Reducing time-to-market with BPMN in telcos

For communication service providers (CSP) and internet service providers, enhancing operational visualization, identifying knowledge gaps, accumulating feedback, improving service quality, and increasing customer satisfaction are invaluable.

Below, we’ll take a look at how a low code approach based on business process modeling and notation (BPMN) can help them accomplish these processes and solve the time-to-market issue.

Solution

BPMN represents a high-quality tool that effectively manages business requirements and coordinates the activities of complex mechanisms and technical processes such as digital communications, fulfilment, assurance, service management, and digital content provisioning.

Low code and BPMN have some fundamental differences. Namely, low code makes it easier to create and deliver applications and features, often to meet specific customer needs. Unlike BPMN, this models and optimizes business processes to achieve various goals, one of which is customer experience improvement.

However, low code and BPMN also have similarities. Therefore using a BPMN-based low code approach allows telcos to use low code to not only create programs, but also codify a particular process as a part of a wider BPMN initiative.

Best practices of using this approach are oriented towards cooperation between software developers and the IT ops department, allowing them to independently develop new visual “blocks” (the functional filling of BPMN elements) to form and constantly dispel a unified corporate library of such elements. This provides ample opportunities for collaboration between a company and its suppliers, primarily during the application of the Agile method in project development.

Collaboration: the RACI matrix

In essence, using the BPMN-based low code approach for managing and analyzing software requirements fosters collaboration between customer development teams and suppliers. The customer creates omnichannel management and business logic at the low-code level, while the supplier implements backend and maintenance, ensuring the reliable execution of IT operations.

Business analysts, programmers, and architects work towards results with a focus on business-oriented design. Automation at the BPMN low code level provides code generation, testing capabilities, and DevOps. The customer tracks progress, identifies bottlenecks, and manages changes. Seamless deployment includes automatic documentation, versioning, account management, and configuration.

Below is a proposal for how to manage a project using the RACI efficiency matrix (R – Responsible, A – Accountable, C – Consult, I – Inform):

Advantages in a nutshell

In contrast to traditional methods of identifying requirements, the primary benefits of managing and analyzing software requirements using BPMN notation include reducing the risk of project failure, improving communication between participating parties and developers, identifying potential problems early in the development process, and creating a clear and comprehensive set of requirements that can effectively guide software development.

The challenge with agile methodologies in large enterprises is that one integration error can lead to multiple others. This way, businesses that integrate new methodologies simply turn processes that should be an advantage into a bug in their success.

Thorough and effective requirements analysis, while embracing a flexible approach, enables the team to enhance communication and interaction among all members, align the software product closely with the business’s terms of reference, increase user satisfaction, and improve the quality of the finished software product. At the same time, it reduces the workload associated with the volume, understanding, and stability of automated requirements.

BPMN notation offers system solutions for the modernization and qualitative digital transformation of any business, where timely technological progress equates to a competitive advantage in the market. It serves as a compact and effective solution for tasks with deadlines and resource limitations or when multiple development teams collaborate on short-term projects, making it impossible to write code from scratch.

New opportunities

The efficiency of the BPMN-based approach for software development was demonstrated during the "AI-Powered Cooperation for Efficient Networks" Catalyst at the DTW23 – Ignite event.

It opens a market for standardized, function-oriented software components and enables CSPs and suppliers to invest in IT for new and differentiated services instead of maintenance and integration. Subsequently, this leads to transforming business agility, accelerating concept-to-cash cycles, increasing B2B revenue, and improving OpEx efficiency.