We are on the cusp of a technological revolution that will bring us next-generation communications services, improved autonomous vehicles, and innovative IoT services. The underpinnings of this revolution will be 5G. It will transform our cities, the way we work, and how we provide healthcare.
5G will bring faster speeds and lower latency — and a catalog of use cases we have yet to consider. In fact, some use cases may not pan out, but that’s okay. Communications Service Providers (CSPs) need to embrace agility and a “fail fast” mentality to find out what does work. As a result, CSPs will need to streamline, automate, and add agility to their processes. They will have to transform their operating model to achieve operational excellence, including network rollout, maintenance, and order fulfillment. 5G is coming fast, and it’s time for every CSP to transform at the most fundamental level.
CSPs that fail to deliver on the 5G promise risk getting surpassed by more agile competitors. That’s why they also need to adopt another set of technologies to meet demand: digital process automation (DPA). DPA uses powerful tech, including robotics, end-to-end automation, and artificial intelligence, to streamline and digitize complex operations while also assuring service levels remain high and real value is brought to every customer, quickly.
Advantages for DPA are many: It reduces costs, increases efficiency, and improves customer experience. DPA empowers teams to design and make dynamic changes with speed and agility while enhancing collaboration between business users and IT. This “citizen development” approach allows everyone to build automation in a low-code environment that keeps dev costs down and creates more time so CSPs can focus on productivity. It digitizes code-heavy processes and uses case management to make processes rules-based and tied to outcome.
Even though it’s tempting to think of work automation as being purely about technology — it’s actually about changing the business. DPA bridges the gap between business operations and enhanced customer experience, and that’s vital. When CSPs satisfy their customers, they win.
Delivering the New “Now” to the Customer
Three-quarters of all customers expect “now” service within five minutes of making contact, according to McKinsey. Siloed systems and processes will, therefore, need to be eradicated as competition heats up in the 5G space. Inefficiencies will alienate customers by not delivering on expectations. Additionally, they will bring about higher operational cost and increased churn.
CSPs will need to tear down all outdated silos to deliver customer-centric experiences. DPA allows CSPs to succeed in this area, because it can design workflows around customers — and not around internal organizations or dated processes. It also orchestrates interactions because customer experience isn’t just shaped around customer service teams: they’re also formed by meeting delivery expectations, assuring network service levels, accuracy of the bills, and more. DPA enhances responsiveness across all experiences — from straightforward situations to the increasingly complex.
Low-code DPA platforms and tools empower teams to collaborate and work in sync with different departments. The technology adds agility to legacy systems, allowing them to transform operational processes. AI functionality delivers next-best action on a customer interaction. Importantly, DPA orchestrates customer interactions into network operations with insight at the moment of need — from the simplest to most complex. It redesigns workflows from an outcome perspective and automates processes for operational excellence.
Businesses can take control of their digital futures. Traditionally, network engineers and repair technicians may have done repetitive tasks via a command line interface. Now, they can automate routine tasks. This empowers the business and builds a digital cultural mindset for the future by transforming a technician into a low-code developer.
With 5G comes numerous changes that call for many complex processes. By 2025, 49 percent of mobile connections in the US will be on the latest 5G networks, requiring five to 10 times more cell tower infrastructure. This demand—along with many others—will require CSPs to operate at their most efficient level, no matter the job title. And DPA can help.
5G will change the way we live and work and soon, all major CSPs will be delivering it. Competition will be fierce, and those CSPs that achieve operational excellence without compromising customer experience will win. Processes will be highly automated and driven to an outcome. DPA will be at the core, a technology that strips away organizational and technical silos to build a new operating model for the future.
