Lumen Automates SD-WAN Services to Recognize 10% Increase in Revenue
INDUSTRY
Communications Service Provider
GOALS
- Deploy New SD-WAN Services
- Eliminate Revenue Leak
- Enable Self-Service for Customer Requests
USE CASES
- SD-WAN Onboarding
- SD-WAN Branch Management
- Self-Service Automation
INTEGRATIONS
Key Results
Reduced time to configure end-to-end Meraki SD-WAN service to just 10 minutes.
Saw 10% growth in SD-WAN orders per quarter.
Orchestrated entire process end-to-end, from service request to shipping to configuration to delivery.
Automated notifications to other systems on completion of successful service.
The Need for Rapid Deployment of SD-WAN Services
Lumen was preparing to launch a new SD-WAN service for their customers and expected to see a large volume of adoption that would lead to an increase in revenue. They needed to find a way to prepare for the heavy influx of new service requests by reducing the manual steps required to complete the process in order to quickly turn up SD-WAN customers. They quickly realized that without automation, they’d never be able to keep up with their customer requests or competition. By automating and reducing the overall interval time to deploy SD-WAN customers, they could proactively avoid a backlog before it even began.
The new SD-WAN services were identified as key value drivers for the business. To support the planned offerings, we had to really expand our team’s capabilities — more than would be possible with manual activities alone.
Network Architect
Why They Chose Itential for SD-WAN Automation & Orchestration
By leveraging the Itential Automation Platform, Lumen was able to easily automate their SD-WAN branch deployment and onboarding process from the first step of entering the sale in Salesforce to the final step of fully activated service on site. With Itential, their network services team was able to successfully automate their SD-WAN services through our:
- Multi-domain, API-first approach that provides support for hybrid infrastructure, specifically SD-WAN technologies.
- Ability to expose functionality via API or automation catalog for self-service capabilities, enabling customers to request activation of new SD-WAN service.
- Codeless Integrations to more than 100 systems and the ability to auto-generate integrations for in-house developed systems, including support for any SD-WAN technology.
- No-code development environment that enables non-developers to build network automations that can open and update tickets, make network changes, ensure network function, and close tickets that reduce daily backlog due to manual changes.
- Itential Automation Marketplace, offering hundreds of automation assets based on industry best practices to get started quickly, dramatically reducing the time it takes to deploy network automations.
By automating our SD-WAN process, we were able to configure devices in under 10 minutes and onboard more customers than imagined.
Head of Network
Accelerated Time to Deliver SD-WAN Services Through Automation
With Itential, Lumen was able to build a new automated process that starts with the service entered in Salesforce, places the equipment order, provides device information, ships the devices, configures service, alerts the warehouse to ship and pauses the automated workflow until the device is delivered on premise. Once delivered, the automated workflow picks back up to activate the SD-WAN service. In the case of fallouts or non-deliveries, the SD-WAN onboarding automation has built-in proactive notifications and processes to alarm the operators.
By automating the full end-to-end SD-WAN service process, Lumen was able to configure a Meraki service and notify other systems of the successful service in under 10 minutes. This quick turnup resulted in a 10% growth on orders per quarter, directly impacting their revenue.
