Analysis SIM Card Provisioning Process at Telecommunication Operator using Balance Scorecard

Analysis SIM Card Provisioning Process at Telecommunication Operator using Balance Scorecard

Dhanny Permatasari Putri

Department of Electrical Engineering Faculty of Engineering, Mercu Buana University

Jakarta – Indonesia

Abstract SIM card provisioning is a process to activate SIM card network and services before it is use by customers. This research is about to analyze the management of provisioning process and the performance improvement between the manual process and the automation process in a business unit at a telecommunication operator which is SIM card activation in provisioning unit/department. The important element to measure the management process in an organization is the performance evaluation of business process inside the organization itself. Although measuring and managing performance constitutes a difficult task in any kind of organization, but the clearly defined of business process, goals and stakeholders can guide to a better company policy. And to measure of performance evaluation system also can enable stakeholders to assess their decision for company improvement in the future. This study contributes to the literature of business process in provisioning and balanced scorecard of an organization.

Keywords SIM Card, Provisioning Process, Activation Process, Business Process Management, Balance Scorecard

1. INTRODUCTION

   The rapid development of telecommunication technology has deep impact to services and applications delivered by telecom operator. The development of smart phones, tablets or notebook, is a trigger to the increasing of customer number for Telecom Operator Company. Telecommunication industry has presented new possibilities to exploit technologies, products and process to support strategies for increasing their revenue. Telecom operator as part of the telecommunication industry also takes this opportunity by increasing the number of customers and increasing income from the usage of their variety service products, -for using mobile telecommunication services or broadband services by the customers.

   Almost 95% Indonesian mobile subscribers use Pre-paid card for their mobile telecommunication services. And with the increasing of number population, especially in Indonesia which now listed as the fourth rank of most populated country in the world. The people behavior itself now a day has more than one mobile devices/gadget (most people now for instance has more than one smart phone or also has tablet) and the behavior to spend more time accessing internet via mobile in

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   their gadget, leads telecommunication operator has to fulfill the demand of the prepaid SIM card in the market.

   To fulfill the demand of SIM card numbers for the customers, SIM cards has to be provisioned before it distributes to customers, – which called provisioning process. Because a process can play a crucial role in business process performance, so the new ways of using good process in provisioning is the reason why SIM Card process is so important to be analyzed.

   This paper therefore proposes the use of balanced scorecard (BSC) strategy to develop a framework to be used to enhance the business process improvement perspective of an organization. The study is informed by a case study of a business unit of SIM card provisioning at telecommunication operator in Indonesia. The paper contributes to the literature of mitigation of improvement of organizations business process. Also the developed financial framework is expected to be used to improve their service delivery. Such effective usage will lead to business excellence as to attract and retain stakeholders.

   1. Research Questions

      From the results of exposure in background above, can be drawn issues of the following main research question namely:

      • How to make improvement in a business process of SIM card activation with the large number of new SIM card requests (with MSISDN inside)?

   2. Constraints and Scope of Work

   • The scope of this thesis research is related to the business process of Pre Paid SIM Card provisioning in GSM Telecommunication Operator in Indonesia.

   • For evaluation and data analysis methodology in this research is using Balanced Scorecard.

   • The Balance Scorecard focus in the part of the internal business improvement quadrant.

     How to measure improvement is not only about the way activities are performed, but it can also provide additional insights whenever performance information is projected into useful information for the company, management or for

     enhancement of the process itself. And therefore the research study is done.

2. RELATED WORK

   Former research about business process modeling was research by Tianyang Dong, Hongming Cai and Boyi Xu, A Business Process Modeling Approach Based on Semantic Event-driven Process Chains[8], in 2010 using BPEL mapping.

   Then in 2011 a research by Ljubica KAZI, et al about "Balance Scorecard (BSC) Framework in Software Project Monitoring"[7], explain about BSC can be as concept as performance measurement system in the field of IT.

   And a recent study in 2013 from Kudo, M.; et al from IBM Researcher, about "Business Process Analysis and Real-world Application Scenarios[6], explain about business process analyst architecture with the three effective scenarios which are business process improvement, system usability improvement and organization improvement.

