How do we measure progress of transformations?
Continuing from last week, today we will explore one key aspect of transformations. We must have effective ways of measuring and tracking the effect of our efforts. Let us take one example, Automation. We know that automation is very important piece and can help a lot in terms of
- Saving Opex (Operational Expenditure): by reduction of manual touch points
- Saving rework and penalties by avoiding manual mistakes, machines are seldom distracted
- Improving speed of innovation- faster introduction of newer services
- Improve speed of delivery – faster service provisioning
Well, there are other benefits too but what I really wanted to cover today is how we measure our success with automation at a very high level. I recall the days when I was involved in packet network transformation at Airtel. The simplest metric for me was to check the volume of orders for existing SDH systems as part of the overall purchase. By fixing and chasing the targets on reduction of SDH purchase, I was able to use the Capex (Capital Expenditure) to build packet network for delivering the network services.
Automation requires three basic elements:-
- Programmability of network elements: that means more software features vs hardware capabilities
- Open protocols for interfacing with the controller
- SDN Controller and /or MDSO implementation
If we look at it from the high level, all these are software modules or capabilities. If we can have a check at the spending in software we should be able to track our progress. So if we have to look for one single parameter to check if transformation is happening, we should track the spend on software and features as a %age of the overall Capex.
Stay tuned for more next week.