July | 2020

Enabling support across 14 OpCos throughout Africa by ensuring consistent KPI delivery to business, reducing high-priority incidents, and outage time

Client Background

Client: Provider of telecommunications, mobile voice, data, and mobile money services in Africa

Industry: Telecommunications

Services: Telephone operator and mobile network provider

Areas of Operation: Africa

Challenges

The leading telecommunications provider in Africa was looking for a solution that would provide support of AMS, Infra, and service desk for 14 OpCos in Africa with a total of 2,225 SLAs for AMS and 1,274 SLAs for Infra. However, they faced multiple challenges in the form of:

  • Poor data availability and KPI on D-7
  • Inaccurate Reporting
  • Ineffective and time-consuming monitoring processes
  • Performance Issues

Solution

Wipro implemented a script-based solution to auto-restart application services found in a hung/stuck state. Optimization was also carried out to fine-tune and fix long-running queries. A wrapper rearrangement activity was carried out to move non-critical KPI at the end. Removal of unwanted scripts from the Wrapper and a consolidated alert dashboard was also implemented to track the status of each script available in Wrapper.

Wipro developed an in-house application [Single View] on the .NET platform. This view provided all the 14 OpCos’ statuses on numerous parameters starting from Server layer to Application layer with color-coding technique. It also captured data points historically for future reference and RCA analysis. Multiple instances of addition data stream applications were implemented to improve the backlog clearance. Table-level indices were created on key parameters, system / code / config level bugs were identified and fixed, and a regular cadence for execution of housing jobs (e.g. Purging) and unwanted data clean-up was introduced.

Business impact

  • Operational SLAs improved from 87% to 100%
  • High-Priority tickets were reduced to zero, thus reducing the outage time
  • Reduction in incidents from 539 to 143
  • Faster data loading and thus CDR availability gap reduced from D-7 to near real-time basis
  • Consistent KPI delivery to business (on or before 8 a.m. OPCO time)
  • 100% assurance of scripts completion for all OpCos resulted in accurate reports being delivered to business
  • Proactive alerts, stabilized system, ease of monitoring, actions on impacted OpCos prioritized
  • Space Optimization, Consistent and Enhanced Performance, near real-time Loading [CDR loading within 37 minutes post generation at Switch end], Faster query output to business

"The Group spread across 14 countries was keen on providing a simple and intuitive customer experience through streamlined customer journeys. To achieve the same, the group adopted a very aggressive transformation approach by creating massive SLA/ KPI in excess of 250 per country in Infrastructure and Application operations (total 3,400). Wipro accepted the challenge and in less than a few months, not only worked out measurement criteria, but also measured, improved, met, and demonstrated to the group across all SLA/ KPIs. This has significantly improved confidence leading to reduction in incidents. Wipro’s team worked with all 14 countries’ customer teams to achieve the feat. While the massive work on SLA / KPI helped the customer on the operational side, bringing stability to business, Wipro’s support helped to stabilize campaigns significantly. Wipro ensured the servers are up and running, application availability, helped in product creation, supported business flow management, database management, data-mart management, scalability, data consistency, and this overall business support resulted in efficient campaign management for better channel delivery with reduced marketing costs."

Vivek Bhagwatkar

General Manager, Communications BU, Wipro ltd