Operations transformation: key for a consistent customer experience in next-generation networks

Transcription

1 Huawei South Pacific Summit 2014, Malaysia Operations transformation: key for a consistent customer experience in next-generation networks 6 November 2014 Shanthi Ravindran, Glen Ragoonanan and Anil Rao

2 2 Abstract This session will focus on the trends towards network operations consolidation that can enable communications service providers (CSPs) to provide a consistent user experience, as they advance with LTE deployments and data services. The session will begin with a quick assessment of the market today, with focus on Malaysia and the challenges that CSPs face in delivering voice, video, and data services. It will evaluate CSP case studies from leading CSPs operating in a highly competitive market and the solutions that are delivered to improve efficiency, that also improve customer experience at the same time.

3 Key considerations for transformation - must be business-led and must be focused on desired business outcomes 3 1 What service and/or operations will it benefit most? 2 How important is the transformation to the business? 3 How can it impact cost, revenues and customer experience?

4 G percentage of connections Revenue (USD billion) ARPU/ASPU (USD per month) LTE Adoption : Malaysia has high growth potential among the EMAP countries 4 Telecoms retail revenue by service type, emerging Asia Pacific [Source: Analysys Mason, 2014] LTE adoption in APAC, by country [Source: Analysys Mason, 2014] Mobile voice Mobile messaging Mobile handset data Mobile broadband Mobile M2M Mobile ARPU Fixed voice and narrowband Fixed broadband and IPTV Business network services Fixed voice ASPU Fixed broadband ASPU 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% LTE adoption starts to grow significantly 0% Australia Hong Kong Japan Singapore South Korea Taiwan Bangladesh China India Indonesia Malaysia Pakistan Thailand Vietnam

5 WE CEE NA SSA DVAP World LATAM MENA EMAP Growth multiple (1 = 2013) Growth multiple (1 = 2013) EMAP will have the highest growth rate in the world for cellular data traffic, but still lag behind DVAP in usage 5 5-year growth multiples for cellular data traffic, by region, [Source: Analysys Mason, 2013] 12 Average monthly cellular data usage, 2013, and 5-year growth multiple for mobile data traffic, , Asia Pacific [Source: Analysys Mason, 2013] 22 Bangladesh Emerging Asia Pacific 8 16 India Thailand Pakistan China Malaysia Indonesia Developed Asia Pacific Japan 2 6 Taiwan Australia Hong Kong 4 South Korea Singapore Usage (MB/month/pop)

6 Scenario: Complex services are driving network complexity and Customers expectations are becoming more demanding 6 Illustrative Customers expect secure, high-quality access to network Anytime, anywhere, any device CUSTOMER End-to-end performance management across devices, applications and network (not just network availability) Secure and quality access to network-based data, applications from any device and access medium Digital services Voice/VoLTE Operators offer diverse services relying on shared network Multiple services SERVICE Social media Streaming video/content Enterprise services Diverse services and applications, often relying on shared network infrastructure Increased exposure to security threats and unplanned events Device- and access-agnostic services RESOURCE Multiple networks VoIP IPTV IP/MPLS Core Mobile access voice/data There are issues in handling such a complex network Multiple, disparate (but converging), geographically dispersed networks Converged TDM/IP networks carrying large quantities of data Virtualised infrastructure with more logical connections than physical Multi-vendor infrastructure with interoperability challenges Network infrastructure IMS PSTN

7 Networks and Services: Now and the future: Customer experience is PRIME and service quality is a key contributor 7 Now: Content and services for high speed LTE networks: Premium content for high value users and popular content and OTT apps for other customers UC Gaming Music Core content now Cloud Storage Video Future: Personalised, differentiated services focused on Customer Lifecycle value Future: Value-added Digital Economy services or Communications Services exposure: Service provider or enabler? Future: Dense HetNets and Software control that will provide the agility to enable the new services at lower costs Now: Customer and Network Analytics are merging to provide a total view of the customers, their preferences and service usage Now: Customer experience is key, to acquire and retain customers and increase usage and ARPU. Service quality is a key contributor to customer experience

8 CSPs evolving business objectives will trigger network changes that will indirectly drive operations automation Business objectives What do CSPs need to change? Reduce costs Increase efficiency of networks CSPs will need to maximise resource utilisation across multiple network layers CSPs need to rationalise and automate operations Reduce churn Provide superior customer experience CSPs will need to provide differentiated, personalised services to customers CSPs need to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction Increase revenue Provide high-value data services CSPs will need to deploy and maintain highcapacity, rapidly growing networks with LTE macros and small cells, deployed in many layers 8 Desired Outcomes? Reduce capex and opex Decreasing churn rates Increasing data ARPU How OSS evolution can enable CSPs to achieve this? Automated service management provides better quality networks and services at a lower total cost of ownership Making customer analytics & geolocation data available to OSS enables personalised service optimisation and support Automated configuration and optimisation can enable CSPs to build capacity faster and still maintain a high-quality network all the time CSP Communications service provider: a generic name for operators (network and virtual (MVNOs)

