How to create a Telecom Inventory

Information Gathering

Most organizations have some form of this information spread across many different teams and sources.

For example, the procurement team captures commercial information perhaps in emails or in Excel which contain vendor quotes, or within an internal contract database. The service delivery teams have a summary of the network assets captured and stored in an access database, spreadsheets, or project docs. The NOC team has a wide arsenal of tools which are tracking the network uptime and overall performance of the network which, fingers crossed, have all been mapped correctly such that when there is an outage John can troubleshoot the network and bring services back into production.

For example, the minute you lose that connection that your board, which includes your CIO, was using for a boardroom video and the NOC is struggling to identify the Service ID to raise an outage, that is when you know it is about to hit the fan.

It is usually now when your CIO picks up the phone to the head of the NOC and says fix it so this never happens again. Or when your CFO is in a meeting with the head of IT finance and your cost has just spiked $3M from last month, and the head of finance has a song and dance about why these costs were not forecasted or accrued for last month.

A lot of the problems that arise because of bad or lack of inventory management can be solved with good practices or rules around how and what information will be captured associated with your business’s inventory.

Establishing a Solid Inventory

One of the keys to establishing a solid inventory is to start with how an inventory element is generated and to identify the teams involved in this process.

Your business demand, Moves, Adds, Changes, Disconnects, also known as MACD, IT projects associated with opening a new office, replacing equipment, connecting to a third party manufacturing plant, and similar activities are all part of this process. Whether you have one individual responsible for this process or a team, put some controls in place and perhaps even policies around this process.

Develop an agreed approved workflow. For example, for product X, engineering must design and approve the solution, procurement must go to market and raise quotes or add pricing from the contract, finance must either be notified or approve the request prior to ordering, and Jenny from service delivery is responsible for configuring the network or delivering the iPhone to the end user.

This might sound like a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy or red tape, but getting everyone on the same page upfront saves a lot of headache later. As various Service Types, including Data, Voice, Mobile, and Trader Line, are ordered, think through what information is important to capture and ensure the must-have fields are completed, and not just with 1234 or abcd to fill in the blanks.

The data quality you capture up front will make or break your inventory repository later.

Do not be afraid to push back. Holding yourself and other people accountable for providing complete and accurate information is what is important.

A defined process or policy quickly identifies where the process worked or is broken, such that the next time your boardroom video is down or your finance head is meeting with the CFO, the team will either be on their A game because all the information they require is at their fingertips, or can go back and review the workflow and identify that Tom entered 123 as the service ID and now there is some explaining to do.

Bad inventory or lack of an updated inventory is the stuff that should not keep you up at night wondering what kit is end of life and about to fail next, whether your month-end process is going to go smoothly because your team has reconciled the invoices correctly and they are okay to be paid, or whether your CPO has just challenged your team to bring down telecom cost by 25% yet you do not know what telecom services you have, who they are with, what services are up for renewal, or whether your costs are in line with the market.

The Essential Inventory Management List

We have included a list of a few key areas to capture across your inventory as some food for thought to consider as you build up your inventory, whether it be in a solution like Temforce which automates this entire process, or in a bespoke solution rigged together with hopes and dreams it is correct.

Capturing information is key for:

• Ensuring the order is accepted by carrier
• Asset End Of Life identification
• Financial forecasting purposes
• Outage purposes
• Understanding what cost center to allocate the cost to internally

What to Inventory and track

• Service ID’s, including circuit ID and phone number, both the internal and carrier reference
• Equipment SLA
• Internal approval, including who signed off on the design or spend
• Carrier routing diagrams
• Install start and end dates
• Carrier quotes, which can be leveraged for benchmarking your cost
• Internal project codes
• Location A and B
• Copies of order forms
• Parent child relationships
• Carrier account information
• Demarc, including where the service is physically installed, room, floor jack, and similar details
• Router name
• IP address information
• MPLS QOS profile
• Capacity and bandwidth
• Purpose, such as boardroom video, elevator, or modem
• Local loop provider
• ASN
• Physical interface
• Cross connect information
• Site contact information
• Financial cost centers and G/L codes

Cost

Cost should be broken down by components, such as access, port, QOS, router, local loop, device, plan, usage, VOIP channel, and voice CPM.

Mobile type

• Provider
• Plan
• Device Type
• SIM
• EIM
• ESN
• PUK Code
• Phone number
• Usage