The Central Address System for UPC
About the project
Globema supports UPC in managing address data, as its quality is the key to the efficient management of the investment and business processes at the company.
Contents:
Industry: Telecommunications
Country: Poland
Product / Service: Smallworld
Category: Network Asset Management
UPC Poland is one of the largest digital cable television operators and one of the largest broadband fiber network Internet providers in Poland. It offers VOIP telephony and mobile phone telephony for individual and business customers. UPC invests in future technologies and offers the most advanced gigabyte network in Poland.
Challenges
The inconsistency between the information in databases and the systems that use them is a big struggle for many telco operators. It’s crucial in the case of processes supporting investments.
UPC wanted to improve the quality of updating and functional changes in this area. It was essential for effective communication between all investment teams.
For an IT system, an address is more than just a building number related to the street name or a postcode. Address data quality also involves premise numbering plan, National Register of the Territorial Division of the Country (TERYT) data, geographical coordinates, or cadastral parcel location. Lacking this information risks faulty planning.
Incomplete address information may be missing such things as the owner or administrator of the estate, planned and existing network infrastructure, or knowledge about competition. Lack of this data could result in problems with various usage agreements, an incorrect technical scope for the project, unsuitable advertisement campaigns, or a delayed sales process.
Solution
We used our experience in order to help UPC Poland to:
- Create the Central Address System based on telecommunications network inventory system (GE Smallworld Physical Network Inventory – PNI) implemented at UPC for over 10 years prior as well as a new application created by Globema, BOB. BOB is a Polish Database of Buildings and it’s used to manage addresses in investment processes.
- Load the reference address data, as well as clean and map the address data for the three key systems: CRM, PNI, and BOB.
Due to the complexity of the address data quality maintenance and the number of systems using the data, we recommended creating a position of Address Data Administrator (ADA). The Administrator’s goal is to manage address data updates based on the Central Address Systems in all of the operator’s systems.
Creating the Central Address System
For years, UPC Poland has been using the GE Smallworld Physical Network Inventory (PNI) system offered and supported by Globema. The system is used to collect network topology and telecommunications infrastructure data.
We created a new application, BOB (Polish Database of Buildings) for UPC employees involved in the investment process. Together, BOB & PNI make up the Central Address System that provides access to address data and an option to edit them. The system contains about 9 million pieces of data about buildings all around Poland. How does it work?
PNI performs advanced address operations, such as division and consolidation. Moreover, it sends BOB useful information about the investment process, such as distance from a particular building to the nearest network object, etc.
BOB allows UPC to register new addresses (that don’t appear in the official registers yet) and use them during the investment process management. They are used to add attributes (such as building status or owner contact information) to particular buildings or groups of buildings and search building addresses by their attributes.
Another useful function is visualizing chosen addresses and their status on Google Maps. The application can be used by third-party subcontractors, as the application access is controlled by a mechanism on the single attribute level.
Cleaning and mapping address data
Globema powered the Central Address System with the reference address data obtained by UPC Poland from the DataWise company and National Register of the Territorial Division of the Country (TERYT). Then, we cleaned and mapped the address data for three key systems at UPC: CRM, PNI, and BOB.
During the cleaning and unifying the address data to the CRM system, the data were normalized and standardized through:
- Standardizing the street prefixes, town names, and street names based on each city’s dictionary
- Verifying and completing the postcodes
- Describing address data with dictionary IDs from the Central Statistical Office of Poland
- Marking the duplicates
We used Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the normalization process. The AI/ML mechanisms were used due to the large address data volume in CRM, lack of connection between the addresses and dictionary data, and need for rebuilding address data structure.
This approach reduced the size of data needed for manual verification and revision to 5%.
The benefits for our customer
The Central Address System provides consistent reference address data. The system allows users to collect different additional information related to the address data, such as agreements with building owners, dates and deadlines of the investment process, competition data, etc.
The benefits that the Central Address System brought to UPC Poland:
Summary
Maintaining the address data quality and stability is the key to the process of acquiring and executing the investments but also to all processes related to the service sales or network maintenance. The Central Address System is the foundation to efficient operations of all OSS/BSS systems.
High quality of address database is the key to the effective cooperation of different specialized systems and departments in our company. The solution delivered by Globema increased and keeps on strengthening the effectiveness of our investment and business processes.
Dominika Pater, UPC Poland
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