Infozech: Improving Profitability

The telecom tower industry has grown to keep pace with the ever increasing customer base of operators across the world. The absence of real-time tracking of passive infrastructure, including people, assets and energy, has created a demand for a comprehensive tower management tool.

TowerXchange: Why have many RMS deployments failed?

Globally customers have thought of Remote Monitoring Systems (RMS), as a magic wand to solve these tracking challenges, and have deployed them widely. However, the results have left a lot to be desired. In the worst cases, RMS has not even delivered consistent and complete data to the server room. In the best cases, it has delivered data that is too detailed to go beyond the server room. At times this data provides minute-to-minute data on performance in relation to operational parameters, and alarms on exceptions. This can be effective for day to day tracking of the equipment and site. However this data needs to be synchronised with other related data such as people, visits, fuel and grid supply, and viewed in a holistic manner to bring about financial gains. This is what iTower provides.

TowerXchange: How can we ensure this valuable data makes it from the server room to the CFO’s balance sheet?

In all the implementations we have seen in the last five years, the action-ability of the data left scope for improvement. And this is what we need to address. We not only capture and analyse the data but also ensure the actions are taken by field staff at site. It is also used for enhancing operational effectiveness.

Infozech brings in field expertise of implementing the “Discipline of Action” at over 150,000 tower sites over the last five years. We have experts who have brought about a change in Field Operations and Energy Management. The iTower suite is a complete offering which takes the data from the server room and translates it to actionability on a ground level. This enhances the bottom line of tower operators on their balance sheet.

TowerXchange: What are the change management implications of this increased level of visibility and accountability?

Infozech understands that there is no single magic wand that brings about sustainable change – it is a continuous journey of automation, higher rigor of field processes and an integrated analytics solution. Keeping this in view, it also provides a holistic picture to MNOs and towercos for a hybrid data collection, analysis and an action-ability path.

Infozech has been a leader in energy management and collects energy data worth US$830 million annually. While we believe RMS and other systems are an important and necessary part to build integrated intelligence, they are not sufficient to bring profitability.

TowerXchange: What does the iTower suite consist of?

iTower has nine core modules.

iROC (Infozech’s Remote Operating Centre): Maintaining 99.9% uptime of telecom towers plays a very important role in tower operations. iTower has a comprehensive module to remotely monitor the tower operations, called iROC. iROC provides an end-to-end solution, from data fetching, tracking, monitoring to controlling and reporting. With the help of iROC, tower operators can manage day-to-day activities from a remote location and control the critical events through real-time dashboards and reporting tools. iROC can integrate, aggregate and correlate different vendor alarms or data on a single platform.

iETS (Infozech’s Energy Tracking Service): The majority — about 30-40% — of running a tower’s operations is its energy costs. iETS helps passive infrastructure providers to get access to real-time information about electricity usage and the movement of fuel  Our iETS offering is closely supported by experts that train and encourage the field staff to adhere to the company’s rules of fuel supply and usage. Tower companies can further enhance their portfolio of carbon footprints with the help of iETS.

iAnalytics – Energy: Passive infrastructure providers can now address their specific questions and improve their operational performance by taking the right decisions enabled by online analytical processing. The data captured across various automated modes can be easily correlated and aggregated into the Infozech’s Analytics platform where is can be further processed for real-time action and delivery.

iBill (Infozech’s Billing module): To run a tower optimally, there are a high number of consumable items such as electricity, diesel and other elements. iTower has a module called  iBill to ensure that all the consumption related data can be integrated for reliable billing. iBill helps tower operators to automate their billing process by integrating all vendors/ telecom companies thereby reducing billing conflicts. Tower operators can easily access the power and fuel consumption data from a centralised location along with the recovery of energy usage.

iFIFO (Infozech’s Field Force): A critical part of managing the telecom tower operations is the field force. With iFIFO, tower operators can easily monitor, track and schedule the field force, site behavior, job-specific and routing data, which helps to improve field force and site operational efficiency.

iAsset (Infozech’s Asset Management): iAsset enables tower companies to understand the location and type of asset present at the site. With the integration of site assets into a master database, iAsset allows users to keep a check and audit the site. Asset movement activity can also be captured to keep a real-time tracking of assets. Health reports are generated to monitor the utilisation of remote assets.

iMaintain (Infozech’s Maintenance Management): iTower always keeps a check on maintenance activities happening on the site through. iMaintain helps operators to address the asset maintenance issues effectively and efficiently by scheduling different maintenance (Preventive/Corrective/Predictive) activities and resolving critical events through the incidence and theft management feature.

iAccess (Infozech’s Access Management): Infozech’s belief in providing secure solutions for this industry has resulted in the development of the iAccess module. iAccess provides a platform for tower operators to securely access their sites and monitor the site accessibility as well as the performance of guards and field personnel. This contributes to enhancing the life of different equipments located at the tower sites.

iAnalytics – Battery: helps in improving performance and life of a battery through continuous tracking, monitoring and control. It includes reporting and analysing various battery parameters which are crucial for the functioning of a battery.

TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up the role of Infozech in improving the profitability of the international tower industry.

Infozech has played a major role in developing products and applications that are helping to shape the Indian and international tower industry. The industry faces huge challenges such as inefficient tracking of assets and resources, unavailability of relevant and integrated data, and inability to make sense of the data coming in to make the right business decisions. iTower addresses all these challenges with its suite of products thus helping tower operators find the right ways to improve their bottom lines.

Infozech can be found at booth 21 at the TowerXchange Meetup Africa, taking place on October 20 and 21 in Johannesburg. For more details, click here.