CSPs look to open systems to accelerate digital-to-network automation
A Vanilla Plus interview with Ilan Sade, General Manager, Amdocs Open Network
In this interview, Ilan Sade, the general manager of Amdocs Open Network, tells VanillaPlus managing editor George Malim why digital-to-network automation is so critical for service provider digital transformation success and how it will enable the continuous delivery of uninterrupted experiences to consumers and enterprises.
George Malim: How would you describe the state of play in terms of digitalization and automation in the telecoms industry?
Ilan Sade: Over the past few years, there has been an acceleration into digital-first and everyone wants to be connected fast. Consumers and businesses are moving into a connectivity-centric ecosystem which has been even further accelerated by Covid-19. The pandemic has brought in a greater sense of urgency and service providers need to respond to this. Although service providers have been making steady progress in certain areas of their digital transformation journeys, the focus has been on customers’ and businesses’ experiences across the different channels and on ensuring net promoter score (NPS) improvements. However, it’s more clear now than ever before that we can’t afford gaps and broken areas within service operations and network infrastructure that are still being addressed with ‘human glue’ or dealt with as checkmarks on a maintenance roadmap. The number one issue is that processes aren’t automated end-to-end.
The human glue is needed because there are too many manual steps. Much work remains to be done to automate service and network operations to remove dependencies on time-consuming manual steps and long lead-time break-fix activities. Several urgent steps need to be taken to reduce and eventually eliminate the risk of disjointed experiences, widespread outages and missed growth opportunities.
In addition, the manual steps have huge impacts on efficiency and service providers’ abilities to operate with the right cost structure. This is also preventing service providers from fully enabling their revenue potential because the scalability is not in place.
GM: Why is there this lag when it comes to automation of service and network operations relative to other areas for service providers?
IS: There has never been a single answer to address digital transformation and each service provider will have to plot its own journey based on business priorities. It depends on what the CSP has and what the CSP plans to do. That informs the direction taken and what the journey will look like.
There is no magic answer. You have got to pick a journey that starts from the use case and the resources you have. Your access to technical people is a major factor and you have to make sure you are able to move in the direction you have chosen. There will be multiple directions chosen by different CSPs.
Having said that, it is no secret that CSPs have historically trailed on basic customer relationship metrics relative to other industries, and therefore there is a generalised focus on improving customer engagement capabilities, including digital support channels, as well as in analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), to make the channels more intelligent with chatbot capabilities, for example.
The number one challenge is a CSP’s legacy. They may have many siloed pieces to consider but they may also have legacy in terms of their people.
Much work remains to be done to automate service and network operations to remove dependencies on time-consuming manual steps and long lead-time break-fix activities.
