Differentiation through operational excellence

Differentiation through operational excellence.   ◦   Ahmed Zein, Digis Squared Co-Founder and Chief Operations & Delivery Officer, shares his experience and thoughts on the vital role the Operations function plays in differentiating your business. Plus, as his new Managed Services team gets ready for the commercial launch of a network, he shares insights into key areas of current focus.

Differentiation and success

What differentiates leading organizations from their less successful rivals? More often than not, it comes down to how they manage their Operations. No matter how great the business strategy, or how large the investment, the Operations Team, the efficiency and customer experience they can achieve, can ultimately determine which business wins and who is left behind.

A workplace philosophy where problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership are core to the way people work together and collaborate, results in the continuous improvement of an organization,” shared Ahmed. “Focusing consistently on the customers’ needs, keeping employees positive and empowered, and continually improving the current activities in the workplace to deliver a better outcome in the future – all of this requires energy and commitment. However, this is a virtuous circle of improvement – keep doing it, and you’ll keep improving, the more energy and commitment you put in, the bigger the improvement you’ll get out.

There are five key areas I’ll be focussing on with the Digis Squared team during this phase. Working together, the team in the Digis Squared Delivery and Operations Centre in Luanda, backed up with staff in our Technology and Customer Support Centre in Cairo, will ensure an on-schedule, optimised network launch, and maintain smooth operational performance throughout.

One: Preparing the Squad

As with any project we work on, preparing the squad for this mission is our top priority. Designing a complete program, and establishing a high achieving attitude and sports-behaviour in the team and its structure, help us all to succeed. The squad needs a dynamic attitude to problem-solving, and an ambitious target to achieve success together.

With all our projects, we carefully consider the specific skills, experience and expertise we need. In recruiting the squad it’s also critical to our success together that we have a strong and aligned sense of purpose, and a strong fit with the Digis Squared culture and sports-team ethos. It’s vitally important to the way in which we operate that we work together as a squad – we help each other, we share knowledge, we learn from and help each other. It’s about both leadership and personal accountability, as well as knowledge sharing. In an area as complex as network technology, almost all issues can only be solved by working together, asking questions, and listening to the experience and ideas of others. We achieve and learn more together.

And this is one of the key differences between Operational Efficiency and Operational Excellence. Efficiency focuses only on how things are done, and doing them better – faster, cheaper, fewer errors, continuous improvement. These are the basics. But Operational Excellence is far wider, it aims to create a culture within the team and company that is conducive to efficient and sustainable long-term growth. The strongly aligned sense of purpose, solving problems and succeeding together as a squad, that is vital to achieving Operational Excellence.

Some of the Digis Squared Luanda Squad, February 2022

Two: Multi-Vendor Management

Vendor management is not as simple as monitoring a mathematical set of KPIs, and a lengthy document filled with SLA words. As a team, we know that the success of any operations is reliant on sound relationships, and clear communications. The Digis Squared way is to always try and bridge the gaps in understanding, to clarify discussions, to identify a mis-fit in technologies, or a gap within a contract and resolve misunderstandings before they become problematic – and critically, to propose a solution.

Yes, of course we report on KPIs, and when an SLA isn’t being hit, but we also work hard to bridge that gap between the vendor and the operator. We work hard to build connections with the vendor’s teams, and work collaboratively together, running user acceptance tests and handovers across all domains.

Three: Performance & Field Management through NOC

Digis Squared’s Managed Services will ensure we achieve full monitoring of the network, corrective and preventive maintenance, network configuration and change management. All of this will be accomplished with operational excellence strategies by improving network availability, maintaining all network KPIs, enhancing quality of service to end customers, improving customer experience and reducing operating cost, as well as capitalizing on network automation and automating all automatable network procedures, across both front and back-office activities.

Read more about INOS here – and the bottom of that page also has links to using INOS in LTE 450 or 600MHz network, 5G and customer case studies.

One of the most important KPIs in Managed Services contracts is the focus on Network Performance KPIs as one of the most important goals. Digis Squared’s cognitive tools are used to provide active monitoring of the network. We use INOS for drive testing, and there are plenty of recent blogs about that!  [See list at end of blog.]

