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The goal of KPN's multi-year OSS transformation project is to align its IT infrastructure more closely with its new business requirements, enabling a stronger competitive advantage in the challenging Dutch market. When complete, the transformation program will have replaced KPN's complex, siloed legacy infrastructure with a new streamlined, horizontal and business-driven solution. Though the OSS transformation is still progressing, KPN has already benefitted from substantial improvements to its customer experience, reduced its operational expenditure, and has increased support for faster service velocity and new, customized services. This year KPN rolled out a new zero-touch broadband provisioning solution which includes products and technology supplied by the Amdocs OSS Division including the TM Forum's MTOSI standard.
"The Amdocs OSS offering delivers an outstanding inventory solution and also a comprehensive range of pre-automated processes that enable us to quickly and easily implement services."
Nesko Jancic, Vice President of OSS, KPN
| KPN |
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| Headquarters: |
The Hague, The Netherlands |
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| Web site: |
www.kpn.com |
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| Employees: |
25,073 |
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| Subscribers: |
38 million, including 31.1m mobile, 3.9m wireline, 2.5m broadband Internet, and 0.8m TV |
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| Annual revenue: |
€14.6b |
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Stock exchange
/symbol: |
Amsterdam Stock Exchange: KPN |
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| Services: |
Prepaid, postpaid, voice, data, IPTV, managed services (2008) |
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| Challenge |
- Improve customer experience through better provisioning
- Enable customer self-care for activation and service configuration
- Lower operational costs through OSS automation and consolidation
- Improve service offering by supporting differentiated and customized services
- Support seamless roll-out of new all-IP infrastructure
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| Solution |
- Amdocs OSS offering for Service Fulfillment
- A preliminary version of the TM Forum's MTOSI Release 2 interface for activation, which dramatically reduces the cost of integrating with the network
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| Results |
- Broadband Automation Pack meets 85% of KPN requirements out-of-the-box
- Delivers faster time to market and lower operational costs
- Supports improved customer experience through faster and more accurate service provisioning
- Delivers a future-proof management platform to support business growth
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| Technical Environment |
- Amdocs Products:
Amdocs Service & Resource Management Solution (OSS), including: Amdocs Activation Engine, Amdocs Delivery Manager, Amdocs Resource Manager, Amdocs Task Engine,Amdocs Broadband Automation Pack, Amdocs Activation Pack (Huawei), Amdocs Activation Pack (Alcatel)
- Hardware & OS: Sun
- Database: Oracle
- Integrations:
TIBCO AIE, TIBCO iProcess Suite, Huawei EMS, IBM Netcool, Business Objects, Alcatel-Lucent Access Provisioning Center (APC), Alcatel-Lucent Element Management System (EMS), and numerous in-house systems | | | | | |
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In a country with one of the highest cable, broadband and mobile penetration rates in the world, KPN must innovate to grow and cut costs. Competition in KPN's core markets continues to increase as not only are cable companies offering triple play packages that include telephony, but now virtual mobile carriers are entering the lucrative 3G market. The introduction of services such as interactive TV means that increased bandwidth is required by customers.
KPN has long recognized the key role that its IT systems have in providing crucial competitive advantage – helping it maintain market share, expand its service offerings and retain its customers. However, KPN identified the need for a more highly automated and business-driven IT infrastructure that would drive down operational costs while increasing operational efficiency. To this end KPN has engaged in an ambitious, comprehensive and multi-year transformation program to consolidate and overhaul its entire OSS. Building an all-IP infrastructure involved completely renewing legacy networks with IP networks and only offering IP-based services.
"Amdocs' OSS technology and vision enable us to continue to innovate and improve efficiency."
KPN's three key goals for its OSS transformation program are to improve the customer experience, lower operational costs, and improve service offerings through innovation, differentiated and customized services, as well as faster service launch and provisioning.
Fast, accurate provisioning is one area that KPN has been working on to deliver against its three key OSS goals. It hopes to introduce zero-touch provisioning, initiated and orchestrated in real time by customers with self-care, across many of its business lines, and has begun by successfully completing the rollout of a fully-automated, zero-touch fulfillment solution for its broadband residential customers. The goal is a simplified and consolidated fulfillment process based on a single centralized architecture to support KPN's all-IP strategy.
"The business-critical nature of our OSS cannot be over-emphasized," says Nesko Jancic, Vice President of OSS at KPN. "One way the Amdocs OSS solution has met our strategic goals is that it has enabled us to support fully-automated provisioning. We now have real-time zero-touch provisioning for the first time in KPN, and Amdocs is key in making that possible," says Jancic.
Improved Customer Experience
In today's competitive and fast-moving market it's no longer enough to deliver voice, video or data. "Consumers now expect more from their services, and expect these personalized, relevant services to form part of a simple, superior customer experience. This is why improving the customer experience is a vital part of KPN's strategy to win new customers, and retain and up-sell its existing customers," explains Jancic.
"We now have real-time zero-touch provisioning for the first time in KPN, and Amdocs is key in making that possible."
A number of business and operational support systems (BSS and OSS), people and business processes shape the customer experience. KPN chose the Amdocs OSS offering for service fulfillment and network/element registration, including the TM Forum MTOSI (Multi-Technology Operations System Interface) standard for activation of the NG DSLAM (Next-Generation Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer) equipment, to transform its customer experience.
"Improving our customer experience is key to remaining competitive in our core markets, and Amdocs OSS has helped us do that by enabling us to deliver against our promises to our customers. With Amdocs, our provisioning speeds are faster, our processes more accurate and we now have a much more accurate view of our network, so we're finding problems earlier and improving our service assurance," says Jancic.
"Improving our customer experience is key to remaining competitive in our core markets, and Amdocs OSS has helped us do that."
