The Telco industry love buzzwords, and ‘Automation’ has been the a favourite for some time now. Though, recently we’re starting to see a shift to a new buzzword: Integration.
But aren’t they the same thing? Well, it’s easy to assume that they’re ‘basically the same thing’ because, to most the achieve a very similar objective: simplifying the process at hand.
But in reality, they’re quite different to each other. Websters dictionary can even shine a clue on the differences, stating that automation is ‘the technique of making an apparatus, a process, or a system operate automatically’ whereas to integrate (at least, for Telco Integration) is defined as ‘to form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole’.
So, from Telco Automation to Telco Integration we can see a path of evolution of the two. In the past, ‘Telco Automation’ probably meant that your call routing platform might have automatically routed a new number to an existing answer point if your customer didn’t add one, or allowed for scheduled routing changes to happen automatically.
Now, for many Telcos we’ve moved on to the new favourite buzzword: Telco Integration. Not only do we have systems running their own automation, we now have automations within systems, that then integrate and potentially integrate into third-party systems and automations.
An example of this would be your Call Routing Platform integrated into your Billing Platform so that every time one of your customers provisions a new number via the routing platform (Automation), an integration tells the Billing Platform that there’s a new service to bill on that account, and all the relevant data such as service number, service type, start dates and any additional fees (like setup or activation fees) that are required.
And if you’re one of those businesses struggling to get everything integrated nicely, don’t worry you’re not alone with almost 89% of business struggling with automation and integration.
But that’s ok, you don’t have to be behind the times any longer. Talk to us here at PracBill and find out how our automations and integrations can you save your Telco time and money.