Facing the competition:How one CAP retained its edge

The heat is on-and it's rising. Telecommunications service revenues neared $1 billion last year and will only go up in the coming years, intensifying a trend that began in the early 1990s when new entrants flooded the competitive access provider market.

Metro Access Networks, launched in 1993 as a subsidiary of Century Telephone Enterprises Inc., was one of those new CAPs operating directly in the eye of the storm.

By that time, the monopolies of local exchange carriers had upgraded their networks and lowered their prices, and many cities had more than one CAP. The investment community wanted to ensure that CAPs maintained their advantages and had the infrastructure necessary to take them beyond the startup phase.

Regulatory markets were beginning to open up, allowing CAPs to sell services that had been previously reserved for the local monopolies. In addition, long-distance carriers demanded that CAPs follow Bellcore and other industry standards for forms and procedures to ensure a uniform vendor interface.

As a CAP in its beginning phase, Metro Access Networks had to find a competitive edge to win over the interexchange carriers' business and expand into lucrative new products. Company management decided that the solution was to automate the company's operations from the very beginning. But building a system of its own would be costly and time-consuming, and it would draw a tremendous amount of resources from the company.

Viewing this automation as a mission-critical system, the company developed a long list of "must haves" for its software evaluation criteria. The package had to comply with all BellCore and Ordering and Billing Forum standards. It had to have a common repository or database from which customer service, engineering, installation and maintenance would share data. It had to be implemented in client-server technology and have an electronic interface with customers for access service requests (ASRs), firm order confirmations, design layout records (DLRs) and flexible reporting. It also had to be user-friendly. Of course, it goes without saying that the solution had to be affordable.

After evaluating the options, the company chose the Access Services And Provisioning System (ASAP) from MetaSolv Software in Dallas. ASAP, a client-server based system with powerful, easy-to-use tools and a rich graphical user interface, met or exceeded all of Metro Access Networks' requirements. Primarily, ASAP addressed the three culprits that could steal the company's competitive edge: ineffective use of time and resources; an incomplete understanding of business processes, including critical information about the business, its structure and industry standards; and service workflow.

Automation Benefits To start with, the system's automation reduces order processing time and can help eliminate data errors. Other software packages that were evaluated could electronically receive orders, but they required the user to print the order in hard copy form and re-input the data manually, making the systems very error-prone and inefficient.

In addition, ASAP makes extensive use of a user-interface design that guides users through the correct data entry sequence to complete tasks. This design is referred to as "wizard" or "smart" Windows because the software application can determine the correct path for entering data based on the value of information previously entered.

After entering an ASR, the system validates the entry according to both industry standards and company-specific standards. The automatic validation system eliminates the need for constant reference checking. The mission-critical system also empowers the CAP to visualize its business processes through a built-in work management system. Employees can effectively plan their work load by seeing their upcoming personal work queues or tasks, and they can view work queues within their own work group as well.

When an ASR is entered into the system, the user selects the appropriate provisioning plan. The system automatically generates the tasks chosen for that plan and creates the appropriate tasks with completion dates for the responsible individuals within the department. The work queue manager allows for tracking a task's progress to completion, and it accounts for dependent tasks. Employees can manage their time and tasks effectively without redundancy of actions or forgetting a critical step in the provisioning plan.

In managing work queues, ASAP gives the administrator a proactive signal when a problem is about to happen. It identifies tasks that are complete, past due or have the potential to be past due. Recognizing that a task has a potential of being late can help eliminate a domino effect by ensuring immediate action. Learning the cause of past problems, delays and bottlenecks is mandatory in maintaining a competitive edge.

In addition, ASAP's work management system enables administrators to more effectively control critical dates. The system enables administration to assign jeopardy codes to past-due tasks. The staff uses these codes to track the cause of installation delays.

For example, an engineer builds a DLR of a new circuit between two nodes. The equipment is already installed at both ends and has the available capacity for the circuit. However, when the installer is at the site to perform the installation, it's discovered that there's a bad card at one end. Thus a new card must be ordered, and the task will be delayed. The engineer can record the reason or jeopardy code for the delay. Management then receives a jeopardy report and can effectively monitor whether this situation is an isolated event or the vendor frequently ships bad cards.

Of course, dealing with a standard request for service is generally a straightforward matter. But installations often become more complicated because of building entrance requirements, rights-of-way acquisition or equipment engineering, making communication between parties critical. ASAP helps to prevent miscommunication with customers by providing the ability to time and date records during the progress of an installation. If any questions arise later about the committed due date or other details, the team has complete documentation and circuit history.

Network Provisioning Based on past experience, Metro Access Networks knew that network provisioning was another business process that was prone to being handled through "home-grown" methods such as paper-based files or spreadsheets. These methods were highly susceptible to inefficient, inaccurate record keeping. Little or no control existed to ensure that data entry was accurate or that entries would keep up with the increasing volume of data.

With ASAP, it is possible to record equipment and facility inventory as one shared database. It also gives everyone responsible for ordering, designing, provisioning and implementing a circuit current access to the status of an order and visibility to the network capacity. Because everyone is looking at the same data, ASAP eliminates the need to keep multiple versions of the information in sync.

With ASAP, a user can monitor the currently installed equipment inventory as well as the capacity inventory of the installed systems. In addition, the order provisioning process automatically creates the DLR and enables the engineers to view the design and assignment.

To assign a channel on a facility, a user would select the first channel on the desired DS-3. ASAP reserves and assigns the first available channel on both pieces of equipment on both ends. The circuit ID is recorded on that slot. It then takes the information from what was selected and generates a DLR, which can be sent to the engineer in the field. The system will not allow assignments to be made where equipment and facilities do not exist.

Manually intensive tasks such as grooming and rehoming also are simplified with ASAP. An engineer can simply select a circuit hierarchy and tell the application to move it to another position. The application then updates all of the associated records, including the DLR. These changes are applied against the database instantly, providing a substantial time savings and eliminating the chance of manual error.

Not only is ASAP beneficial to the order entry process and provisioning, but sales staff also can monitor the system with read-only access so they know when their customer's circuits are installed and accepted without having to call operations or customer service. In addition, when salespeople visit customers, they can dial into the system using a laptop to see the equipment and circuit availability.

As the battle for customers in the local markets becomes even more competitive, successful companies will have to rely more than ever on their responsiveness, flexibility and ability to leverage their people and systems. Timely, accurate order processing and provisioning will be a key competitive advantage in the months and years ahead.

Susan Rodriguez was Vice President of Metro Access Networks, Arlington, Texas, when this article was written. She recently left the company to provide consulting to local exchange carriers and competitive access providers.