Incident Management at Orange

Managing a two-tier support structure…

Front-line call centre representatives at Orange Romania’s SMC handle incoming customer queries for internet and TV service faults. They have to perform initial troubleshooting and diagnostics tests and, where those don’t fix the problem, raise tickets for the SMC Engineering team.

SMC Engineers respond to those tickets as part of their much wider range of responsibilities. They also have to maintain the network – ensuring up-to-date software configurations, and configuring and patching devices – and also act as subject matter experts for new project planning. All of these competing roles have to be managed and prioritised appropriately.

Making light work of diagnostics…

Automation was deployed by Orange Romania to reduce the Level 1 manual troubleshooting workload. CORTEX software now interfaces with the core network equipment and network management systems to streamline the initial diagnostic processes. It can perform a far more exhaustive array of checks, at machine speed, than the call centre workers were able to.

That’s removed a great deal of obsolete manual effort and transformed overall efficiency. Crucially, it’s also led to the number of problems resolved on the first call rising to 80%.

Managing precious engineering resources more effectively…

CORTEX is now also being used to manage how tickets are passed to SMC Engineers, and how their time should be prioritised. Its workflow capabilities automate the flow of tickets from the first-line team, and then can assign them as specific customer-centric jobs for engineers, or as part of a wider technical issue at Orange Romania.

Those support tasks are also now being prioritised more appropriately within the engineering team’s wider range of responsibilities. That holistic view has helped the SMC Engineering team become far more effective, with a far stronger perspective on its overall workload and key priorities. In turn, that’s enabled it to focus on higher job functions and become far more strategic in its service to the business.

Making iterative improvements…

Orange Romania has been on a continuous improvement cycle since applying CORTEX software to its incident management in 2021. Moving forward, they are planning on extending the capabilities to Level 2 operations, increasing the maturity of their autonomous operations.