Proof of concept project for Portuguese telecommunication regulator.

Proof of concept project for Portuguese telecommunication regulator.

We have just finished proof of concept (POC) for Portuguese telecom company ANACOM. ANACOM is the regulator, supervisor and representative of the communications sector in Portugal.

Our Portuguese branch requested us to help them in preparing proof of concept to control communication and resource load in their automation system. Our main tool for controlling in this project was ARIS PPM. Our tasks were to analyze licensing processes, to check recourse load and to restore process chains from automation system in ARIS PPM. We got excel file with data upload from our colleagues and should to analyze it to provide the customer with POC solution in ARIS PPM. The excel file contained extracted data from automation system.

There are many users’ interacting in this system every day. Communication schemes have been built by flight. It was not easy and simple to build it.  There were a lot of execution scenarios classified by fifteen telecom license types. The communication structure looks like sunflower. Due to nondisclosure agreement participants have been depersonalized.  See Fig. 1

                                                  Fig 1. Participants’ activity analysis

The ARIS PPM had to find and restore different types of process-chains. It had to show departments, roles, personals load and analysis. In other words we got licensing processes chains from automation system and made actual data available for business analysis and control.

Process-chains restoring is necessary because customer is going to automate this process based on these chains using web-methods platform. They asked us to provide them with business process analysis to understand system from inside and to determine the most loaded steps of the process and recourses that has a very high load. One part of our work was communication and users’ functional activity analysis in order to find bottlenecks and to relief resource load. We needed 2 months and data excel file that has been extracted from customer information system to do this job. Using data file we got charts and process chains for every type of licensing. It allows the customer to develop requirements for process automation using web-methods platform.

We aggregated data as well as company level as departments and employs level. It made us eligible to see the whole picture of the processes load. It also allowed us to see the process chains with roles that carry out functions in the process.  

  We have analyzed and constructed interactive communication scheme from top to low execution level.  See Fig. 2.

                                                    Fig.2. Communication analysis

We managed to define who and how executes and delivers tasks in a business process. We answered on the questions about who are the initiator and the executor of a task. Where are communication bottlenecks? If initiator is delivering task to executor, it’s displayed in the process-chain as a document or task. We verified process chains to find breaks between tasks. The most loaded executors are been selected and analyzed. We visualized recourses load too.

There are the following unique characteristics of this project:

• ARIS PPM  is a pre-project analysis instrument;
• On-the-fly process chains recovery;
• Developing complicated communication schemes between organization units and roles in a system;

This experience is useful for the following projects: Processes audit in automation systems, business processes benchmarking, and communication analysis.