rules
for most common network elements. This not only reduces costs, but
significantly speeds time-to-market. Additional applications can be created
by the service provider and plugged into the system to meet the unique needs
of its network.
A COMPETITIVE IMPERATIVE
Most of today's carriers do not use a rules engine tied to both the
network and an activation system. Thus, order errors are not identified and
corrected up front. Instead, they are often detected late in the process
when there is a stronger likelihood of disappointing the customer. In
addition, when errors occur, they usually must be fixed manually, using
costly, skilled resources.
With increasing network and service complexity, low flow-through is
becoming a major bottleneck for service providers. The inability to solve
the bottleneck in some cases has a major negative impact on the service
provider's ability to deliver value-added services to the customer and, in
turn, hurts its competitiveness. By utilizing a back-end infrastructure that
links Web-based customer self-ordering with activation and service
confirmation, service providers can achieve the instant-on, error-free, and
zero-touch provisioning that will enable them to thrive in today's fiercely
competitive marketplace.
Glen Hellman is vice president and general manager of 3Com Carrier
Networks OSS located in Reston, VA. 3Com
delivers Web-enabled solutions to consumers, small- to medium-sized business
locations, and network service providers.
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