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Bridging the Wholesale Connectivity Automation Divide: Key Recommendations for Communications Service Providers

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Summary:

TruContact Universal Order Connect (UOC) helps simplify the buying and selling process for wholesale connectivity, offering an easy entry into the NaaS ecosystem.

Access to the internet is a requirement for every business — but getting connectivity to support it can sometimes take months. At the recent MEF GNE NaaS event, TransUnion® Vice President of Business Development John Carr participated in a question and answer session hosted by Rosemary Cochran, Principal and Co-Founder of Vertical Systems Group. The conversation revolved around the automation gap that exists within communication service providers’ (CSPs) wholesale organizations.
 

While some providers move aggressively toward network-as-a-service (NaaS) by committing time, money and resources into adopting MEF LSO standards for automating and streamlining the process of buying and selling connectivity, others have made little or no progress.  

Watch the video of the Q&A here and read on for a recap highlighting John’s insights on how CSPs can bridge the gap — and what challenges remain. 

Q: What would you recommend as essential first steps for a service provider that has little or no automation when it comes to their wholesale business?

My recommendation is for more carriers to start participating in the API ecosystem for wholesale transactions. Many smaller providers believe they don’t need automation because their wholesale order volumes are too low. And sometimes larger providers have the attitude they’re going to get the orders either way, so why bother? But building a worthwhile ecosystem requires participation from all service providers.

I suggest smaller service providers start by talking to their larger customers and suppliers. Find out what their plans are for adopting automation. Get in tune with them; maybe start with a pilot project. But either way, to truly make an impactful change, everyone needs to participate in this ecosystem in one way or another. Talk to the experts and begin collaborating with solution providers like TransUnion.
 

Q: How do you incentivize a company that wants to get involved, but they're still not sold on it at this point, even though they have internal groups struggling to keep up with quotes?

Often when a buyer of wholesale services has suppliers that aren’t automated, they believe there’s no point in upgrading their own systems, but that’s not true. One of the top reasons for order delays is missing or wrong information. We recommend buyers start their own automation initiatives by sending order requests to these providers using a tool like Universal Order Connect (UOC) (or other solutions) where much of the information is already loaded and pre-configured. This small step helps suppliers provide better service with fewer delays, which is of course beneficial for the buyer.

For some CSPs, a move toward MEF LSO and NaaS can feel overwhelming. I think a lot of providers look at the MEF APIs and feel they’ll have to spend a whole lot of money without really knowing what the outcome will be or how long it will take. Integration costs of getting into the various back-office systems is the most expensive part of the process because you have to figure out what's going on with each one.

You need to sit down with the various teams and consult with them — and that's an expensive and time-consuming process. That’s why carriers are asking us if there are ways to get into the NaaS ecosystem without spending all that initial outlay — and the answer is yes. This is exactly why we created  TransUnion Universal Order Connect.
 

Q: If a carrier were to implement a solution like TransUnion Universal Order Connect, what does that process look like?

You can leverage as much or as little of our UOC platform as you’d like. Often, there's an opportunity where one group starts using a portion of the system and the rest of the groups start to see the benefits, so we’re able to grow the platform at our customers’ pace.

In terms of implementation, one of the challenges we run into is different groups within the service provider organization have different budgets with separate systems and ownership. Often, these groups don’t take a big picture approach and talk about where things should be going. But this is incredibly important, especially when it comes to benefiting from the use of automation and APIs. That said, we run into these challenges all the time and have learned how to manage them.
 

Q: What about the smaller connectivity suppliers. How will they fit in with network-as-a-service going forward?

I think fundamentally, all CSPs need to be in the NaaS ecosystem, big or small. Even if a provider is only leasing a small number of circuits, there needs to be a standardized process.

We need to keep in mind there's more than just the quoting and ordering part of the process. In fact, that’s the easy part. When you look at what we're really doing and trying to achieve, it requires a new approach. For instance, take the need to dip into live circuit inventories for quoting and ordering. NaaS changes what’s required of these systems in this new era. It broadens the number of systems we need to talk to in the organization — for large and small providers. Creating consistent interactions between suppliers is also a very important step. NaaS will go through several phases, and the first one is simply getting everybody onto the same page.
 

Q: How long do you think it's going to take going forward to get everyone on board with MEF LSO?

In just the last three years, we’ve seen a lot more people getting serious about MEF implementations, but there’s a wide range in where they are on their journeys. UOC is a great way to bridge the process, especially for those carriers still in the early stages. We offer an easy way for these service providers to get involved without a major investment. Not everybody's going to move at the same pace, and the reality is getting to full adoption could take years.

UOC is designed to help simplify the buying and selling process between service providers for their wholesale connectivity business. We’ve spent a lot of time developing the MEF LSO Sonata API as one of the standard interfaces to our platform. UOC is also a way for people to satisfy the needs of their partners that want to automate their non-MEF and non-ASR ordering processes. That’s because we focus on translating between standards and order types. UOC provides an easy button for automation and transformation efforts without those big investments — or locking into one standard and not satisfying your other customers.

Watch the video to learn more about TransUnion Universal Order Connect (UOC) and how we can help simplify your NaaS and digital transformation journey.

Watch the video to learn more about TransUnion Universal Order Connect (UOC) and how we can help simplify your NaaS and digital transformation journey.