TM Forum's annual Digital Transformation World (DTW) is a major event in the communications industry, where innovation comes to life, inspiration is sparked, connections are made, and knowledge is gained. Around 3500+ attendees, 50+ CSP VPs, and above from 100+ countries joined this event.
Digital operations transformation is a hot topic during this exhibition.
As the front runner of this digital era from the African continent, MTN shows its impressive influence in this industry. Mr. Mohamed Salah, Head of Network Operation and Transformation delivered a keynote speech titled “Driving industry-leading connectivity operations across Africa” at the Spotlight Session: Transforming network-centric operations to become service-centric operations summit in DTW 2023.
MTN has been working closely with TM Forum for past two years with focus on autonomous networks and how it can achieve the long-term objective of L4 autonomous level under the umbrella of Ambition 2025. Last year at DTW, Mohamed Salah shared how MTN has aligned Service Operation through Service Close-loop by adopting 3 layers and 4 close loops to fulfill the process life cycle and this year we witnessed how MTN has been actively collaborating with its suppliers on the Service Operations transformation.
Mohamed gave us the glimpse of what MTN has been doing and how the journey of Digital Operations Transformation is progressing at a rapid pace under the leadership of MTN Group and how the PACE Framework (PACE is the Framework launched by MTN Group CTIO in 2022) has focused on Digital operations transformation. Since then MTN has successfully completed the assessment of some of its Tier-1 Operations and the plan to roll-out the exercise across other OPCOs in the coming days.
Through this years’ whitepaper release, MTN showcased its digital operations transformation objectives to deliver superior user experience, second to none Network achieving operations excellence and improved efficiency coupled with innovation.
MTN has successfully chalked out its platform strategy to build the largest and most valuable digital platforms to drive agility and elasticity with AI/ML, unified and big data, enabling revenue growth. MTN’s Agile operating model requires agility in ways of working, governance and organizational culture. Where MTN will focus on the people and workforce, introducing efficient ways of working, skillset development hence achieving the service transformation. Another pillar of digital operation transformation MTN is keenly focusing on is, process optimization through adaptive processes modeling which enable the end to end operations process automation supporting quick decision making with right and sufficient data.
Mohamed shared MTN’s aim to achieve high level of automation with AI/ML applications. For example, AI/ML based application to generate rules and correlation to reduce alarms, correlate alarms, identify root cause alarms and perform service impact analysis automation hence achieving the Service close loop. Ultimately this will enable MTN to achieve superior customer experience relying on the automation capability, transforming network-oriented operations to service and customer centric operations through SOC and NOC integration synergy.
MTN believes digital platform will drive the digital operations transformation and provide 2 key values, one to support its digital transformation and second to support business growth.
Business growth will be complimented through open APIs as all of MTN’s business platforms such as EVA and Chenosis will connect to the digital OSS which is MTN digital enablement platform. All network and operation data from the singular and unified data lake are made available to various businesses with in MTN to support their respective business needs. Furthermore, this strategy provides a unified architecture across network operations encompassing planning, deployment, operation, optimization and customer experience.
In a nutshell, this digital OSS platform has a unified data lake, AI capabilities, development studio, network capability openness and cloud and network API sets. Thorough these, it provides digital assets and services such as data governance, self-development and AI everywhere.
MTN also shared how it is using this strategy in Nigeria as a model of “Digital Operations Transformation” in partnership with its supplier Huawei.
MTN has already implemented the data governance and AI-powered digital platform in Nigeria, helping Nigeria achieve AI OPS. In terms of leading indicators, the team has integrated the NOC and NPM modules, streamlining the organization and process of maintenance and optimization, eliminate the gap between routine network maintenance and network optimization, and also been able to better guide routine network O&M driven by network indicators.
In terms of leading experience, the team has integrated NOC and SOC modules to demarcate, resolve and improve for customer experience related tasks. Through this unified experience indicators and intelligent customer experience management, MTN has effectively achieved leading customer experience. In terms of service leadership MTN has implemented intelligent and automated O&M in multiple MTN service fields, ensuring stable and leading service experience in all service fields, such as 5G and ToH.
