The automation challenge

Juggling speed, traffic, and data volume challenges

Telecom service providers are under pressure to meet the needs of customer sophistication on one hand while handling the speed, traffic, and volume of data generated by newer technologies such as 5G, IoT, and cloud on the other. However, a bigger challenge is managing the operational cost and workforce efficiency using manual and archaic processes. They add business overheads to back-office teams, field engineers, and technicians impacting their service quality, delay in the handling of a critical network, and operational issues, and thus affect overall customer experience.

TCS’ FSA delivers twin benefits of customer satisfaction and higher internal efficiencies

Enhanced networks mean robust maintenance, infrastructure, and management which du telecom, one of the largest telecom service providers in the United Arab Emirates, was struggling to incorporate with its archaic manual processes. Major areas of challenges in operations included efficient handling of their field force, their team’s visibility on the ground and real-time vehicle inventory among others. They required a solution to empower and digitally transform their way of working to help them build a common roadmap of future capabilities, manage business demand in a unified manner and ensure service quality. They needed a partner who could help them not only transform their workforce management but also design a 360-degree view of their field force and business performance, which significantly results in better customer experience and quality of fieldwork for their network operations.

Banking on a decade-long partnership with TCS, du telecom was confident of pulling through this enormous task of digitalization and complete automation of current manual workforce processes. TCS’ extensive experience in the telecommunications industry and field service, proven track record of managing large-scale business transformation programs, and hands-on understanding of du’s business processes made it the ideal choice for this strategic program. 

TCS believed that a shorter wait time for customers, real-time tracking, and strong coordination between back-office and field workers; deliver the twin benefits of greater customer satisfaction and enhanced internal efficiencies, which not only results in reducing operational costs but also leads to happier customers with genuine feedback worth its weight in gold. TCS’ flagship solution Field Service Automation (FSA) on Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, offered du telecom not only all this, but most importantly, ensured that the migration from legacy to the new platform had a minimal shifting impact on existing integrations.

"du has a dynamic working environment and it is amazing to see how quickly TCS adapted to our dynamic ground realities and our expectations"

Peter Larnholt, CIO, Du Telecom

Transition from legacy systems to digitalization boosts positive customer feedback

Although the COVID-19 pandemic posed a huge risk to this transformation, TCS quickly aligned with the Secure Borderless WorkspaceTM (SBWS) process which fulfilled du’s business objectives in time.

↑ 98% positive customer feedback

↑ 50% increase in work efficiency

↓ 5-10% reduction in warehouse visits

By conducting development and adaptive training programs remotely and round-the-clock virtual assistance to field technicians and engineers and backend teams, TCS helped du Telecom achieve 100% user adoption of the renewed field service platform without any delay or loss to their operations and businesses.

du Telecom is now empowered to use an automated system for not only assigning technicians based on their skill sets, regions, and real-time availability; but also, able to manage field demand and increase their work efficiency for customer service assurance and fulfilment by 50% due to automated scheduling and dispatching leading to better handling their field force. Being a web and mobile-based solution, TCS’ FSA helped both the operations team and field engineers to keep track of their workloads and field technicians to plan and proficiently execute their tasks. Pre-emptive preventive site visits are also now well-planned and debriefed real time. A 5-10% reduction in warehouse visits by the technicians (daily vs weekly) is also achieved through FSA. The FSA was rolled out for network as well as customer service operations. As part of this, field executives can deliver fixed line services in faster and efficient manner.

Customer feedback is also captured by the technician during the same field visit and du is getting 98% positive customer feedbacks due to high service quality, with quick, and quality issue fixations and enhancements.