Save Money, Make Money with a Predictive Approach to Critical Alarms

Posted: June 24th, 2014 | Author: Ulla Koivukoski | Filed under: Industry Insights | Tags: , , | No Comments »

The influx of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices has changed the fabric of mobile customer expectations: in short, they’re higher than ever before. People today expect to work online, consume content or access cloud services, wherever they are and whenever they want. These new technologies add to the complexity of already diverse networks, which requires an increase in maintenance work and a balancing act of how to allocate scarce resources and competencies across the board.

According to a 2013 survey conducted by Comptel and Vanson Bourne, Quality of Service (QoS) is one of the primary drivers of customer acquisition and retention. It is a basic competitive requirement for communications service providers (CSPs) today, thus traditional network planning and optimisation or maintenance tasks are no longer sufficient. QoS management needs to be a much more proactive process today, to help keep customers happy in the long run.

That being said, the business case for proactive service management has multiple factors. Many telcos have scaled back on preventive plans to save money and resources. But while the savings are immediate in the short-term, corrective site visits and longer downtime can, ultimately, be more expensive and cause costly customer compensation and retention activities.

So, how can CSPs predict network faults and correct them preventively, without overspending? Comptel recently published a whitepaper that outlines the benefits of a predictive site maintenance approach to critical alarms, where tasks are prioritised based on anticipated network failures.

Critical alarm prediction allows CSPs to see further into the future. It’s a new kind of service management that predicts alarms and service disruptions on a network element level with advanced real-time analytics.

Here’s a quick preview of the whitepaper on the value of Critical Alarm Prediction to CSPs:

Reduce operating costs

A major cost in site maintenance comes down to workforce expenditures. When there are no emergencies and maintenance work is conducted during normal working hours, CSPs can achieve the most efficient use of their workforce. By simply predicting faults before they occur, and using the workforce accordingly, CSPs can save on operational expenditures.

Prevent revenue loss

CSPs know the angst associated with an unexpected site failure. Not only is the current traffic on the site affected, but any future traffic to the site is impacted until it’s back online. However, when potential faults are predicted, site maintenance can be scheduled and prioritised, and traffic can be even re-routed proactively, if necessary, reducing downtime and potential revenue loss.

Improve customer experience

The cost of churn, including churn prevention, is the single largest cost item for mobile operators. Coupled with data-savvy customers who are less likely to sit through local network outages, CSPs should prioritise QoS and the quality of experience (QoE). Introducing Critical Alarm Prediction enables CSPs to predict faults and schedule maintenance, which helps reduce site downtime and positively impacts the customer experience.

Build a culture of proactive service

Critical Alarm Prediction has the potential to introduce completely new ways of approaching proactive service management. It’s a business application that can help CSPs act before failures occur and, ultimately, move toward more intelligent analysis and operational processes.


Want to learn more about how a predictive approach can benefit CSPs? Download Comptel’s whitepaper, “How Prediction of Critical Alarms Helps CSPs Reduce OPEX, Prevent Revenue Loss and Improve Customer Experience.”

Download



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