How Workflow Supports Innovation in Telecommunication

Highly functioning workflow automation breaks down information silos, improves communication between departments and enables greater innovation in telecommunication.

The telecommunication industry is a very interesting example when it comes to the role of digital technology and its growth over the last decade. This is because the industry has been vital to the digital evolution of almost every other sector, public and private, in the world.

Being a conduit for other industries’ digital transformation, it might seem strange to say innovation in telecommunication companies has been relatively slow. Perhaps it should be rephrased that innovation in this industry can never be fast enough. For a sector that exists to provide connectivity to others, it’s important that industry players keep up with the latest innovations themselves.

Along with the challenges faced by individual companies and their processes, there are also industry-wide challenges that must be dealt with. The telecommunications industry faces several disruptive forces that will drive change:

• IoT explosion, data and traffic – The number of smart devices that will be connected across networks is going to continue to rise significantly over the next few years
• The growth of mobility – Telecoms companies will need to accommodate the rising demand for mobile services privately and professionally
• A saturated market – When everything is digital, where to next?
• Security – Networks will be expected to protect customers from more and more advanced threats

It’s an exciting time for telecommunications companies and their customers. But what about employees at these organizations?

The nature of the telecoms industry is such that as companies tend to be large multinationals they need the opportunities presented by digital technology internally as well as when dealing with their customers. This is where workflow automation comes in.

Workflow Innovation in Telecommunication Companies

Workflow automation aims to boost the efficiency of organizational processes (both internal and external) by automatically carrying out repetitive tasks and freeing your employees for work of a higher value. For telecommunication companies, this means greater connection between multiple areas of your business.

The opportunities that workflow automation presents for the industry are also real and achievable:

• Automation of internal and external processes
• Data-driven decision-making
• Sophisticated customer-facing apps that produce data and enable better customer experiences

 

How information is communicated in telecommunications companies can be stalled by manual processes that haven’t been evolved to keep up with the times. Across departments such as HR, IT, marketing, sales, finance, etc., users need the right solutions to speed up processes, reduce error, and aid collaboration.

Telecommunications companies are often large organizations relying on the abilities of thousands of employees across departments, so if processes are not as efficient as they could be there is potential for:

• Information silos
• Long delays
• Inefficient use of resources
• Reduced employee engagement
• Reduced productivity
• Negative impact on the bottom line

With the explosion of network coverage and an “always connected” world, the volume of data being created and harvested has exponentially increased for companies across entire industries, and this includes telecommunications. Alongside this is the expectation of a more personalized customer experience—from automated texts or emails thanking customers for paying their latest bill, automatic generation of digital receipts to automated emails to update them on the progress of specific services like the installation of satellite television, or personalized customer feedback surveys.

Internally, sophisticated workflow automation technology can transform the employee digital experience by:

• Streamlining portals (i.e. providing single sign-on functionality)
• Standardizing workflows
• Replacing manual, paper-based processes

As well as developing better internal processes, organizations can use automated workflows to aid productivity and efficiency in interactions with their customers or clients.

For example:

In the case of a telecom company, a salesperson in-store or over the phone logs a new customer contract onto the system, triggering a workflow to send out an installation person to that customer’s house, which triggers a customer care manager to chat to the customer and see how the installation service is going.

Nintex Helps Innovate Your Processes

The technology to deal with these new expectations is powerful and adaptable workflow solutions. For example, Nintex Workflow Cloud is an adaptable and intelligent automated workflow solution that brings automation, process analytics and mobile technology together to optimize processes and extend workflows much further.

For example:

A customer calls their telecom company to flag a problem with their internet/phone service. This automatically triggers a work ticket for a member of the IT team who investigates the issue from the office and, if it is unresolved, the ticket passes automatically to the technician who goes and inspects the box/signal on-site.

From there, the technician can use a Nintex Form to send a report which travels straight to a specialist who arrives with a specific tool and together they fix the signal issue. This means the issue potentially gets resolved in a matter of hours rather than taking days or weeks.

Nintex Workflows provides a telecom organization with web-based, mobile-integrated workflow automation to enable better management of customer requests and issues like the example above, or even a large-scale network rollout like this one.

Employees have access to:

• Single sign-on across their multiple devices – mobile, tablet and desktop
• Task management capabilities – to see who is doing what
• Progress tracking – using real-time data to see what work still needs to be done and to solve or even preempt rollout issues

Along with automatic notifications as phases are completed or still waiting to be completed, Nintex enables better communication across sites and stakeholders and acts as a project history for audit purposes.

When it comes to automating workflows across your departments, Nintex is a quick to deploy, easy to use and a cost-effective solution. To see first-hand how workflow automation can improve the internal processes of your organization no matter what your industry or the platform you use, get started with a free trial now.

 

To find out more about Nintex and how we can help your business, get in touch with us today and request a demo.