Where is my Order -1 ?

Part - 1 - Abstraction is the foundational step

The person seeking an answer could be anyone: you, frustrated by the long wait for high-speed internet at home or the office; your network team, perplexed by unpredictable delays in getting MPLS connectivity; a Telco COO facing an embarrassing escalation from an irate customer; or a customer service representative on the phone trying to appease someone. Regardless of who’s looking, most Telco ecosystems lack a single platform or solution to provide a definitive answer.

The spaghetti of IT applications, business processes, products, and business segments makes answering a seemingly trivial question incredibly difficult for most telecom companies. While it’s easy to play the blame game, here’s a possible solution to the “Where is my order?” dilemma, using a four-step process:

1. Abstraction
2. Aggregation
3. Contextualisation
4. Realisation

Abstraction

This solution starts with the concept of a “Line,” which we’ll call a “Trail.” A trail has a defined start, stop, and distance between those points. We break down the order’s journey, whether through systems or services, into distinct trails. Each trail has a threshold representing the time it takes for an order to move from reception to completion within a system or a logical milestone.

This is easier said than done. To understand further, let’s look at how a customer-facing…