How to solve the
automation puzzle

In February 2021, Nokia and STL Partners surveyed 100 CSP executives and found cost control, customer experience enhancement and service innovation were the top drivers of automation efforts. External pressure from hyper-scalers, data center providers and device and application makers are other key factors, according to Chris Lewis of Lewis Insight.

“These external parties are demanding the network be simplified. They’re demanding fixed and mobile broadband along with responsive services, and they want those services deployed in a much shorter timeframe than in the past,” Lewis says. “Automation will change the way services are created, delivered, managed... pretty much the whole business. It’s fundamentally different from the way we've run telcos in the past.”

CSPs’ own shifting ambitions are also making automation increasingly critical. In the Nokia–STL survey, 71 percent of respondents said they aspire to move “beyond connectivity” aiming to offer services that build on value-add platforms and applications. That inherently requires business, network and service automation.

Most CSPs still operate with a mix of automated and manual processes. About 40 percent of survey respondents said they have some degree of “intra-process” automation (automation within a single domain), while few have achieved “inter-process” automation across network and service domains or business units. This more sophisticated kind of automation is exactly what’s needed to bring disparate systems together in a seamless end-to-end whole.

Nokia reached out to a diverse panel of industry experts for their take on what CSPs could do to make solving the automation puzzle easier. While each brought a unique perspective, the experts agreed four principles are key: having the right mindset, knowing why you’re doing it, being patient as you work incrementally, and embracing openness.
 

Principle 1: Change your mindset

“Everybody immediately thinks automation is a technology problem,” says George Glass, Chief Technology Officer at TM Forum. “But it's actually a deep cultural issue. It's a people issue. It's a skills issue. You're basically moving people into other people's territory, bringing disruptive thinking, asking people to disrupt themselves. A transformation like this is 90 percent people and culture and 10 percent technology.”

Chris Lewis agrees. “The culture change cannot be overstated. It's a massive change to get the IT department to work more closely with the network department to work with the lines of business, to the product, people and so on.”

Because automation demands a culture shift, CSPs need a plan to go about it — not just a technology roadmap, but also a clear people roadmap for automation and AI.
 

The kind of out-of-the-box, innovative thinking needed to execute a comprehensive automation strategy will emerge only if a CSP has the right organizational culture to generate it. Shifting the culture is necessary but by no means simple. It demands forethought, dedicated effort and careful management.

“Leadership is an extremely important part of making this transformation,” says TL Viswanathan, Head of Digital Operations at Nokia. “It all starts there. After all, it’s the leaders who decide, ‘Why are we doing this?’”
 

Principle 2: Know your ‘why’

One of the most important items to get clear on is the business purpose of automation, Viswanathan says. “It's not about what you can automate. It’s about why you should automate it. It’s about the benefits it will bring.” To yield the most meaningful benefits, whichever use cases are chosen, they should be value-driven.

Yet, as the Nokia–STL survey results show, the ‘whys’ of automation are still largely tactical, with some variation by region: cut costs, speed up time to market, manage complexity and launch new services that can’t run without automation. That’s something CSPs should look to change, Chris Lewis says.

“Yes, we have to automate the network, but we also have to automate all the pieces that fit around the network to deliver the service that, ultimately, customers will pay for. I think we've been too obsessed with the underlying technology rather than the service that’s being delivered or the economic value being created.”

The ability to focus on value creation requires a clear automation strategy and a formalized process to keep goals in view. Neither is especially common, despite CSPs’ own impressions of the approaches they’re taking. One finding from the Nokia–STL research is that while 40 percent of CSPs say they have an automation strategy, only one in five systematically tracks key performance indicators (KPIs).

Closing that apparent gap between strategic intent and implementation would not only help CSPs measure their progress but also structure their automation ambitions in achievable chunks and avoid taking on too much at once. The experts on the panel generally agreed that it’s a good idea to start small and focused and scale from there.