Streamlining Back-Office Processes

Here we are: the first quarter of a new year, and in many cases with a new outlook on life — and work. No one will argue that this is very typical this time of the year, when resolutions and good intentions take precedent — at least for the first month or so of the year.

While many resolutions fall by the wayside before February, I do believe this is the year of the new network focus. Jumping off the headlines of 2018, I think this will be the year of all-that-is-5G. This will no doubt have companies focusing the majority (or at least much) of their resources on building out the networks required to support the 5G juggernaut, and their quest to be first and best.

This should be very good news for the fans of ISE magazine. However, it is imperative that everyone keep in mind the fact that there are a lot of customers riding on the existing wireline networks despite continued cord-cutting trends. The trick for companies will be maintaining, or improving, service to this customer base without pulling resources from the aforementioned 5G efforts.

Luckily companies have a tool at their disposal that can help with this effort — and that tool happens to be the Network Transformation (NT) efforts that we discussed throughout 2018. (How’s that for a tie-in?)

At this point in our journey I do not think anyone can argue with the benefits of moving customers from a costly, somewhat antiquated (from a current market demand perspective) infrastructure. Better service, greater resiliency and expanded capacity for things like faster broadband are all givens at this point. Yet despite this I still feel many companies hesitate to push their NT strategies into the next higher gear.

I believe this is due to the fact that many companies continue to struggle with the demands (i.e., work) associated with migrating the right customers. As a result, when it comes to allocating resources, the new and shiny stuff gets the glory while older networks fade into the background.

Unfortunately, this fade can be costly in and of itself. It can also be very noisy in that people using these networks have, in many cases, no real alternative for their needs, so when things break, they start screaming.

So, the question is pretty clear. How can we drive down the overall costs associated with NT?

In our last column, we focused on one NT partner’s focus on streamlining the OSP processes and equipment in an effort to optimize efficiency and thus accelerate NT capabilities. Thankfully, there are many other equally qualified partners focused on improving things, so I think this end of the NT world is in great hands. (BTW, this also helps with the construction of 5G networks, so the work of these partners produces many benefits.)

Unfortunately, I’m not sure that this is the case when it comes to internal or back-office carrier functions — all the things that help to identify the right universe of customers ripe for NT migrations.

As we discussed last year, NT is a very manual, labor-intensive process, with NT teams working tirelessly to not only identify the right customers, but to also ensure that these customers enjoy a smooth, seamless transition. It is a lot of work cleaning up databases and writing service orders, and it ain’t easy.

But why is this so manual, given all of the advances over the years?

To figure out why this is, I think it’s necessary to look backwards a bit to see what drove all of this. Lucky for me, I happened to be talking to Bill Doyle, CEO of Dexter Systems. Bill is one of the sharpest people I know, and he’s helped me figure out things like this for long time.