   Base on related work of the previous researches and other reading materials, that leads the author to have research in business process improvement in one of business unit in a telecommunication company which is provisioning process in SIM card activation. And this research study suggested hypotheses to test the influence of automation system as parameters to the business process improvement perspective of an organization. These hypotheses are;

   • With the automation process in provisioning process should optimize the business process.

   • Automation process can handle a large number request of Pre Paid SIM card provisioning from Regional User (Sales) team than with the manual process.

3. DATA AND THEORY

   1. Balanced Scorecard

      The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is an analytical framework used for strategic planning and management within an organization. It ensures congruency between business activities and the organizations objectives, vision and strategic goals.

      Fig. 1. Balanced Scorecard Framework

      *Adapted from Kaplan & Northon 1996

      BSC has four quadrants that help in realizing organizations perspective in financial, internal business process, customer, learning and growth. And organizations will be putting in place instruments for checking and balances to improve its performance.

   2. Business Process Management

      Business Process Management (BPM) is the discipline that combines knowledge from information technology and knowledge from management sciences and applies it into operational business processes to get continuously process improvement to get more effectiveness and efficiency in business perspective.

      The BPM life cycle can be drawn as figure bellow;

      Fig. 2. BPM life cycle

      *Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management

      Business process can be illustrated with flowchart, activity diagram and sequence diagram. And in this paper, the author uses some of the diagrams to illustrate the process.

      Flowchart is a type of digram that represents an algorithm or process in designing and documenting complex processes or programs. The diagram usually illustrates the solution of problem. Flowchart is easier to understand by non programmer.

      A sequence diagram is a diagram that shows objects interaction in time sequence of how the processes operate with one another and in what order also construct of a message sequence chart.

      Activity diagrams are graphical representations of workflows activities and actions for choice, iteration and concurrency.

      BPM technology is now considered as solutions to deliver real-time of a actionable information. Information can be collected in a variety of ways and can be made using real-time dashboards. It also can be implemented in a software packages in to a modeling that also a simulation. It is an approach that bridges organizational and technological in a package.

   3. SIM Card Activation in Provisioning Process

   In telecommunication, provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide (new) services to its users. It is a process to activate SIM card network and services before it is use by customers.

   In provisioning some process has to complete due to the activation process such as authentication in Network Element (NE), IN/Online Charging System (OCS) and other system related to the operator. There are two categories in activating SIM card, from new numbers usually called activation process and from recycled numbers usually called deletion process.

   Fig. 3. Business Process SIM Card in Telecommunication

4. METHODOLOGY

   This research is directed to the analysis of the performance of a company Business Process in handling the provisioning process of pre paid SIM Card activation in telecommunication operator using a variety of perspectives in the Balance Scorecard (BSC) method with inserting Business Process Management as the step to define the internal business process part.

   To get expected result in this research for evaluation and data analysis, the author uses flowchart diagram for activities taken in this research study as describes in the figure below;

   Fig. 4. Research Methodology Flowchart

5. RESULT AND ANALYSIS

   Research results obtained from the implementation of steps taken to validate the method are;

   1. Step 1 – Data/ Information collection

      The results of determine the process, scope, problem, purpose and also the identification of vision in step and procedure at provisioning process, summarize below;

      1. Element in Provisioning Process System:

         • Database; for handling cards life cycle. (A)

         • Mass Provisioning process (B)

         • The HLRs store detail of every SIM card issued by the mobile phone operator. Each SIM has a unique identifier called an IMSI which is primary key to each HLR record. (C)

         • OCS/IN is Online Charging System (D)

         • SPR is Subscription Profile Repository; a caching database, which also represent all data in HLR. (E)

         • ARS is Automatic Route Selection/Selector; a data base system that handles system of Customer Relation Manager, that related to MSISDN and IMSI mapping. (F)

           Fig. 5. Element in provisioning

      2. The main functional element that important in provisioning process to be passed in cards activation such as:

         • Product ID Expire Date

         • MSISDN CST

         • IMSI A4G

         • ICCID GPRS

         • Provider ID

         • A4KI

      3. In the provisioning process of SIM card activation also has to include process like:

         • Validation

         • Check routing configuration

         • Prepare data and command

   2. Step 2- Design and Modeling

      After identification of Scope and System Requirements the next step is to visualize the process in a diagram as the design and model of the business process flow requirement (-based on Step 1 point 1);

      Fig. 6. Provisioning Process-Activation in Sequence Diagram

      Fig. 7. Provisioning Process-Auto Deletion in Sequence Diagram

      Fig. 8. HLR Batch Process in Provisioning in Global in Activity Diagrem

   3. Step 3 Execution

      Based on the requirements of the user story, it determines that the technology to be used is web service application as the improvement of the business process in SIM card provisioning.

