Automate a tower’s entire lifecycle with FieldPower®

During 2019 the global average tenancy ratio on towerco sites reached 2.0x, and with that milestone comes the necessity to make every tenant’s interaction with tower owners as frictionless as possible. Enter Ducont System’s FieldPower^®. The cloud-based system allows towercos and MNOs to automate asset management, job ticketing and to remove friction between landlord and tenants. The solution also allows tower owners to monitor work by subcontractors and optimise asset performance against SLAs. TowerXchange discusses the solution with Venkatesh Sundaram, Group CEO of Ducont Systems.  TowerXchange: Please introduce your company – where do you fit in the telecoms infrastructure ecosystem?

We at Ducont design and implement secure IT solutions that help our customers improve efficiency, increase performance, and meet their mission. Ducont helps our clients to transform digital experience, modernise the operational process, and mobilise business.  

We have a proven track record of providing quality solutions for various industries including telecom, banking, insurance, government, consumer electronics, utilities and logistics. We are headquartered in Dubai and Edison, NJ and have state-of-the-art technology Research & Development centres in the U.S. and India. We are also present in Singapore and the UK.

Ducont has been implementing solutions for telecom companies for the last twelve years and has several large telcos as its customers. We have automated and digitally transformed many telcos through our Gartner listed Field Service Management Solution – FieldPower^®. The solution automates the entire service lifecycle of field operations including delivery, installation, field service repairs and scheduled maintenance.  TowerXchange: Where are Ducont systems live in the telecoms world, how many sites are managed through it and what results have been achieved?

Ducont has digitally transformed service operations for many telcos, towercos and telecom service providers across the world, including Saudi Telecommunications Company, Omantel and edotco Group. 

FieldPower^® is used by our clients to manage more than 100,000 sites and they have been able to achieve great customer satisfaction by meeting contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs), increasing productivity and efficiency through end-to-end automation, greater cost savings by optimal utilisation of resources, and better visibility on the works carried out by their contractors.

TowerXchange: Could you share a digital transformation success story from a telecoms firm you have helped?

We can consider one of our esteemed clients, edotco Group, where they have started their digital transformation journey by Implementing FieldPower^®. Before we implemented FieldPower^®, they had issues such as;  - Manual and repetitive processes 

- Disparate systems and processes used in six different countries

- SLA performance issues

- No clear visibility on resource activity, vendor performance, inventory et cetera

- Data and information mismatch across stakeholders.

Now with FieldPower^®, edotco have been able to; - Use one holistic cloud solution for their operations in all countries

- Achieve increased efficiency both in back office and front office using our Scheduling and Mobile solution

- Streamline and unify their business processes and systems across six countries

- Harmonise data and information by integrating to multiple source and reporting systems

- Have greater visibility into vendor performance using our Multi-vendor management solution

- Optimise utilisation of field engineers by assignment to the right jobs and tracking those jobs to closure.

TowerXchange: Where can FieldPower^® help most in terms of improvement in terms of operational excellence?

FieldPower^® is an end-to-end digital transformation tool for the telecom infrastructure ecosystem which can evolve along with organisations’ efforts to continuously improve their operations. It is a highly configurable and flexible system to meet their ever-changing business needs. FieldPower^® is an all in one tool which not just provides access to information, but also helps to make decisions based on the available information and, in turn, to perform actions based on those decisions. Results of such actions can be monitored and changes made dynamically. FieldPower^® significantly helps in; - Achieving increased first time fix rates (FTTR) and reduced mean time to repair (MTTR)

- Improving technician productivity and optimal utilisation

- Increasing scheduling and dispatching efficiency

- Decreasing turnaround time

- Accelerating invoicing

- Increasing performance against SLAs

- Reducing overhead costs

TowerXchange: MNOs are asking towercos to become more customer-centric; how does FieldPower^® help towercos to take better care of their tenants? 

FieldPower^® was built with the basic tenets of good customer experience management in mind. Our expertise in integrating various order management and ticketing systems allows real time information updating, which is invaluable for towerco tenants. The solution empowers customers with a self-service customer portal where they can create tickets and track them to closure. Also, customers can rate their experience and authorise the closure each time they interact with a service requirement. FieldPower^® helps organisations meet their customer’s contractual SLAs by handling situations effectively. The whole customer experience, right from service requirement definition to closure, is frictionless. TowerXchange: Towercos need certainty and predictability to hit their SLA targets, how do you assist in service delivery assurance?

Service delivery assurance is another building block of FieldPower^®. The system helps organisations forecast and plan the service requirements coming their way well in advance using our analytics suite.  The SLA management solution doesn’t just report SLA performance at the end of the day, but also helps the organisation to meet their SLAs even in cases of unexpected situations.

FieldPower^® delivers uniquely useful insights to stakeholders helping them to make smarter decisions. On top of that, our AI powered scheduling engine makes on-demand decisions during service delivery execution, assuring organisation meet their SLA targets. TowerXchange: How future-proofed is your solution for advances linked to IoT, cloud analytics and new digital transformation technologies for asset management?

FieldPower^® is a cloud-first solution built using the latest cloud technologies and all of our latest implementations are on cloud. It is cloud agnostic and capable of running on all forms of cloud deployments, be it public, private or hybrid. The system’s multi-tenant architecture helps us to deliver cost-effective solutions to our customers. With the latest IoT capabilities, FieldPower® is set to deliver unprecedented value to organisations through its predictive analytics suite.  In fact, we are delivering connected service solutions where assets are monitored in real-time and with this customers can be assured of their assets’ performance more than ever before.

TowerXchange: Does FieldPower^® support the whole lifecycle of an asset?

FieldPower^® has an extensive integrated inventory management system. With our IoT capabilities, FieldPower^® helps in monitoring an asset’s performance during its lifecycle through its analytics engine by analysing various operational issues such as the most frequent types of faults, most frequent spare parts replaced, asset movement, maintenance performed et cetera. Also, the IoT features help in monitoring assets’ health and site condition in real time. TowerXchange: How does your solution help manage different stakeholders within the tower supply chain, from tenants to subcontractors?

FieldPower^® is one holistic solution to connect and collaborate among different stakeholders in the tower supply chain, where information flow is frictionless and instantaneous. Our multi-vendor solution brings transparency among different stakeholders while addressing security and privacy. The solution’s scalability and flexibility helps organisations cater to the changing business and operational demands of both tenants and subcontractors, while at the same time all stakeholders have clear visibility into their investments and returns.

TowerXchange: Please sum up how you would differentiate your solution from your competitors’?

Exceptional expertise in implementing digital transformation programmes for telecoms for the last twelve years is our key strength.  FieldPower® is an award winning, top rated field service management solution in the telecom world and is built to work on an eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map) framework with our scheduling engine being one of the best in the industry. 

FieldPower^® being a product driven solution, we take pride in our short implementation time compared to our competitors, which gives lot of time and cost advantage to our customers. Off-the-shelf capability with limited customisation and vast integration capability clearly is the biggest advantage that our solution has over its competition. Also, we are able to draw strength and apply our experiences in implementing various latest technologies such as Robotic Process Automation, Chatbots and other innovations for banks and other industries. Finally, with our global strategic presence, we are able to deliver and support customers in any part of the world with highest quality and cost effectiveness.