9 Service assurance functions will need to upgrade for more features and functions to support LTE and beyond 9 Customer experience management (CEM) on the support stage of the customer lifecycle: Service problems need to be solved before they impact customers. 56% of CSPs believe QoS influences customers willingness to recommend a CSP. 1 Real-time data network monitoring, IP traffic management and network analytics for customer centric view to cater to LTE data monetisation strategies. LTE brings more RAN layers. Unified assurance systems are needed for cross domain correlation for fast root-cause analysis of network / service issues Performance monitoring data becomes critical for Network benchmarking, Trending and Predictive operations across the network Network provisioning / Service activation / Network Optimisation needs to be efficient and automated enough to drive changes faster Information sharing between functional areas like Operations, Customer Care, NPO etc is essential Active Remote test Mobile phone End user Analytics Probe systems Passive DPI CPE Customer Experience applications SLA Access network Service management KPI/KQI Fault and event management Root cause analysis Network topology Discovery Predictive Operations Aggregation network Capacity planning Performance monitoring IP / Ethernet Counter analysis Polling Trending NMS SON, Configuration management Core network Impact analysis Customer records Workforce automation Home network management Dispatch ACS IT network Virtualised services

10 VoLTE will start testing all aspects of service management and its impact on customer experience in a CSP network 10 VoLTE is a QoS enabled application, that will test the coverage and capacity in the RAN and automated optimisation techniques will enable a better customer experience End to End Service management becomes imperative. Probe solutions that are capable of correlating control-plane and user-plane data for effective troubleshooting will be needed. Service management - Service KQI reporting application for VoLTE; per-subscriber reporting with likely cause of service quality disruption End-to-end call trace data can be very valuable for troubleshooting QoS issues. This information can be enriched with real-time network data obtained from passive probes and performance monitoring systems to develop a more comprehensive QoS monitoring approach. Voice QoS measurement techniques - Perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) / Perceptual objective listening quality assessment (POLQA) will be needed VoLTE application Fault/Event management Mobile access Backhaul and aggregation KQIs Real-time mediation/analytics Performance monitoring Accessibility Retainability Integrity Availability Mobility QoS POLQA, PESQ Service management Mobile packet core Probe systems IMS, app and content domains

11 CSPs should evolve towards customer centric operations models with ICT transformation 11 Leap of faith Network operations centre (NOC) 10% Fix the basics Service operations Centre (SOC) 90% 99% Customer connection Customer Experience Center (CXC) Network-centric operations Focused on network elements and OSS Starting point for all CSPs CSPS will retain their NOC and outsource functions Service-centric operations SOC require new service management systems and more indepth systems integration to monitor and manage services Customer-centric operations Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Telefónica are a few CSPs deploying advanced CEM systems on top of their SOC tools.

12 If you don t know where you are going any road will take you there, but 12 IT, BSS and SDP architecture IT and SDP architecture IT, BSS and SDP IT and SDP technologies technologies Network Network architecture architecture Customer and Service Service layer layer Analytics Transformation ICT (is for cost Roadmap optimisation) (Data transformation) Transformation Transformation in a competitive environment CSPs must Operations choose the right approaches practices transformation path to & practices navigate Operations approaches and Operations architecture OSS architecture Key transformation challenges for South Asia CSPs? Stabilising the organisation from volatile changes. Building realistic Network and achievable ICT transformation Operations programmes, as more ambitious initiatives have technologies Network higher risks an will be harder Technologies to justify the business case. technologies Establishing a sound Project management OSS technologies office (PMO)

13 13 eircom Group achieved 20% cost savings by consolidating service assurance systems in the service management centre Business drivers eircom Group s service management team wanted to move from a segmented view of its various network and infrastructure assets to a unified view. It wanted to migrate from separate IT, mobile and fixed network monitoring to a single consolidated ITIL based service management system that could provide a view of service impacts. Implementation approach Each of the three domains had a number of performance monitoring and telemetry systems that gave just a segmented view of performance of that domain. eircom s existing OSS estate included a number of COTS, such as IBM Tivoli Netcool, InfoVista and EMC Smarts, as well as numerous home-grown tools, resulting in disparate business processes, high ongoing costs from new development to support services, and a lack of an end-to-end service view. After a CTO driven architectural review and an RFI process, eircom chose a single COTS solution developed on the basis of unified service assurance solution. As a first step in that strategy, eircom is deploying the solution to monitor new services such as fibre to the cabinet, LTE and IPTV, with a plan to eventually migrate all existing services onto a single platform, replacing approximately 60% of the legacy monitoring tools within three years. Benefits Reduced operational costs by 20% overall by moving to a unified ITIL based incident and event management system. Key factor that led to cost savings was the reduction in operations staff headcount, but with continued 24x7x365 support. It is now in a position to retire over 100 separate legacy systems including Netcool, InfoVista, NNM, Smarts, to name a few. Reduced time to market for new services such as LTE, IPTV and NGA because of the streamlined service management and business processes. Achieved green tax breaks as a result of the restructuring of the service management centre.