By consolidating numerous legacy inventory systems into the Amdocs inventory, KPN has gained multiple business benefits. For example, a major cause of lengthy provisioning processes is inaccurate network data, which causes fallout in the process and requires manual intervention. A consolidated and accurate inventory is therefore the foundation of a more efficient fulfillment process. In addition, consolidating data from numerous inventory systems has also improved KPN's service assurance and network planning. Faults can now be pinpointed and fixed much more quickly, and capacity can be designed, assigned and planned more accurately. This improves operational efficiency, but also minimizes disruptions to customers when faults occur.
As part of a fully-automated end-to-end fulfillment solution for broadband, KPN implemented Amdocs Automation and Activation Packs. These packs support faster and more accurate service deployment by allowing KPN to deploy new broadband elements much more quickly – enabling it to cope with the large number of broadband orders it receives.
Simplifying and consolidating the fulfillment process based on a single centralized architecture means KPN now has full visibility of its fulfillment processes. This enhances the customer experience by speeding the provisioning process and reducing the number of provisioning errors, which means customers are able to start using services much more quickly without having to wait. KPN benefits from a shorter order-to-revenue cycle.
"With Amdocs, our provisioning speeds are faster, our processes more accurate and we now have a much more accurate view of our network."
Jancic explains, "In today's market, customers have much higher expectations. They expect to be able to order a service and for it to be fulfilled in real-time. They're not prepared to wait for lengthy provisioning processes or to put up with mistakes. Fast, accurate provisioning has become a point of differentiation and a means of improving the customer experience. We're very excited about our new fully-automated broadband provisioning process because it delivers the high level of service that our customers now expect."
Lower Operational Costs
With increasing downward pressure on price for traditional services such as voice, KPN has long recognized the need to lower its operational costs in order to remain competitive, and has taken a multi-pronged approach to this challenge. Its strategic transformation program includes rolling out an IP backbone and extending its all-IP infrastructure into the access network. KPN has had a long-standing relationship with Amdocs OSS Division, and Amdocs is playing an integral role in KPN's long-term transformation. "Amdocs' OSS technology and vision enable us to continue to innovate and improve efficiency, from decommissioning legacy systems to standardizing our OSS," says Jancic. "As a result we can quickly launch new converged services to customers in shorter time frames and at a lower cost."
KPN recognized the need to move to a lower cost and streamlined infrastructure that would support its next-generation ambitions. This has been achieved through rationalizing and consolidating its OSS, simplifying the fulfillment process and basing it on a single centralized architecture. The resulting fully-automated end-to-end fulfillment process reduces the requirement for costly manual intervention.
Improved Service Offering
The new business dynamics of competitive, IP-based communication markets means that differentiation now comes from services and the systems that support them, and not from the underlying network technology. To remain competitive, service providers need to be able to offer a wide range of innovative, customized services and launch and fulfill these services quickly, reliably and at low cost. This reinforces the need to streamline and automate OSS processes.
"OSS automation is vital if KPN is to fully exploit the potential of next-generation services," comments Paul van Hoogmoed, Manager, Network Information Management. "We now have to deal with a much greater volume of services and, at the same time, the service lifecycle is shortening. Only with a highly automated closed-loop service delivery process can we support the rapid and low-cost deployment and provisioning of innovative services that we need to remain competitive."
85% Out-Of-The-Box Implementation
KPN'S new fully-automated broadband provisioning solution was developed using the rapid application development method over two week cycles. It uses Amdocs Automation and Activation Packs to support a zero-touch fulfillment process from order taking to service activation for services such as xDSL and fiber-to-the-curb. The project took around six months from start to testing and was commercially deployed during 2008. KPN received 85% of the functionality for its new automated broadband provisioning solution out-of-the-box, which meant a fast roll-out requiring little customization for a lower total cost of ownership.
Right-First-Time Service Activation
KPN is a long-standing Amdocs customer. The Amdocs OSS offering provides an enterprise-wide solution for KPN, spanning multiple business units including mobile, wireline, IP VPNs, and its pan-European fiber-optic network. KPN is stepwise replacing legacy inventory and fulfillment systems with the Amdocs OSS offering. To date this has already resulted in substantial business benefits. For example, inventory consolidation saw KPN migrate data from two huge legacy inventory systems that had been in place for more than 30 years to the Amdocs Cramer inventory. The legacy systems could then be decommissioned. As a result KPN realized both process efficiencies and significant savings in headcount and equipment.
"We standardized on the Amdocs OSS offering for our strategic all-IP program."
Paul van Hoogmoed, Manager, Network Information Management, KPN
To accelerate the roll-out of its residential broadband services, KPN has deployed a new automated provisioning solution, which makes use of a number of Amdocs' products including the Amdocs Automation and Activation Packs. These packs have enabled KPN to productize the business processes associated with the broadband component of its triple-play rollout, substantially decreasing time to market for the deployment of new broadband elements, as well as reducing ongoing operational costs.
Amdocs Is A Trusted Partner
"Our legacy infrastructure had served us well for many years, but it was no longer aligned to the needs of our business," says van Hoogmoed. "KPN first implemented the Amdocs OSS inventory solution more than five years ago. We standardized on the Amdocs OSS offering for our strategic all-IP program, and are continuously assessing our legacy systems across all platforms within the KPN network."
Jancic concludes, "The main reason I recommend the Amdocs OSS products is that Amdocs has really listened to customers such as KPN, and has continually responded to our needs. In OSS there are always multiple system interdependencies. COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) software needs to be implemented to work in conjunction with those existing systems – and in implementation there are sometimes unexpected consequences. We look for vendors who will partner with us to ensure that the details are properly addressed. The outcome is that the Amdocs OSS offering delivers an outstanding inventory solution and also a comprehensive range of pre-automated processes that enable us to quickly and easily implement services."
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