Have you or any of your colleagues been tasked with designing a major new network area, such as a new housing estate, development area or even an entire city or town?
In the past, designing and building new network areas for telecommunications operators was a complex and time-consuming process. Being a multi-faceted exercise meant it required a lot of manual effort. Creating a single design was probably not sufficient. You needed to create more than one design variant to confirm that you had a cost-effective alternative. However, with the advent of automated Network Rollout Management (NRM) solutions, this process has been significantly improved.
It's now no longer a case of wondering if you have a cost-effective design, but knowing that you have the best design for whichever factor (or factors) you wish to optimise for (cost, time, number of customers served, etc). Automated NRM solutions rapidly try hundreds / thousands of different design variants and often use significantly less resources such as ducts, cables and even nodes.
Say goodbye to manual design efforts! NRM solutions drive efficiency in telecommunications
Before the introduction of NRM solutions, telecommunications operators relied on methodical manual design processes and manual adherence to each telco’s Engineering Design Rules (EDRs). Designs were often prepared iteratively, with separate designers contributing separate design segments to the overall design (cascading or iterative designs). This approach required a lot of design effort and quality control (QC), which also meant coordination between different designers and even entire teams. This manual approach was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors and miscommunication. As a result, it often resulted in delays and increased costs. When you consider that the outside and inside plant builds of a network are one of a telco operator’s biggest capital investment, even the smallest of design / build efficiency gains can dramatically impact the overall profitability of the operator.
The introduction of NRM solutions has significantly streamlined the entire process from end to end. NRM solutions provide telecom operators with features to manage the entire network rollout lifecycle, from planning and design; to quantity surveying, bills of quantities (BoQ) and procurement; to build / roll-out sequencing, worker implementation packs; and on through to operational handover and maintenance.
Features of the SunVizion Network Rollout Management
One of the key features of the SunVizion Network Rollout Management solution is its ability to incorporate design data as well as large amounts of additional information acquired during site surveys and other data that may be needed during the rollout process. By seamlessly sharing this data between different processes and teams, the solution eliminates inefficiencies resulting from repeated data entry, data inaccuracy, inconsistency, and under-utilisation.
Another important feature of SunVizion Network Rollout Management is its rollout project parameters dashboard view. This feature provides telecom operators with the visibility of up-to-date information and the management levers to ensure each project is coordinated effectively. It allows the operator to monitor the progress, interactions, decision gates and key parameters of the investment, providing cross-linked data in the form of specifications and reports.
The Workflow Process Designer is another feature of SunVizion Network Rollout Management. It enables telecom operators to define repeatable network rollout processes in BPMN-compliant flow diagrams, without the need for programming. Repeatability is the key to process design and implementation. Repeatability allows for the orderly delivery of automated and manual activities, thus helping to reduce delays, errors and improve overall efficiency. Just as NRM solutions automate the trial of many different design variants until and optimal one is found, the Workflow Process Designer allows for the testing of different process variants, ensuring that the most effective implementation approach is taken.
As described earlier, these end-to-end project implementations require the collaboration of many different team members and operational groups, even external third-party suppliers. This makes task management another essential feature of Network Rollout Management solutions like SunVizion’s. Coherent project and task management allows for multi-team cooperation as well as the coordinated and sequenced assignment of tasks to approved resources for completion according to the approved workflow. This systematic tracking and assignment of activities helps to ensure that tasks are completed on time or identifies where jeopardy situations are arising when committed timelines are unable to be met.
NRM Solutions Bring Speed, Savings, and Revenue Growth
By providing these and other important features, NRM solutions have revolutionised network design, build, handover and operations for the telecommunications industry. They have significantly improved the time to market (TTM) of new network areas, allowing telecom operators to deploy new services and turn on new revenues faster. This has helped to deliver on some of the most important metrics for telecom operators, including:
- Reducing costs (CAPEX and OPEX)
- Reducing Ready For Service (RFS) times
- Increasing revenue (and time to revenue)
- Improving build reliability
- All whilst delivering improvements in overall profitability.