14 Telecom Italia s NOC SOC transformation, improving customer experience and reducing network opex 14 Problem statement Telecom Italia was facing competitive pressures that were causing negative revenue trends, market share reduction and a slowdown in the number of new services that it was launching. Network-based surveillance (alarms and performance monitoring network elements) was mainly reactive. Implementation approach Telecom Italia s OSS estate included silo-based tools to monitor specific network or service domains, which did not provide an end-to-end service view and therefore hindered the CSP s ability to perform proactive customer-oriented surveillance. The CSP implemented a service operations centre (SOC), with near real-time service monitoring. The SQM platform provides direct evidence of service alarms and related causes (such as threshold violations and equipment faults) and a visual representation of geographical regions affected by problems. The SQM platform generates service alarms with related severities by executing correlation rules on various operational data. It also supports and executes propagation rules on service alarms over the hierarchical network/service tree based on configured service models. The unified assurance platform gathers information from multiple data sources including probes, and analysed call detail records (CDRs) in order to provide service alarm troubleshooting and customised, user-oriented, service and region-based views. The CSP has implemented 700 monitoring rules and 300 service alarms, 11 service models and 100 KPIs for service quality monitoring Benefits The SOC implementation enabled Telecom Italia to optimise its network maintenance processes to monitor the end-to-end QoS and identify the right priority of corrective actions. The unified service assurance platform enabled Telecom Italia to use network event correlation and geo-referenced real-time service monitoring to identify service and customer impacts, and proactively manage QoS issues.

15 Executive summary: PCCW-HKT, the smallest of five CSPs in Hong Kong, transforms the customer experience in its operations and customer care 15 Hong Kong has 7.1 million mobile subscribers, and its mobile penetration rate exceeds 200% (based on 3 months active SIMs). About 28 million roaming users were on Hong Kong s mobile networks in 2013, most of which are from mainland China PCCW-HKT is the smallest of the five mobile operators in Hong Kong. It had million mobile users by the end of The operator launched a customer experience management (CEM) transformation programme in 2009 to improve customer loyalty, starting with corporate/premium customers. Corporate customers account for 20% of PCCW-HKT s subscriber base, but generate 70% of its service revenue. PCCW-HKT s CEM strategy focused on the following goals: providing a unified view of the customer experience improving customer satisfaction among corporate and high-value, VIP customers in order to reduce churn reducing the mean time to resolve problems related to billing inquiries and service disruptions reducing the cost of acquiring new corporate customers. Figure 1: Key metrics before and after implementation of PCCW-HKT s CEM transformation plan [Source: Analysys Mason and PCCW-HKT, 2013] 2012 Pre-implementation Postpaid ARPU HKD185 (USD23.85) Mean time to identify faults was 3 hours Drive test and on-site visits by technicians to assess network coverage 2013 Post-implementation Postpaid ARPU HKD210 (USD27.05) (13% increase) Mean time to identify faults now 30 minutes 67% reduction in cost to assess corporate users network coverage

16 Organisation Systems Successful transformation need a pragmatic, long-term organisational approach, where the customer is king 16 Systems design, implementation and configuration are most effective when they Rationalisation of tools and follow the business and operational systems are aimed at processes. consolidating and linking Existing BSS/OSS information must be sources evolve to take on new features to support new services. Network virtualisation, analytics of Big Data and flexible API-enabled service layer software oriented ICT architecture are needed Re-skilling of staff is essential for any Process implementation is more transformation. This dependent enables on achieving the organisation more and people than systems. tasks with the same people Skilled staff need to be utilized optimally by: increasing business and operations process transparency centralising and coordinating operations making actions proactive increasing knowledge and skill sharing Customer-centric objectives Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (etom) is only a process guideline and each CSP needs tailored operational Merging / processes mapping of to etom align with the etom framework. and ITIL processes is key in an ICT transformation Processes must meet strategic business needs as well as tactical technical and operational requirements. Processes re-engineering is more complex than greenfield process development. Business led programs are Resistance essential to change for can leading lead the to issues assessing the existing change environment can be disruptive to CSP s business and customer experience / satisfaction Change must be incremental, not drastic Poor change management can lead to loss of expert resources Personal attachments can lower team spirit Processes Change

17 17 About the Presenter Shanthi is a member of Analysys Mason s Telecoms Software Research team, focusing on OSS, BSS and SDP for Asia Pacific customers. Shanthi Ravindran Senior Analyst com Shanthi has over 20 years of experience at Tier 1 Infrastructure vendors in Singapore, working on design, deployment and operations of Wireless and Broadband Networks for operators across the Asia Pacific, starting with the first GSM and CDMA networks in APAC and continuing on through to 3G and 4G networks. She is an expert in designing optimized, End to End solutions across Access Network, Circuit and Packet Core, IMS, Subscriber Databases and Policy, OSS and BSS with a strong understanding of the applicable telecoms and network evolution standards. 17