Analysis Provisioning Process in SIM Card Activation at Telecommunication Operator using BPM and Balance Scorecard

Abstract

In telecommunication, provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide (new) services to its users, which the functionality and the most important concepts of business process in SIM Card provisioning is a process to activate the SIM Card network and services before it is used by customers. This research is about to analyze the provisioning process between the manual process and the automation process. The important element to measure the management process is performance evaluation. 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 for company improvement in the future. This study contributes to the literature of business process in provisioning, business process management and balanced scorecard of an organization.

Full text

Analysis Provisioning Process in SIM Card Activation at
Telecommunication Operator using BPM and Balance Scorecard
Dhanny Permatasari Putri, Rizal Broer Bahawares, Mudrik Alaydrus 1)
1) Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Mercu Buana University Jakarta
Indonesia; email: dhannypermata@yahoo.com, rizalbroer@ieee.org, mudrikalaydrus@yahoo.com
Abstract - In telecommunication, provisioning is
the process of preparing and equipping a network to
allow it to provide (new) services to its users, which
the functionality and the most important concepts of
business process in SIM Card provisioning is a
process to activate the SIM Card network and services
before it is used by customers. This research is about
to analyze the provisioning process between the
manual process and the automation
process. The
important element to measure the management
process is performance evaluation. 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 for company
improvement in the future.
This study contributes to
the literature of business process in provisioning,
business process management and balanced
scorecard of an organization.
Keywords:
SIM card, Provisioning Process, Business
Process Analyst, Business Process Management,
Balance Scorecard.
1.
INTRODUCTION
The rapid development of telecommunication
technology has deep impact to services and
applications delivered by telecom operator; like the
development of smart phones, tablets or notebook, this
is one of a trigger the increasing of customer number
for telecom operator. Telecommunication industry has
presented new possibilities to exploit technologies,
products and process to support strategies for increase
their revenue. Telecom operator as part of the
telecommunication industry also takes this opportunity
to increase their revenue by increasing the number of
customers and also increase income from the use of
their service products, -for using mobile
telecommunication services or broadband services by
the customers.
Almost 95% Indonesian population use mobile gadget
subscribes for the Pre paid card for mobile
telecommunication services with the people behavior in
now a day which has more than one mobile
devices/gadget and also the behavior to spend more
time accessing internet via mobile in their gadget,
makes 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 Business
Process Management and 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.
1.1. 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)?
Can provisioning process performance in
provisioning process be measured by Balance
Scorecard in part of Internal Business Process
quadrant?
1.2. 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.
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.
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 WORKS
Former research about business process modeling was
research by MM Avarzaman & A Salahi, a journal in
2009, “The Increasing Performance of Authentication
in UMTS” is about the authentication and key
agreement function to identify and a mobile station
and validates the service request type. It also
explained about proposed signaling message flow for
authentications which improve performance which
reduce the authentication time, set up and data size
and then from Tianyang Dong, Hongming Cai and
Boyi Xu, “A Business Process Modeling Approach
Based on Semantic Event-driven Process Chains”, in
2010 using BPEL mapping.
Then in 2011 a research by Ljubica KAZI, et al about
"Balance Scorecard (BSC) Framework in Software
Project Monitoring", explain about BSC can be as
concept as performance measurement system in the
field of IT.
And a recent study from Kudo, M.; et al from IBM
Researcher, the research was, "Business Process
Analysis and Real-world Application Scenarios” that
lead the author to have research in business process
improvement in one of business unit in a
telecommunication company.
Base on related work of the previous researches and
other reading materials, this research study suggested
six 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
should optimize the business 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
3.1. Business Process Management
Business Process Management (BPM) is the discipline
that combines knowledge from information
technology and knowledge from management sciences
and applies this to operational business processes [3].
The BPM life cycle can be drawn as figure bellow;
Fig. 1 : BPM life cycle
Business process can be illustrated with flowchart,
activity diagram and sequence diagram.
Flowchart is a type of diagram that represents an
algorithm or process in designing and documenting
complex processes or programs. The diagram usually
illustrates the solution of problem.
Activity diagrams are graphical representations of
workflows activities and actions for choice, iteration
and concurrency.
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.
BPM technology is now considered as solutions to
deliver real-time, actionable information. Information
can be acted upon in a variety of ways and also can be
made using real-time dashboards. The important
concept of information is implemented in an enterprise
software packages in to a “modeling” that also a
simulation. It is an approach that bridges
organizational and technological in a package.
3.2. 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
organization’s objectives, vision and strategic goals.
BSC helps in realizing organization’s internal
business process, learning and growth. And
organizations will be putting in place instruments for
checking and balances to improve its performance.
Fig. 2 : Balanced Scorecard Framework
3.3. 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
For evaluation and data analysis methodology to get
expected result in this research, the flowchart and the
activities are:
Fig. 4 : Research Methodology Flowchart
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
method with inserting Business Process Management
as the step to define the internal business process part.
5. RESULT AND ANALYZE
Research results obtained from the implementation
of steps taken to validate the method are;
5.1. Step 1 - Data/ Information collection
The results of the identification of vision of step
and procedure in provisioning process;
5.1.1. Element in Provisioning Process System:
Database; for handling card’s 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
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
The process also has to include:
Validation
Check routing configuration
Prepare data and command
5.2. Step 2- Design and Modeling
After identification of Scope and System
Requirements then visualize in a diagram as the
design and model of the business process flow
Fig. 6 : Provisioning Process-Activation in Sequence Diagram

