The business case for live topology
Operating and maintaining a live topology is vitally important to the successful management of Service Operations Centers (SOCs). It enables operators to unify numerous network domains resulting in a unified customer view and a consolidation of business operations. Additionally, it allows for services to be scaled easily through automation and for these services to be supported and maintained following the provisioning stage. This is evidently advantageous from a customer experience perspective—a command of the live topology means that network faults are resolved simply and swiftly, thereby ensuring that a superior level of service is consistently maintained.
In contrast, the traditional manually curated processes employed by customer service managers and service desk agents inhibit progress and limit the ability to assess customer impacts. Without a live topology to facilitate SOC operations through improved data quality and network consistency, a company’s bottom line inevitably suffers.
CSPs are finding that the technology has tangible business benefits, including the ability to analyze a greater number of services across the whole enterprise customer base, as well as the facility to match enterprise customers with the best and most relevant technology and products for specific business needs. It also allows them to grow the revenue base and cross-link significant data sets with a regular update for appropriate offer campaigns. Overall this adds up to an improved customer experience management approach for CSPs who are empowered to improve on fault resolution rates, decrease handling times, increase productivity, and minimize high-risk enterprise customer churn.
There is clearly a compelling business case for live topology and its role in empowering the SOC through business consolidation, systems rationalization and operational transformation, to name a few. It is therefore logical to conclude that the future of innovative, customer centric operators lies in live topology.
For more details on why live topology is a crucial ally in today’s evolving, complex network ecosystem read Appledore Research Group’s paper entitled The Importance of Live Topology in the Modern Service Operation Center.
