Communication Service Providers
Revolutionising connectivity: Service lifecycle management in next-gen communication solutions
Recent industry reports state that the global market for next-generation communication technologies, such as 5G networks and beyond, is expanding rapidly and is expected to grow significantly. For instance, the market for 5G infrastructure in Asia-Pacific itself is expected to increase from $8.8 billion in 2021 to $75.0 billion by 2026.
The demand for innovative services and applications is increasing as a result of the widespread adoption of advanced technologies like virtualisation, edge computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT).
However, regulations, market trends, and competitors keep telecom companies under constant pressure to stay afloat. By leveraging service lifecycle management practices, service providers can capitalise on opportunities to deliver differentiated offerings, enhance user experiences, and drive revenue growth.
What is service lifecycle management?
Service lifecycle management (SLM) comprises software and strategies to introduce, manage, repair, and maintain products and services. Lifecycle management in telecom is a crucial framework that includes planning, development, deployment, operation, and eventual retirement of services offered within modern communication networks. These may include:
- Customer support
- Service request management
- Warranty management
- Field service management
- Returns, calls, and repair management
- Automation and technology management
- Orchestration
Key components of SLM in next-gen communication solutions
At its core, SLM involves the systematic management of services throughout their entire lifecycle, from conception to termination. Let's take a look at a few key components of SLM:
- Strategy: Service strategy involves analysing the demands of the market, outlining service options, and coordinating them with business goals. The process includes understanding the needs of customers, the competitive environment, and technological advancements in order to create a strategic plan for service development.
- Design: Translating service requirements into detailed procedures, architectures, and standards encapsulates service design. Specifying service level agreements (SLAs) and ensuring interoperability with other systems and network components are all part of this phase.
- Deployment: Service deployment involves implementing and incorporating services into the network architecture. To ensure a smooth deployment and compliance with current network components, this process entails configuring software components, testing service functionalities, and allocating resources appropriately.
- Operations: Managing and monitoring services in real-time, such as key performance indicators (KPIs), responding to malfunctions and issues related to the service, and carrying out necessary service improvements or optimisations, ensures optimal performance.
- Optimisation: Enhancing the overall quality of service (QoS) and user experience may require capacity planning, resource optimisation, and usage pattern analysis. Here, service optimisation comes into play to gradually improve the performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of a service.
- Retirement: In order to support new services or technologies, SLM helps recover resources, move users to alternate offers, and decommission services that are no longer viable or relevant.
Why do telecom organisations need service lifecycle management?
As communication technologies evolve rapidly, service life cycle management has become more crucial in ensuring the efficiency, dependability, and financial gain of service offerings. Let us look at these reasons in detail –
Maximise the infrastructure uptime
From the backbone infrastructure to end-user equipment, telecom businesses must deliver maximum uptime for customer satisfaction and retention. If the service falls below a certain level of SLA, financial penalties from regulatory authorities can also kick in.
Simplify service
The complexity of interconnected and new-age systems makes it even more challenging to deliver a service consistently. The scarcity of skilled personnel, rising costs of parts and supply chains, and stringent SLAs add to this complexity.
A comprehensive understanding of these aspects and robust service lifecycle management is essential for cost-effectiveness, consistency, compliance, repeatability, and customer satisfaction.
Extend the asset life
Maximising the asset life ensures lower cost of replacement, sustainability, and higher profitability. Technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) are essential in the service lifecycle and ensure that the asset works efficiently.
Achieve higher efficiency
Several departments, from product/asset teams to customer service executives and field engineers, work towards efficient service lifecycle management. It's essential to avoid any data silos among teams since they require consistent and reliable access to data to coordinate and deliver the service efficiently.
Increase the profit margins
Telecom businesses work on tight margins. An efficient service lifecycle management helps increase revenue, cross-sell and upsell the products, or upgrade existing services to maximise profits and deliver higher value to the customer.
Deliver a consistent service
Consistent service is essential not only for meeting the regulatory norms but also for delivering higher customer satisfaction. The primary aim of service lifecycle management is to drive loyalty by consistently meeting customer expectations.
How do you choose a service lifecycle management solution?
A service lifecycle management solution is complex with several teams in the company involved. Manual processes and data exchange can cause delays in accessing cross-functional information. The right service lifecycle management solution must integrate seamlessly with all processes to have a single source of data or a data model. The SLM solution provider must understand your needs to improve service margins and revenues.
How can Infosys BPM help with Service Lifecycle Management?
Our comprehensive suite of business process management solutions tailored specifically for the communication sector helps maximise operational efficiency, improve visibility and collaboration across departments, and accelerate revenue generation. The integrated workflow for service lifecycle management includes aspects from service configuration and rollout support to supply chain mapping and churn analytics. Explore our offerings.
