Turning Data into Value: How Integrating Probe and Performance Management Data Creates a Virtuous Cycle
Enhance network quality, reduce operational costs, and improve customer satisfaction by unlocking the value in your existing network data. By integrating Probe and Performance Management data, your teams can resolve issues faster, gain complete visibility across domains, and make more efficient use of technical resources - delivering measurable business value from day one.
The good news? A practical approach to integrating your existing network data can deliver immediate benefits while creating a foundation for future growth.
The Challenge of Disconnected Data
Many operators today face a common scenario: different teams using separate tools to monitor the same network from different angles. Different people across your organization analyze the network from different angles - some examine aggregated statistics from network nodes, while others focus on probe data that captures actual subscriber traffic.
When service issues arise, your teams waste valuable time coordinating manually - sending tickets back and forth and consulting various colleagues to piece together what's happening. This disconnect directly impacts your resolution times and customer experience:
- Longer time to identify and resolve issues
- Incomplete visibility across network domains
- Difficulty determining the true impact on customer experience
- Inefficient use of technical resources
One operator recently described spending over seven hours troubleshooting a service degradation that affected YouTube streaming in a specific region. The problem? The data needed to pinpoint the issue was scattered across multiple systems, making it difficult to see the complete picture.
Bringing Together the Best of Both Worlds
Performance Management data and probe data deliver complementary insights that strengthen your operational intelligence.
Performance Management Data delivers statistical aggregates from network elements, including:
- Internal node metrics like memory utilization and processing load
- Energy consumption data
- Traffic summaries across all subscribers
- Overall service quality indicators
Probe Data captures actual signaling between network elements, revealing:
- Individual subscriber experiences
- User location information through subscriber identifiers
- Session-level quality metrics
- End-to-end service flows
When properly integrated, these complementary data sources create a complete view of your network's performance and your customers' experience.
Starting Small for Meaningful Results
Our approach to integrating probe and Performance Management data delivers operational intelligence that directly impacts your business. The good news is that you don't need a massive, all-or-nothing investment to start realizing benefits. The most successful operators are taking an incremental approach that delivers immediate value while building towards a more comprehensive solution.
Rather than trying to ingest all possible data at once, focus on specific use cases that deliver clear business value. For example:
- Service Quality Management: Integrate just the data needed to monitor key services like YouTube streaming or VoLTE call quality
- 5G Fixed Wireless Access Service Assurance: Combine the strengths of customer experience analytics and network performance metrics to deliver a powerful, end-to-end view of service quality.
- Regional Service Assurance: Focus on specific geographic areas experiencing customer complaints
This Targeted Approach Allows You To:
- Minimize upfront investment
- Demonstrate tangible results quickly
- Build internal support for further integration
- Learn and adjust as you go
As one operator discovered, by targeting specific use cases first, the initial investment required was substantially lower than anticipated. They could extract only the necessary KPIs from performance management systems to complement their existing probe data, making the project much more affordable.
Creating a Virtuous Cycle
Each integration project you complete builds directly on the previous one, creating a virtuous cycle of increasing value and decreasing implementation costs.
- Start with a targeted use case that addresses a specific business challenge
- Integrate the minimum necessary data from both probe and performance management sources
- Deliver measurable business value through improved service quality or operational efficiency
- Use those results to justify the next integration project
- Gradually expand your integrated data foundation
- Reduce costs by eventually consolidating duplicate systems
This spiral of improvement creates compounding benefits. Each successful use case not only delivers immediate value but also makes the next integration easier and less expensive. You establish the data relationships once, and then build on them for future projects.
Looking ahead: building a foundation for the future
The approach described above does more than solve today's problems - it creates a solid foundation for future capabilities, including:
- End-to-end service assurance across all network domains
- AI-powered anomaly detection that spots potential issues before they affect customers
- Automated remediation of common network issues
- Predictive maintenance that prevents outages before they occur
By organizing your data today in a methodical, use-case-driven manner, you position your organization to adopt these advanced capabilities as they mature - without requiring massive upfront investment.
The Path Forward
For operators with limited resources, the message is clear: don't wait for the perfect end-state solution. Start where you are, with the specific challenges your organization faces today.
- Identify a high-value use case that currently requires coordination between teams
- Define the minimum data needed from both probe and performance management sources
- Implement a targeted integration focused on that specific use case
- Measure the business impact in terms of improved resolution time, better customer experience, or reduced costs
- Use those results to build support for the next integration project
This practical, step-by-step approach delivers immediate results while building toward a more comprehensive solution. It's not about boiling the ocean - it's about making steady progress toward a more efficient, effective network operation.
By taking this path, you'll not only solve today's challenges but also prepare your organization for whatever comes next.
This article was previously published on FutureNet World's blog.
