Prevent and minimize telecom outages – Your essential temforce Guide

Blog two in a series of three – How can you prevent and minimise outages?

We all know that outages are bad for business, so preventing and minimising outages should be a top priority for any business that relies on telecoms.

Too many companies seem to accept the occasional outage as a fact of life, but by keeping stock of your inventory, following clever procurement processes, creating iron clad contracts and carrying out regular supplier relationship reviews, any corporation – large or small – can both reduce the likelihood of an outage, and just as importantly, minimise the impact of any outage that does subsequently occur.

Think ahead

It’s never too soon to think about outage prevention. When you are setting up a new network or benchmarking your existing suppliers, simply make sure that outage management is one of the items at the top of your agenda.

Keep proper records from day one, so that you can create a historic log of every circuit used and every partial outage or complete outage which occurs.

These records will help you to identify systemic trends and weaknesses, so you can learn from the mistakes of the past and prevent similar outages from happening again in the future. Only by knowing what has happened, when it’s happened and how, can you then effectively work with your vendors on outage prevention.

Know your circuits

It should go without saying that any company should have a full and detailed understanding of every circuit connection within the business. That means knowing every circuit ID from every supplier and also how they relate to one another if you have built up your own network.

Bear in mind that you will have your own internal circuits, which will then be connected to outside lines via one or more different suppliers. In a large company, you could be talking about hundreds (or even thousands) of different circuits, so when an outage occurs it can take a lot of time and effort to identify the source and cause of the problem.

By keeping a record of every circuit ID, you will know exactly who to speak to in the event of an outage, and they should then be able to fix the problem much sooner. This will speed up the process by which an outage is actually managed considerably.

It is also worth making a note of the most valued business critical circuit connections within your company – the ones that, if and when they to go down, would have an immediate knock-on effect on your business. Keep a closer eye on these circuits and consider taking extra precautions with them.

Keep track of your operations

In the world of telecoms, many problems can be avoided by good inventory management – outages included. By installing a professional TEM solution, you can keep track of every circuit from point of its original origin (i.e. the original request, routing diagram, order form, contract and Service Level Agreement), supplier and past outages in one place, making it easier to manage, minimise and even prevent outages over time.

Know the impact of an outage

Any outage will cost your company money and damage your reputation, but the actual cost can vary from company to company. Work out the immediate and long-term effect that a partial and/or complete outage will have on your business. Firstly this will tell you whether outage management should be a top priority or a medium priority, so you can choose your suppliers accordingly. Secondly, consider building diversity and backup connectivity in the event the primary circuit goes down.

For instance, if you are a trading house in the financial sector, you will want to make outage prevention an absolute priority, as one missed trade could potentially cost your business millions.

You may find that ordering services from off-net providers impacts their overall “Time to Repair” SLA, and that “On-Net” suppliers can offer an improved “Time to Repair” as they own the facilities and will be able to dispatch their staff in a timely manner.

Vet your suppliers

This too should go without saying, but when you are conducting your due diligence on your suppliers, make sure that you investigate their own outage management procedures. What is the average downtime per year/month/day? What systems do they have in place to manage an outage?

It may be worth adding an outage clause to your contract, and building strong relationships between your company and your key suppliers. Even in the tech-heavy telco industry, there is no substitute for a good human relationship. Your next costly outage could be prevented or minimized by a simple phone call to the right person.

Temforce is a provider of Telecom Category Management SaaS enabling teams to boost their Telecom Management!