Reduce costs, predict faults and boost customer satisfaction with Virtual NOC

How is Elisa working to deliver an outstanding and consistent customer experience in a cost-effective way? The secret lies in our network operations centre, or NOC. The NOC provides a centralised resource for the operational management of telecoms networks by consolidating control and reporting interfaces for ease of access and visibility, and by enabling appropriate activities to be performed and coordinated.

There is a clear need to control operational expenditure (OPEX) in the telecoms industry. Analysts have been making dire predictions about declining margins and the impact of OPEX on budgets for many years, and they are coming true. Furthermore, with the advent of 5G, there is demand for higher performance and agility, but it comes at a significantly higher cost.

Reducing OPEX has become crucial, and automating key processes and actions that require minimal human intervention is a clear answer to achieving that. It has a strategic role in protecting and boosting margins, meeting KPIs, and in transitioning to a new, agile network and service architecture. The question is: how and where do we start the automation journey?

One way to meet this challenge is by adopting Elisa’s Virtual NOC to automate network management and fault resolution processes.

Using the same technology, Elisa in Finland became the first mobile network in the world to secure a completely virtual, zero-touch NOC, enabled by closed-loop automation and machine learning.

The Virtual NOC has significantly reduced the number of manual operations, thereby cutting costs. It has also improved the customer experience and optimised network performance, while enabling more efficient resource allocation and helping Elisa to meet its operational targets. Right from the outset, Elisa recognised that, while they wanted an automated NOC, it was crucial to take a step-by-step approach towards implementing it. This included an extensive review of operational costs, taking into account the customer impact of faults, the volume of issues that arise, and the cost of resolving them.

Thanks to the Virtual NOC, Elisa has been able to achieve the following results in Finland:

  • 100% of customer-impacting issues have been automated
  • 100% of first-line work is automated
  • 93% of alerts are predicted and proactively managed
  • 79% improvement in resolution time
  • 71% reduction in the number of incidents
  • 15% reduction in customer complaints

How have we managed to do this? Through a combination of process automation, a prioritised approach, and ensuring effective error resolution. Find out more by reading the white paper below, which explores why NOC automation is essential, considers the benefits that can be obtained, and provides an illustration of this in practice.

Curious to know more about how the Virtual NOC improves networks? Get in touch for a no-obligation discussion.