Digital Transformation Initiative for a Telco Customer

Among the business challenges faced by the customer, we identified the following:

Decreasing costs:

Agility:

Performance/Stability:

Transparency:

After careful consideration and numerous discussions, we came to a conclusion that only a major BSS transformation project, with a complete swap of most of the existing BSS systems, would make it possible to achieve the goals set by the customer. Despite being an extremely complicated process, it would significantly improve the customer's Telecom business perspectives and decrease long-term operational costs.

Due to the customer team's lack of experience in major Telecom transformations, Andersen was asked to assist them in drafting the initial solution architecture, organizing a tender process to select the best matching primary BSS software provider, and supporting the general transformation process.

Andersen's BSS architecture specialists and analysts conducted multiple workshops with the customer's representatives in various departments — business, finance, marketing, etc. — to clearly describe the existing solution, identify which components required transformation, and draft requirements for the new ones.

All this allowed the participating vendors to deep-dive into the required functionalities, so the operator's representatives could easily identify gaps in proposed solutions.

In order to understand the complexity of the described business processes, let's have a look at a sample diagram for the “Creation of a new B2C subscriber via eShop” use case.

As you can see, this business process affected multiple BSS and OSS components:

Channels:

Internal BSS components:

OSS components:

As part of the last round, the shortlisted companies had a chance to present use cases concerning their platforms. This way, a deep understanding of all advantages and flaws was reached on the Telecom side. These efforts helped the customer to select the best final BSS vendor's solution with reasonable pricing.

The following advantages of the preferred solution were especially appealing to the business and helped to make the final choice:

Based on careful analysis of the proposed BSS solutions for Telecom and their pros and cons, the operator made the best choice.

The selected vendor was chosed as the customer's primary BSS vendor due to its overall high compliance with business and technical requirements, experience in similar BSS cases, and reasonable prices. Since its score in Web Front channels was low, it was agreed that Andersen would take over a portion of the work and develop the SelfCare and eShop systems so that the vendor could concentrate on the primary BSS components.

Due to the high workload of the BSS vendor and their tight project schedule, we also took over some Front-end components, which contributed to the successful implementation of the project on time.

The final architecture featured some minor changes compared to the initial proposal. As you can see below, SelfCare and eShop web channels were added to Andersen's scope.

The microservice provides a Web UI for clients to input their login and password information or authenticate via other means:

By following industry standard protocols, OpenID/OAuth2, we ensured the safety and robustness of authentication flows.

In order to fulfill all customer requirements, we needed to implement extra advanced functionalities:

It enables additional functionalities on top of B2C SelfCare; that's why it was agreed to move this channel into a separate app.

A single representative can manage multiple subscriptions simultaneously, which means managing packages and pricing plans of, for instance, all subscribers. This greatly simplifies the work of the operator's B2B support team, as a representative can do many operations by themselves. Additionally, B2B SelfCare gives the possibility to control company-level bills, credit notes, payments, and other information.

Big Bang migrations have an advantage over Phased migrations, as they do not mandate a coexistence period – i.e., when both old and new stacks have to be supported. Since the number of subscribers was not that large, we selected the overnight migration approach as the simplest option.

A dedicated cutover manager was appointed to ensure the successful client migration and overall cutover process. The manager was responsible for a 400-point cutover plan that described all needed activities, in every affected system, required to switch to the new BSS stack. A few cutover rehearsals were planned and successfully executed to instill confidence in the customer that the solution was ready for deployment. After that, we were given the final green light for the Go Live phase.

As a result, the new BSS stack proved to be robust, efficient, and agile. The customer was fully satisfied with the resulting BSS transformation solution as it allowed them to achieve their goals in full.

Client engagement across digital channels has significantly increased:

Improved stability has ensured that 99.8% of orders are handled successfully within the SLA timings. The performance of new subscription issuance procedures and package activation use cases have improved by 20% and keep on working consistently and quickly even under high loads.No Severity 1 or 2 Issues after the stabilization period.