Automation business case for beginners

Automation without a business case is a ship without water. Lots of potential but terribly impractical.

The business case for automation is so important and the dynamics around it so nuanced, we wanted to be sure we clearly conveyed the most critical elements. We think we’ve done that here and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.?

Creating the business case requires exploring what creates costs. The main contributors? People, tooling and time.?

Next, there has to be agreement on how value will be measured. Maybe reduced error rates, increased responsiveness and new organizational oxygen to focus on a business priority like proactive quality management of end customer services tied to fewer customer care calls.?

What is at stake??

The shift to cloud has put an expiration date on old approaches. Future industry leaders will be highly automated. Those that are not won’t be able to compete.?

If telecom fails to automate, we will see unsustainable cost structures, networks that perform far short of true potential and increasingly disillusioned operational teams.?

Getting down to business

Automation cannot be a spot solution that attempts to solve just one problem.?

A single use case or even a few use cases from a single telecom domain will not justify the expense. There is broader solutioning that needs to be done to implement it holistically across the business and systemically within all network domains.?

Automation only makes sense when it is the heart of transformation for the entire operating model. One based on software that replaces repetitive human tasks in a reliable way.?

Anatomy of an automation solution

Automation is never plug-and-play. Business cases within an operator start by identifying who has the need (users) for the solutions to be deployed and who becomes the owner after implementation. A decision is made by management about how to pay for it, which teams will bear the cost and vendors who are engaged.?

• Users are frontline workers that engage directly with the network and its technologies. They are first to identify operational bottlenecks and potential areas for automation. Their perspective is primarily operational and not always concerned with the intricacies of multiple systems integration.

• Owners have a comprehensive understanding of databases, systems integration, cloud-native technologies and data. Their concerns extend beyond immediate operational efficiencies to encompass broader technical alignment within the organization's tooling strategy.

• Management makes sure the proposed solution serves the business, provides service within the defined SLAs and contributes to profit generation.

• Solution vendors must understand and integrate the distinct needs of system users and system owners. If the vendor doesn’t understand how the organization works, it can’t navigate these waters and facilitate conversations between the groups. The result is a suboptimal solution, decreased value and inflated costs.?

Insights from system users regarding daily operational challenges must be synthesized with the technical expertise of system owners and the strategic vision of management. Vendors must then match the capabilities of the automation solution with the unique workflows and technology preferences of the operator.?

The goal is to translate technical features into tangible business benefits that resonate with both system users, system owners and management.?

What does automation cost and what is it worth?

Ever increasing network complexity is making manual network operations unsustainable. This complexity increases implementation errors and slows deployments. We are seeing this proven as Big Tech companies outcompete traditional telecom operators.?

Still, automation is not a forgone conclusion if it can’t pay for itself. Investing in automation means justifying increased upfront costs with anticipated future benefits, savings and efficiencies.?

This is all but impossible when only considering the value of replacing manual tasks done by humans. If an automation system costs $1M per year but the operational team currently employed only costs $500K per year then automation is seen as a cost.?

The operator needs to stop spending the $500K as soon as possible and benefit from systems that perform tasks “for free” at infinite scale. The $500K team must be redeployed to design a network that meets today's customer needs rather than focusing indefinitely on manual network resource problem resolution.?

In other words, telecom operations must mirror hyperscale operations, where network size and complexity is decoupled from operational team size.

Making the business case

Each operator’s business case will be unique because each operator’s operations and status quo are different. That said, all business cases comprise a series of smaller business cases for each identified need and should consider the same base cost principles of people, tooling and time. Value is established by measuring productivity and quality KPIs.?

“Sleeping cells” are a good use case to demonstrate a single use case given the end-to-end touchpoints on multiple systems that are included in the closed-loop chain of events. These include fault management, performance management, trouble ticketing and an automation platform for taking corrective action.?

Sleeping cells are active but do not carry traffic due to any number of potential issues. Identifying and rebooting these cells is a manual, time-consuming process. Closed-loop automation transforms this by swiftly identifying and rebooting cells, significantly reducing downtime and improving workflow efficiency.?

For 10,000 sites (70,000-80,000 cells), an average of 10 to 40 sleeping cells are expected per day. In the worst case, this equates to 400 man hours per day for manual trouble resolution. Addressing this immediately would require a team of 50 people doing nothing else. In reality, tickets are queued until people are available, leading to longer outages and fingers crossed that customers won’t notice. Manual processes require cell names to be added to any partial automation script execution, introducing risk of further errors, especially when crossing manufacturer boundaries.?

Full system level automation has infinite assignment capacity and eliminates name injection from the system inventory for analysis and resolution. People do not touch the process. A traditional polling system takes about 45 minutes for the latest data to be retrieved for analysis, then we estimate three minutes for automated RCA analysis and about two minutes for next best action execution. The total resolution time is 50 minutes and resolution time is guaranteed with zero procedural errors.

In the end, business processes are sanitized while relevant teams are alerted about automated opening and closing of significantly enriched trouble tickets along with full reports documenting what has occurred.?

The cost benefits of reduced man hours and faster resolution times are obvious. But as we know, this is just one part of the equation and individual business cases cannot be viewed in isolation. Rather, a bigger picture that encompasses organizational structure, workflows and employee roles must be considered. Each smaller business case becomes a piece of a larger puzzle that depicts a transformed, more efficient and agile organization.?

Weaving automation into telecom’s operational fabric

As we have discussed, the true value of automation is realized when automated processes are woven into the fabric of the organization's operations. When closed-loop automation is approached as a concept, that can be implemented horizontally across RAN, core and IP, and vertically across physical and virtual systems and networks.?

The automation journey is about creating a cohesive, automation-driven ecosystem that not only cuts costs but propels the organization towards greater operational excellence and adaptability.

This is the only way telecom can be competitive as greatly increased service revenues continue to remain elusive.?

What has been your experience making the business case for automation? What other factors do you consider?

Perivoye Stoyanovski and Geoff Hollingworth contributed to this article. Mention them in the comments to give us your thoughts, ask a question or start a conversation.

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