Fig. 7 : Provisioning Process-Auto Deletion in Sequence Diagram
5.3. Step 3 – Execution
Based on the requirements based in 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. In this
research author uses Bizagi simulation as the
software to simulate the provisioning process model
proposed. The simulation is used to know the
process created can be run and processed as
expected, before it implement in the new system.
The new system of the change request project is
implemented in the web-service application, which
is integrated with other related system. Below is
the model of the provisioning. Application can
download free at www.bizagi.com
The result of the simulation can be seen in the
figure below.
Fig. 8 : Process using BizAgi simulation
Fig. 9 : Process using BizAgi simulation (2) – Result
5.4. Step 4 - Monitoring & Optimization
Provisioning process 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.
Table 1 : Data Transaction Summary (Manual Process) in a Year
After Mass Provisioning become automation, which
using integrated system that integrate with other
system such as HLR, OCS and others, the number of
the data transaction summary is increasing.
Table 2 : Data Transaction Summary (Automation Process) in a
Year
5.5. Analyze
5.5.1. Concepts of Provisioning Business Process
with BSC
Aligning business process in Provisioning with BSC,
by choosing Strategic Measures for the Four

Perspective explain in a table matrix bellow
Table 3 : Matrix BSC, Strategies & Measurement
5.5.2. Data Analysis and Result
From data taken in company annual report, we can
get data for number of customer in postpaid and
prepaid subscribers, which will be use for customer
perspective quadrant analysis.
Table 4 : Comparison the Number of Customer
For internal business prospective quadrant we can
analyze from the request in a year then we divide the
data until we get how many requests in a month and
transaction success complete in a month also in a
minute.
Table 5 : Qualities that are comparable in a table
After defining the strategies and measurement and
also based on experts’ experience in the industry
specially in handling provisioning process for SIM
card activation then we try to define the percentage
targets have to achieve by each perspective quadrant
and strategies. The measurement will be done by
calculating how much performance improvement has
been achieved by the provisioning department after
the provisioning process become system automation.
There are some changes after the automation process
is released based on the interview from the support
team, one of the changes such as the less number of
the resources and the less number in working hours
(no overtime), which summary can be seen in table
below.
Table 6 : Average Transaction and Request in manual process
6. CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATION
After analyzing the problems and collecting the
data of the process and also the simulation model
with BizAgi software, the improvement that taken
in provisioning process of SIM card activation is
by making automation in the process which also
integrated system based on web-service
application.
To measure the improvement in provisioning
process is by using BSC, which also the aim of this
study can be adapted to a telecommunication
company as a measurement. It already proof that,
this research uses BSC to measure the
improvement. The results are:
Velocity/ Cycle time for average number of SIM
card complete process in 1 minute increase
9863% from 20.19 per minute in manual process
to 2011.76 in automation process
Number on time deliveries in automation process
is more effective because all requests can be
handled without overtime, which different from
manual process from 2907641 increases to
289692935.
For number employee and the cost of the
Operating expense in simulation shows effective
and efficient improve 71.43% than manual

process
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. 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.
For recommendation with this research is that the
management expected to support the program
analysis in business process improvement, although
initially there will be extra cost for consultant and
system in the beginning, but for the future is
expected to the 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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