Alvarion: effective management spanning multiple teams in multiple sites around the world

Alvarion is the largest WiMAX pure-player with the most extensive WiMAX-based broadband deployments worldwide. Alvarion’s solutions support personal wireless access over advanced technologies for the transmission of mobile data, VoIP, video and other value-added services.

Mobideo’s Guide™ was fully integrated into Alvarion’s work processes around the world, supporting from site surveys, through physical network deployment, to acceptance tests.

The solution, which includes the Psion Teklogix hand held devices, enables Alvarion to improve control over the installation of its WiMAX network within the specified schedule and budget.  Alvarion further gains full transparency throughout the installation process, which enables it to significantly improved service levels.

The Challenge

As a company that installs WiMAX networks around the world, most of Alvarion’s deployments are carried out by local dedicated subcontractors, speaking a variety of languages. When installing a new network, Alvarion faces several challenges:

• Compliance with short lead-times
• Compliance with technical parameters frequencies, network reach, location of the installation, coverage, and more
• Strict acceptance tests and delivery requirements
• Manual data collection preventing the company from responding in real time to occurrences in the field and leading to inaccuracies in network data following installation
• Repeated visits to installation sites to complete the deployment, make repairs or modify locations
• Difficulties managing dozens of installation teams that are distributed worldwide in parallel
• Difficulties obtaining an up-to-date status of the installations in a given interval of time
• Real-time management of several work teams and subcontractors at sites around the world
• Lack of consistent installation procedures among countries and even in different regions in the same country

The Solution

The cooperation between Alvarion and Mobideo led to the integration of Mobideo’s Guide™ system in international projects involving the deployment of wireless communication networks.

A unique solution, Guide™ enforces compliance with work procedures while taking into consideration their order of execution, in accordance with regulatory requirements.  Guide™ enables Alvarion’s users to manage communication networks deployed by different subcontractors and work teams.

Mobideo integrated its Guide™ system as the core tool for managing Alvarion’s work processes around the world – from site survey, through network deployment support, to acceptance tests. The implementation of Guide™ enables Alvarion to improve the management and control of WiMAX deployments, with an emphasis on full transparency, shorter leadtimes, cost reduction, and improved customer service.

The Results

Implementation of Guide™ led to impressive results:

• Better management of field personnel and subcontractors
• Improvement of customer service with higher transparency and shorter schedules
• Retrieval of up-to-date, real-time information about project phases
• Improvement of the decision-making process
• Improvement in resources’ allocation, including the effective planning of tasks by managers
• Real-time task monitoring from the control center, allowing for a good estimation of the date of completion of a task and to respond rapidly to occurrences in the field
• Ability to remotely control the work of field personnel in real time
• Substantial reduction in the time needed by field personnel to arrive to an installation location
• Decrease in the number of field errors (for example, incorrect antenna coordinates) through the automatic connection to GPS devices and applications like Google Earth
• Significant increase in installation cost savings through the decrease in the number of task performance errors, and reduction in the number of repeated site visits
• Significant improvement in the work tasks' management of  teams and subcontractors in geographical dispersed locations, while complying with the projects’ schedules
• Improvement in the service to Alvarion’s customers with higher transparency and shorter schedules
• Creation of a central repository of information with up-to-date data about networks and installations around the world, and supporting data analysis and statistics