Why its Important to Have a System That Ties Directly into the Fiber Plant Records
There are certain operations in telecommunications that have a natural catch in the process like billing, services, support, that a subscriber will tell you if there is something wrong. For fiber cables there is no immediate catch that will be easily fixed as it can stay hidden for years and when it becomes a problem it's not small but a catastrophic issue. To prevent a major issue with subscribers having plant records of all the fiber cable that is being installed will benefit multiple operations of your company as you grow and continue to build new service areas.
A good foundation of your company is important and a good foundation of the fiber cable records that is solid will age successfully without a major expense in the future. This will raise your company's value and expand the number of subscribers you can reach. A fiber plant record in the long run will be a cost saving standpoint by saving time in the troubleshooting issues, helps locating cable to ensure someone else doesn't cut through your cable. It will also help track inventory of materials and your installation progress which will help understand the cost of construction to help ensure that contractors will stay on budget. In the end having fiber plant records will limit a majority of headaches when it comes to dealing with issues in the field with installations and truck rolls.
The first layer of your company should not be a "nice to have" feature instead it should be a must. A complete understanding of your fiber cables will provide more benefits to your company, it will help utilize the big expense of the physical asset. The use of fiber plant records and having devices/equipment tied back into a single system will help with starting up a subscribers services as everything is all lined up before installation starts. Then the installation will consist of plugging in the equipment and scanning the device to connect the address and device together to make monitoring easier for your support team with getting the subscribers service up and running faster.
Vision fundamentally provides an immediate check for the records when setting up a new subscriber's services, with a good record of your fiber cable will help speed up the process of the subscriber to their service. The integration between Vision and companies like 3-GIS and IQgeo will ensure connectivity and future automation as you continue to grow your fiber service areas. With 3-GIS it will model out the circuit paths through Vision, will link locations that are in Vision and match in 3-GIS.
If your company doesn't have fiber plant records can be an issue for other parts of your business. Sales opportunities will be missed and support can be unstructured as unnecessary trucks could be rolled out for dispatch due to monitoring not being set up on subscriber devices. Plant records will also help with the cost of network outages by limiting the amount of technicians needing to be sent out to find a problem with your service area due to a storm or fiber cable being cut. Knowing where an issue is will help limit truck rolls and allow for outages to be fixed quickly. Fiber networks are a long term asset for your company, you have to take care of it and know everything to help your subscribers and your company improve their overall experiences.
A fiber plant will help position you to build trackable assets that will bring endless possibilities for gaining incremental and big efficiencies.