Spreadsheets – and the important yet often inaccessible data held within them – are the bane of a communications provider’s business. Indeed, carriers must be able to count the resources they need to control and derive value from, or they cannot execute or plan. That’s true regardless of the industry sector. The better the data, the more the business is worth.
Today, most carriers and tower companies store their data in spreadsheets and tables within databases, which are like giant spreadsheets with rigid rows and columns. If someone needs to add a new type of information, they must add a new column, even if there are only a few entries that will be used by a handful of people.
The bad news is that the more columns are added, the more unwieldy the table becomes for everybody. The good news is that there is a solution to the problem and it’s OneVizion’s Vizion Platform.
The OneVizion magic
The magic ingredient at the heart of OneVizion’s Vizion Platform is its proprietary Linked Record Architecture (LRA), which has allowed communications service providers (CSPs), tower companies and more to efficiently manage over $100 billion in assets thanks to a revolutionary strategy the company calls “3 X 3 X 3.”
OneVizion’s Linked Register Architecture (LRA) takes a completely different approach. Imagine each piece of data as a sticky note. Each one, regardless of what type of data it is, can be linked to related ‘sticky notes’ in any way that makes sense to each customer. No complex programming is needed – the LRA creates a super flexible web of secure and organized information. Business users can make changes and access the data without help from the IT team.
New types of information can be added at any time without restructuring what’s there already. Even with billions of records (the Vizion Platform holds 90 billion records and counting), access to all data is quick because of the smart indexing.
A real-life example of the Vizion Platform’s success is T-Mobile US. When the mobile operator was rolling out its 5G network, it used LRA to manage 125,000 cell tower sites, each with 400 different tasks. With a traditional database it would have extremely challenging to track and update this amount of data. As a result, T-Mobile completed its nationwide roll-out a year ahead of schedule.
The 3 X 3 X 3 approach
OneVizion’s 3 X 3 X 3 strategy is the secret sauce behind the Vizion Platform. This strategy lets the platform users build their own data management strategy — customizing the platform to meet their individual needs and helping companies increase their value by 10-15% within three years.
In addition, the strategy delivers a 10x to 50x advantage over traditional technologies, dispelling both data and application misery that is endemic in users of the usual enterprise software.
The three top-level components of the Vizion Platform’s 3 X 3 X 3 strategy are:
Integrated Resources
“The Vizion Platform creates an environment that provides the Integrated Resources for Data, Processing and Tasks, which are the fundamental elements required by any large-scale program,” said John Patton, Chairman of the Board for OneVizion. “They don’t solve the business problem, but they lay the foundations for the solution.”
Implementation
The Integrated Resources are complemented by Implementation assets, which enable customers to configure the Vizion Platform exactly as they want it. Customers build their own Journey Solutions from ready-to-go modular packages (think LEGO bricks) to suit their priorities and ways of working. Uniquely in the market, customers can start the journey at any point, depending on their situation and budget, due to OneVizion’s unique Gragile® methodology.
Gragile combines guard rails and agile. The ‘guard rails’ are helpful boundaries that keep projects on track. The ‘agile’ part allows means projects still move quickly, adjusting plans as necessary. A telecom operator typically needs to manage data about cell towers or other infrastructure, its workforce and equipment. With the Gragile approach, customers can begin by fixing their most pressing problem first, make changes without waiting for IT’s help and add new features as needed without causing any disruption.
Comprehensive Tools
The third component of the top-level trinity is the Vizion Platform’s Comprehensive Tools. Design tools provide configuration and customization, such as modifying data structures and user interfaces with little technical expertise. Presentation tools provide a flexible interface for data visualization and user interaction. Operational tools are for robust, day-to-day, secure systems operations and management. They integrate seamlessly with the Design and Presentation tools to form a cohesive ecosystem for managing the enterprise software lifecycle.
Success at TowerNorth
One Vizion’s customer TowerNorth understands the value behind 3 X 3 X 3. The company adopted the Vizion Platform to help scale its growth and manage new tower development projects plus existing infrastructure assets in a uniform but highly flexible way that supports current and future operations.
“TowerNorth’s approach exemplifies what we designed the Vizion Platform to achieve – supporting tower companies from their early stages through major growth phases,” said Patton.
Bert Stern, CEO of TowerNorth, commented, “OneVizion provides a very robust, comprehensive platform. It’s also fully customizable. We were able to take the base platform and build what we want on it, to make it look and operate how we want it to.…The platform strikes a perfect balance between being customizable without being so open-ended that you get lost in it and can’t create the right structure.”
“The platform strikes a perfect balance between being customizable without being so open-ended that you get lost in it and can’t create the right structure.” – Bert Stern, CEO, TowerNorth
“If your data is not accurate, you’re not able to effectively manage your projects or report accurately to your customers,” said Stern. “Our team has taken the steps to ensure the information in the system can be relied on and trusted. OneVizion provides a powerful and customizable solution that enables us to implement processes to manage our data.”