Digis-One is a key tool for any Operations team.  We typically passively monitor the network performance using Digis-One, our cognitive, multi-vendor, multi-technology Unified Fault Management (UFM) solution delivering centralized dashboard and alarming monitoring system for the Front and Back Office Teams. Digis-One facilitates all systems/interfaces monitoring, in addition to automating the most time-critical manual work, including automated generation and assignment of Trouble Tickets to the team responsible for solving the network issue. Digis-One delivers a significant impact on SLAs and Mean Time to Repair.

Generally, when undertaking a Managed Services contract, field maintenance is one of the top priorities. Responsive teams on the ground undertake corrective and preventive actions across the network, fixing issues before they become a problem. The Operations Squad assess KPIs, and proactively lead the way to ensuring improved customer experience. Working together, this delivers efficiency, expansion and business success.

The field maintenance service will utilise available data (network, environment, events etc.) and our cognitive tools to schedule preventive maintenance plans and optimise resource utilisation. Mindful of the various contractual SLAs and targets, together, I field maintenance and NOC teams will ensure complete coordination and alignment for all field and site access activities.

Four: Clear Change Management

A newly launched network encounters a lot of dynamic changes and interactions across all domains. I’ve experienced the dynamic situations new network deployments encounter many times before, and know that creative thinking, sound analytical practices and strong teamwork can together solve the issues which will arise. Actively managing and considering the sequence of changes require deep consideration and experience. Careful planning is needed to consider how unforeseen risks or incidents will be handled, what processes will be followed, and how unplanned changes will be addressed.

We’re at a really exciting stage of this project. Combining the skills, expertise and experience of our staff, and our AI-led tools and processes, we’re confident the squad we are building will deliver differentiation through operational excellence.

Five: Application Development Management

As a greenfield mobile network, benefits from the high demands and expectations of the commercial teams to launch ambitious, state of the art products & services to the market, pushing at the competitive and technological edge of possibilities.

With this in mind, the Digis Squared team believe it is important to bring the concept of Application Development Management, ADM, with a DevOps flavour to this Managed Service contract. Merging the development and IT/BSS operations, the goal of our ADM team is to reduce the time between a system needed development or change and its deployment into the production environments. In turn, this reflects on and enhances the time to market to materialize a commercial requirement into a real technical output, deployed on the product IT/VAS nodes. To put that another way, we’ll be using ADM techniques to develop, test and deploy rapid, noticeable improvements in an ongoing continuous loop, perhaps even before the end customer notices there was ever an issue.

Working in this way, as a DevOps team, both the development staff, and the staff in charge of operations, are in deep communication with each other – they are ONE team! There is enhanced cross-knowledge and collaboration between the developers and IT operations, assessing and solving issues together, and a more seamless workflow that eliminates sizeable knowledge silo’s which are found in traditional models. The result is the smooth deployment of technology, such as software and updates in the safest, most reliable way possible.

Differentiation through operational excellence

It’s an exciting time for the Digis Squared team globally, and we’re ready for this. It’s great to work with clients with clear ambitions, and high targets for excellence. Sharing knowledge, ensuring utilisation of cognitive systems and clear processes, building a superb team. We’re working closely with our client and the other partners to ensure this new network achieves commercial success, and one of the secrets in how we will achieve that together is with differentiation through operational excellence.

In conversation with Ahmed Zein, Digis Squared Co-Founder and Chief Operations & Delivery Officer.

If you or your team would like to discover more about our capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .

Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.

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Image credits

  • Digis Squared social media and blog banner image: Fabian Plock (Shutterstock)
  • Luanda bay in article: Manual Carreia COSTALOPES
 
 

INOS ◦ Now more than ever, know your network strengths, and weaknesses

Understand what has changed, then invest

As work patterns continue to change, operators struggle to model their network capacity and investment plans. Understanding current network coverage, performance and quality of experience, and that of competitors, is vital before investment decisions are made.

Our cloud-controlled INOS automated testing platform delivers both drive testing, and in building data, enabling operators and service providers to efficiently obtain the insights needed for key upgrade decisions. [Our tools need just one person in the vehicle or building – no engineers are needed on-site, ensuring that they can do their work safely and together we can keep our communities connected.]

Know your strengths, and weaknesses. Now more than ever, ensure you know the capability, performance, quality of experience and coverage of your voice and data networks, and that of your competitors, before you invest. Discover more about how INOS can help you, here.

Now more than ever, use INOS to benchmark coverage, performance & QoE.

To discuss how our network benchmarking expertise can help your business, please use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com to arrange a convenient time for an informal conversation.

