For many service providers leaning into 5G, preparing for their next digital evolution can be perplexing, costly, and time consuming. Not only are service providers required to build the bridge as they walk on it, but they also need to keep their eyes on the customer experience, recruit and train talent, grow the business, and innovate new services.

To successfully support our customers on their digital transformation journey, last year, Cisco Business Critical Services unveiled a multi-tier subscription service with Specialized Expertise options (Scrum Services and Expert-as-a-Service) to support the creation of an agile workforce.

New Service Provider capabilities

At Cisco Live, we're pleased to announce a series of enhancements to our portfolio that target key transformation challenges, including security, the burgeoning skills gap, legacy IT, and workforce agility. Our new services, coupled with our analytics, insights, and automation, enable service providers to reimagine their transformation journey so they can realize better outcomes, faster. To enable visibility into the network at each stage of the technology journey, we are announcing the addition of Service Provider Mobility to simplify multi-architecture network management and Matrix Analytics as a new Scrum Service to streamline network performance.

From strategic roadmap development to continuous optimization and innovation, Business Critical Services help service providers maximize return on their investments. We do this by helping them connect more people to more places and more things, so they can grow revenue, reduce costs, and mitigate risk.

The Vodafone story

A leading telecommunications company in Europe and Africa, Vodafone is a longtime customer of Cisco. Working to build a more inclusive digital future, Vodafone is leveraging next-generation platforms to bring services to their customers faster, while also focusing on building a fully optimized customer experience. Key to Vodafone's success is a central operations model that continuously assesses the health of its network, an agile workforce that continually upskills, and an automation strategy that minimizes the need for human intervention.

To achieve lower operating costs and an improved customer experience, Business Critical Services teams have been conducting discovery assessments to gather insights into Vodafone's global network. These insights are crucial to recommending and providing training as well as ensuring employees have the knowledge they need every day to perform their jobs optimally as they adopt new responsibilities, implement new technologies, and transform their network infrastructure.

Leveraging Business Critical Services expertise, analytics, and insights, Vodafone has been able to build both a robust network and a highly agile workforce. This has helped to reduce the number and severity of network incidents. "We also experienced a decline in issues, and faster restoration time," says Dario Bellini, Head of Second Line Operations in Vodafone's European organization.

"This has led to more time for innovation, more time for automation, enabling employees to do more day to day in their jobs," says Ara Yildizli, Director of Vodafone Network Operations. "We need a partner that understands our problems and our needs. If we are successful, our customers are happy, and we win."

To learn more about Business Critical Services, view Transforming for the Next Digital Evolution with Cisco Customer Experience Vice President Chris Rittler. This Cisco Live session (PSOCX-1003) provides an inside look at our new offers and spotlights how Vodafone is preparing for their next digital evolution. And while you're there, check out our demo for our new Scrum Service for Matrix Analytics.