More and better quality services for millions of users, while cutting costs

Communications service providers (CSP) in mature markets today face a tough dilemma. They need to be able to offer fully-fledged communications services with the highest quality to an ever-differing range of needs. In the toughest case scenario, they need to do this under flat or decreasing revenue per user.

”This agreement will lift our relationship to a more strategic level. Nokia Siemens Networks’ proactive, agile and highly consultative approach aligned our strategy with their vision perfectly. I am positive that together we will lead the way to the adoption of the most powerful operations support architecture in the industry. The benefits are clear.”

– CIO of the CSP

 
 

A partner with shared vision

“Our customer team engaged the CSP’s Operations Support Software team to discuss their main business issues while transforming their operations for more agility in the changing business environment,” says Roberto Bagnoli, Sales Director at Nokia Siemens Networks. “We were presented an opportunity to share their strategy and vision. Our consultants analyzed the CSP’s strategic objectives and helped understand the role and possibilities of processes and tools in making operations more efficient. Through careful business process analysis and optimization, our consultants recognized a perfect match with the CSP’s challenges and the next generation solution strategy of Nokia Siemens Networks.”

”The problem was obvious - their network and services infrastructure needed tuning. The CSP’s legacy infrastructure was not optimized for continuous change and was seriously blocking service development. Because of the patchwork infrastructure, the CSP was spending too much time and money on managing their network and operations support software,” says Alessandro Magnino, Lead Business Consultant at Nokia Siemens Networks.

 

Challenge

  • Increased end-customer quality and service requirements combined with slow or flat growth of revenue per user puts pressure on increasing network and system flexibility and efficiency

  • CSP’s network was a patchwork of multi-vendor HW and SW technologies. Low interoperability & optimization lead to continuously increasing operational and maintenance costs and decreased flexibility

Great team work for the best solution

After analyzing the customer situation and the extensive solution portfolio of Nokia Siemens Networks, Roberto and his team could see the perfect match with our solution approach and the strategic objectives of the customer. “There was a bend in the river we needed to navigate first“, he continued. “We created the business case to show the value of the solution in real business terms – time, money and the user experience – to the CSP’s CIO. It was imperative to show the maximized benefits for the whole organization, not only the network operations.”

“It was all a great team work. While Roberto and me were calculating the business benefits and ROI our Project Management team engaged with the CSP’s Innovation Department to find out which parts of our solution concept could best help address their needs,“ says Gennaro Miano, Account Manager at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Working closely with our solution manager, business consultant, solution architect and sales, the CSP figured out how this new technology solution should integrate unify with their current complex operating support software architecture.”

Solution

The target was to build agility and efficiency for the CSP’s multi-vendor and multi-technogy network. The consulting phase of the project, with indepth engagement and careful analysis resulted in identifying the need to:

  • Decouple business processes from systems and applications to enable smarter service development in the future

  • Introduce a Service Oriented Architecture approach to greatly improve the integration and orchestration of OSS and BSS processes in voice, data and content across all processes and technology platforms

  • Introduce business process monitoring and reporting tools to improve future optimization and enhance the user experience

Agility and OPEX cuts enter the equation

The teams delivered the results: the solution for increasing configuration and service management agility, cutting system integration OPEX through process development and automation. Service and charging management algorithms, for instance, will be harmonized and integrated to fit the CSP’s current and future business needs. The service development processes will be integrated to the back-office systems.

The solution and business plans were presented to the CSP’s CIO aligned with the initial solution architecture, estimated project investment, ultimate benefits and ROI. Initially, the business IT department was not easily convinced, as Nokia Siemens Networks had not previously cooperated with them. However, since the business case was obvious and the need for a progressive solution was clear, the project was finally started after almost a year of proactive consultation and multi-level customer engagement.

Benefits

  • Ultimately, an expected 30% cut in system integration OPEX, ROI in less than 12 months

  • Ability to launch new services faster and to offer more customer-focused services

  • A more agile and flexible network allowing the CSP to remain at the forefront of innovation while better managing operating costs and capital expenditure year-on-year

  • A vendor-independent, future-proof solution that allows for migration towards next generation operations and business support systems as indicated in the CSP’s strategy

Realizing benefits while cutting costs

After receiving the go-ahead from the management, the customer’s Innovation Department, Nokia Siemens Network’s business consultant and a project manager drafted a step-by-step deployment project proposal. The plan was to first stop cost escalation, and start making annual cost savings in the second phase.

”The project’s first phase will be deployed in six months. Within nine months some of the key applications - fault, performance and configuration management - will already be running,” says Anneli Korteniemi, Business Development Manager at Nokia Siemens Networks. Before the second phase, the results of the first phase will be assessed, before rolling out the system according to a careful deployment process and project management.

“Instead of revolutionary transformation, the project was split into smaller phases. These led to a slower realization of benefi ts, but tighter cost control,” says Korteniemi. “The implementation process will engage all the CSP’s OSS personnel, as well as budgeting and technology staff together with several people from the service management function. Because of this, we will apply robust change management processes and principles that will guarantee minimal interference with our customer’s daily operations.”

Co-evolution with a shared target

What started as a proactive suggestion from Nokia Siemens Networks, now has very strong support from the CSP’s CIO and IT & network management. After a successful implementation in the CSP’s home country it will eventually be applied to its group-level processes internationally as well.