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Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.

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E2E radio services ◦ Now more than ever, use independent expertise to manage your multi-technology, multi-vendor networks

Ensuring telecom network infrastructure is managed efficiently is complex – highly interconnected globally, expensive infrastructure with a large base of legacy systems and technologies, combined with multiple vendors and interoperability concerns, plus demanding customers expectations.

Managing the complex commercial and technical issues of E2E Radio Services should not be under-estimated.

With the rollout of 5G, and growth in IoT deployments, additional stress is added to the operational teams as they grapple to gain the knowledge needed to successfully optimise and manage the new capabilities, and evolving commercial expectations.

This growth in operational demands, in combination with the extra strain on communications systems created by COVID-19 globally, means that even more efficient methods of delivering end to end radio services are needed.

“Operators will need to consider new ways of generating capex efficiency as they strive to meet growing demand for high-speed and low-latency data services.”

Source: EY (1)

Competency development

With so much change occurring simultaneously, as well as high operational demands, finding the time to invest and deliver training is difficult but vital. At Digis Squared our teams understand this, and have developed training solutions which can be delivered remotely, or on-site when social distancing and travel permits.

We ensure MNO staff-readiness for the future, and emergencies, as well as developing their capabilities to robustly address today’s demands.

Missing skills, poor data quality and a lack of long-range planning are holding back the transformation agenda.

Source: EY (2)

Independent expertise

As a flexible and experienced independent partner, we help service providers fill in the gaps in their end to end radio services capabilities – whether that’s through providing resources to address short-term skills gaps, strategy advice, new analysis tools, innovative solutions, or bespoke competency development, we are there when we are needed, providing expertise across the entire network lifecycle: R&D, strategy, planning, integration, in-field, optimisation & benchmarking, operations & support, customer care.

Relentlessly focussed consulting

In a multi-vendor, multi-technology field, ensuring interoperability and identifying areas of improvement is complex – our team is independent, business-aligned and relentlessly focused on realizing the value of your network. Digis Squared consulting services steer you towards the networks of tomorrow, anticipating changing commercial, technical, regulatory and customer demands, and developing detailed strategies and plans to ensure your business can address them.

“5G will play a critical role in the digital economy for decades to come. This new era of intelligent connectivity offers the chance to recast customer value propositions, accelerate industrial transformation, and reinvigorate the digital society.

Source: EY (2)

RAN solutions

Our services scale to help our customers manage increases in network complexity, and growth of network traffic effectively and efficiently. We provide the expertise necessary to support your network transformation goals, with our multi-vendor and multi-technology capabilities, our services adapt to meet the emerging needs of your network.

Innovation

We leverage state-of-the-art techniques to help service providers to design, deploy and operate the latest network technologies, so that they can provide the new services subscribers want, while ensuring network quality remains high, E2E radio services are optimised and operating margins respectable.

  • 5G: our teams accelerate the transformation of mobile networks, enabling new services, new applications & even new industries. Digis Squared provides end to end support for service providers to deploy their 5G networks, starting with planning support, and extending to 5G network optimization
  • Automation & software solutions: Automation is key to ensuring operational efficiency as network complexity increases. The Digis Squared RAI solution delivers powerful integrated capabilities, using AI & ML, providing network insights, configuration management and performance monitoring processes, and energy saving. We build tailored automation solutions for MNOs, to help them address any challenge.
  • IoT: The driving force of digital transformation, IoT has complex technology requirements, including a cascade network architecture consisting of massive number of devices, and each design has a different design objective. Optimizing the network and delivering the required capacity and coverage for each IoT use case are challenging tasks for IoT implementations, and our solutions address them.
  • Drive-less tuning: Minimizing drive test (DT) efforts, our INOS solution automates all reporting types i.e. SSV, customer complaints and cluster benchmarking. Robotic post-processing capabilities help MNOs to speed up logfiles analysis, as well as resolving field problems.

In a world of technical and commercial complexity, seeking an independent experienced voice to guide your teams, and extra resources when you need them, will help ensure that your E2E Radio Services are fully optimised and able to handle new technology from new vendors.

Now more than ever, use independent E2E radio expertise to manage your multi-technology, multi-vendor networks.

To discuss how our E2E Radio Services experts can help your business, please use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com to arrange an informal conversation.

Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.

Sources

Image credit: James Padolsey