The telecommunications industry is shaping the world around us. Devices are everywhere; globally, the number of devices per person will rise to 3.6 by 2023. Companies are promoting policies like ”Live and work anywhere.” Advancements in telecom technology are changing the operating models for business and life.
This convergence of trends, especially as TV, internet, and mobile blend together, kicked off the recent aim10x webinar, hosted by Krishna Kulankara, EVP & Vikram Parvataneni, SVP at o9 Solutions. It brought to light that a physical supply chain is behind the digital world that exists all around us.
As advancements continue, detailed planning can enable operators to stay ahead of customer demand for new services and offerings. As Krishna said, “ what it means for planning overall is that nothing remains constant. You have to continuously evolve planning systems and solutions to meet the needs of the business.”
Living up to lofty telecom customer expectations requires planning through many simultaneous challenges. Four quotes, in particular, characterized the challenges:
- “The business is changing so fast, and the systems and processes do not evolve at the same speed.”
- “Most of the planning tends to happen in spreadsheets. And people are doing it in a very, very siloed manner.”
- “…subscriber growth drives most of the business expansion, and then how does that tie to everything else in terms of device planning, infrastructure planning, and so on?”
- “Across devices and the network, how do you plan for short life cycle products?”
Overcoming planning challenges
To overcome these challenges, telecom supply chains must reinvent their ways of working, aligning the organization, its technology, and its processes. These digital operating models break the burdens of siloed planning and empower the types of decisions that create value across business units.
o9 Solutions’ whitepaper, “Build critical end-to-end Demand and Supply capabilities for Telecom network infrastructure planning”, elaborates on what that means for those providing the offerings and services that are omnipresent today. The process includes:
- Building demand sensing and shaping capabilities
- Translating demand to supply at a granular level
- Manage the supply planning strategy to collaborate on and execute order allocation.
Learn more and get your hands on the whitepaper here.
