(work in progress)

Auto-provisioning

One of the core benefits of using Panther Admin is the capability to manage all aspects of customer service for “typical” customers systematized and automatically. Broadband providers usually make use of several different competences for simple tasks involving getting new customers into their business using procedures that takes time and generate costs. With Panther Admin we try to limit costs on competences to only be used in the planning phase.

An examples of competences is when taking care of new broadband orders. A typical order means setting up the technical infrastructure of the customer, sending out equipment, start the billing cycles etc. When the customers are in the system, new tasks can be upgrading subscriptions, downgrading, close subscriptions because of unpaid invoices etc.

Since broadband providers gain very little value from each subscriber, auto-provisioning is a must. It is very important that all tasks related to normal customer behaviour is automated and that is for several reasons; first reason is to make the customer have a good service, by not having to wait in a long queue waiting for a free employee, second of all to limit the costs of services for having people employed to do these tasks.

With Panther Admin customers can buy subscriptions, have their services provisioned, upgrade their subscriptions or downgrade them, or even have their subscriptions closed if invoices are due, and opened up again automatically when due invoices are paid!

Panther Admin supports several different infrastructures like Switch based Ethernet networks, DSL DSLAM based networks and Cable based CMTS networks. The platform even support networks with mixes of all the kinds of networks mentioned.

Network provisioning can be done in so many different ways and there are arguments to do it for each of them. Panther Admin supports “most” of these setups, but to keep this manual simple, we base the manual on a fairly simple setup that can be used on networks up to a couple of thousand switches.

SWITCHED ETHERNET network

This first example is typically used in European city networks where apartments are pre-wired. The philosophy is to have wired as many apartments as possible, and let the potential customers use the plugs. When potential customer plugs-in their computer, they will be meeting a shop where they buy the internet subscription directly and are online on the internet, with their subscription within 2 minutes. Without a subscription the potential customer will be denied access to the internet.

Doing it this way makes it very attractive for the potential customer to subscribe. The customer will feel the service as really good, and there will in most cases be no customer support involved at all. New customers subscribe into the system, with no work done related to the customer.

To be able to do fully automated provisioning like the example above, the system needs to be configured with products, self-service portal and the network switches pre-defined.