      Fig. 9. Provisioning Process in SIM Card Activation – Flow before Automation & Flow with Automation process

      And in this research author uses Bizagi simulation as the software to simulate the provisioning process. The result of the simulation can be seen in the figure below.

      Fig. 10. Process using BizAgi simulation

      Fig. 11. Process using BizAgi simulation (2) Result

   4. Step 4 – Monitoring & Optimization

      Provisioning process of SIM card activation in manual; the flow was still use facsimile to request for activation of SIM Card before it sell to the dealer and the amount of data is not so much (around hundred thousand). Usually the Regional Sales send facsimile of Nota Dinas to Mass Provisioning team (see Figure 3 and Figure 9, for the process flow).

      TABLE I. DATA TRANSACTION SUMMARY (MANUAL PROCESS) IN A

      YEAR

      After the Provisioning process become automation (it also called Mass provisioning), the process now is using web services application which also an integrated system. The Mass Provisioning system is now integrate with other system such as HLR, OCS and others, and the number of the data transaction summary of SIM card activation now is increasing.

      TABLE II. DATA TRANSACTION SUMMARY (AUTOMATION PROCESS) IN A

      YEAR

   5. Step 5 – Analyze

      1. Concepts of Provisioning Business Process with BSC

         Aligning business process in Provisioning with BSC, by choosing Strategic Measures for the Four Perspective quadrants of BSC explain in a table matrix bellow;

         TABLE III. MATRIX BSC, STRATEGIES & MEASUREMENT

      2. Data Analysis

         TABLE IV. AVERAGE TRANSACTION AND REQUEST IN MANUAL PROCESS

         • Based on data operator

           TABLE V. AVERAGE TRANSACTION AND REQUEST IN AUTOMATION PROCESS

         • Based on data operator

           TABLE VI. COMPARISON THE NUMBER OF CUSTOMER

           * Based on data annual report operator

           TABLE VII. QUALITIES THAT IS COMPARABLE IN A TABLE

           TABLE VIII. ANALYSIS EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS IN PROVISIONING PROCESS IN SIMULATION

           TABLE IX. ANALYSIS IMPROVEMENT IN PROVISIONING PROCESS IN

           SIMULATION

           TABLE X. RESULT AND ANALYSIS

      3. Result

   • The implementation of process automation in the line process of SIM Card activation can improve the effectiveness of 71.43% compared to the manual process.

   • The effectiveness implementation can be seen from the reduction in the number of employees that can reduce the financial cost of the department, in terms of the employee cost and the employee does not have to work overtime to meet the demand of SIM card activation.

   • Quality improvement can be seen from the result of increasing number of data from successful activation per day in automation system compared to the manual system (Table I and Table II). In a month average transaction, it increases 99 times in number or 9963.16

   %, from average 242303.42 in manual, to 24141077.92 in automation.

6. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION The aim of this study is to analyze how the BSC can be

adapted to a telecommunication company as a measurement in improvement process. It proof that, this research uses BSC to measure the improvement. But to get the result of measurement, the organization must explicitly state how it is going to accomplish its objectives by identifying the chain of cause-effect relationships whichoutline the way that strategic objectives are attained as well as how they intend to implement the strategy.

The diagrams, model, tables, matrix and simulation was used as a strategic control tool as a way to transmit strategic objectives through strategic measures and goals to the whole organization, in order to develop a way to check their implementation by means of a comparative evaluation of objectives with results. Also as a modeling approach based on the extension of process chains for modeling that describes web services and the interaction between service providers in application system.

For recommendation with this research is that the management in any organization is expected to support the program analysis in business process improvement, although initially there will be extra cost for consultant and the development of the system in the beginning of the project, but for the future step is expected to have improvement of business process itself, improvement of system usability and the improvement of organization beside it also can reduce business unit cost and improvement in efficiency and effectiveness for the company.

Further research could investigate whether this implementation produced the desired effects in the long run despite the identified defect or weakness in the system.

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