The future fit NOC – Keeping network operations relevant

TM Forum members are welcome to contribute insightful thought leadership pieces on digital transformation and leadership, which are published at the Editor's discretion. In this piece Sangeet Kapoor, Sandeep Shinde, and Jan Pieter Zonjee of Tech Mahindra join forces to discuss how the network operations centre (NOC) can remain relevant, thrive and ultimately improve business.

Traditionally, the network operations centre (NOC) has played the role of a curator, ensuring smooth functioning of the network with minimal disruptions and downtime. It is typically seen by the business as a support function, entrusted with avoiding critical outages and the subsequent revenue loss.

However, changing market dynamics mean the role of the NOC is poised to evolve from being a troubleshooter, to becoming an enabler for business transformation. But, providers must create a transformation roadmap for their NOCs to redetermine their priorities for meeting the changing demands and remaining relevant.

Embracing the future

Improving and optimizing the network is key to driving new revenue; CXOs are focused on investing in network upgrades and enhancements ranks high on CXO priorities, particularly 5G which will support a huge range of applications with widely varying service requirements. Such complex network environments and sophisticated services will demand a matching advanced, agile and customer centric operational set up. The NOC therefore should step up, re-organize and adapt around changing business priorities. It must evolve from a support function to a strategic one, carrying out multiple roles with clear KPIs to position the NOC as an enabler of business transformation.

Figure 2 below illustrates a vision blueprint of the future fit NOC which can be used as best practice guidelines. The capabilities are building blocks that will enable the NOC to reach its desired vision. While all the attributes and capabilities may be desirable, all may not be applicable.

NOC leadership should examine their business needs, understand the implementation effort, but still be ambitious in defining their organization vision.

Making the Shift

Leadership must set the ball rolling by defining and translating the new NOC vision into concrete transformation initiatives with clear ownership, timeframe and business benefits. This helps management to identify the most appropriate initiatives and allocate proper resources to drive the transformation.

Transformation initiatives should cover three key focus areas – 1. Organizational structure 2. Technology, 3. People and skill sets. All three areas should be addressed hand in hand to take the NOC up the maturity curve. For example, transforming the Tier 1 NOC towards an automated thin layer - mandates successful deployment of new tools to realize zero touch processes - which in turn requires technical knowledge and change management experience within the NOC team.

Reorganize to organize

Telecom organizations typically have a tier based structure in the NOC comprising of a large agent workforce. Each layer focuses hard on increasing network availability and minimizing customer impact. However for future success, the NOC must be organized differently with thin boundaries, working more horizontally and with high automation and digital capabilities. Figure 3 below provides a comparison of traditional versus future fit NOC model, and lists some practical transformation initiatives.

Adopt new technologies

The NOC’s main limitations stem from still-used legacy network management tools, often run in silos, with no integration. Most legacy tools focus on availability monitoring and locating outages, making it difficult to assess business impact, and no insight into the network faults that cause applications to fail.

Benefits from implementing the right new tools include zero-touch data driven processes, proactive and predictive analysis, and intelligent reporting for proactive NOC management. This all means, more resources are freed up to focus more on strategic initiatives. Some of the new technologies that can greatly help NOCs include robotics, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), workflow orchestration and automation. AI/ML based solutions for example are maturing fast and witnessing industry wide adoption. Gartner predicts ‘hyper-automation’ and ‘human augmentation’ using AI/ML as the top trends in the near future.

For technology-based transformation initiatives, consider the effort required vs. the business benefits in return as shown in Figure 4 below. The ideal transformation roadmap should include both short-term game changer initiatives (to prove value immediately) and long-term. Such technology workstreams can help NOC departments move up the maturity curve (e.g. reactive to proactive) in a phased manner.

Transform the workforce

Digital evolution is increasingly widening the skills gap, and Gartner says “64% of managers don't think their employees are able to keep pace with future skill needs”. Addressing the digital skills gap requires reskilling existing resources and hiring new talent. Firms should benchmark against the market to assess the real skills gap, and also collect feedback bottom-up from employees to understand learning requirements. Most importantly, they must embed a change in mindset towards transformation and willingness to take new roles within the teams must be established. A ‘digital-way-of-doing-things’ based culture must be encouraged and be made part of the employee performance evaluation.

Team members within the NOC should be formally mapped to the identified transformation initiatives with accountability for delivering them. Employees should also be encouraged to take cross-functional roles and work more horizontally to learn new skills. In case of niche initiatives such as AI and ML, it is best to add new talent with AI skills and build connected teams. Such resources may not be dedicated to the NOC but can be shared across projects within the organization and can mentor other team members.

Avoiding the pitfalls

In practice, different sets of roles and competencies may be required, team compositions might change and the operating model would be adjusted to the new strategic positioning of the NOC. All these changes should be seen as challenges in transforming the organization and to open up new business opportunities.

But they may also be perceived as threats for staff concerned, such as fear of the unknown, loss of status or job, uncertainty due to lack of competence, pressure to deliver results, low trust or confidence in the future vision. Management plays a major role in this and its involvement in implementation is a critical success factor.

To meet these challenges, firms should adopt an integrated approach, giving special attention to change management. A solid stakeholder analysis is a good starting point, and will help in identifying roles and interest of those involved and also in building the transformation teams responsible for implementing the change. Businesses should communicate a shared vision, and be clear about why change is required and why now.

Closing

The scale of transformation needed would vary for each organization as there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach, but the NOC must not be wary of setting ambitious goals. The transformation roadmap should include multiple concrete initiatives linked to the overall goals and be planned in a phased manner. There should be measurable value, particularly the NOC moving up the maturity curve at each stage.

In the end, NOC transformation should be viewed as a journey and not a destination, which can constantly evolve along the way. The defined vision should be evaluated regularly and adjusted to remain relevant with changing technology and business needs.