Removal of pairing of Set Top Boxes in SAP

Client

Asia's largest Direct to Home Entertainment Company, is the pioneer when it comes to digital entertainment. The innovative offerings and revolutionary features of Company have earned it a prestigious place of being World’s third largest DTH Company.

Existing Process

Every Set Top Box (STB) was paired with Viewing card (VC) in SAP. Paired VC need to be physically inserted in the STB Box. VC was restricted to be used with paired STB only.

The Problem

When we talk about millions of STB and VC every year:

• System resources were getting highly utilized, impacting the speed and performance.
• Substantial labor & logistics cost was involved in inserting the VC’s in the STB physically.
• Errors in pairing were leading to delays in activations

The Approach

Client raised this issue with EBEX SAP consulting team. Assignment was to lead & re engineer these interrelated processes for improved efficiency/effectiveness.

Teams are created, including representatives from Commercial, Logistics, CRM, Service, Revenue Assurance, Sales and SAP. These teams first analyze the current problematic and lengthy process and its impact.

Over weeks of an intense, highly-interactive and collaborated meetings with all stakeholders, teams needed to:

• Define existing process deficiencies
• Reengineer processes and
• Address key process interrelationships.
• Throughout, EBEX catalyzes and facilitates the process by providing guidance and coaching on underlying process reengineering and then proposed and developed the solution.

The Solution

Eliminate pairing of STB and VC in primary systems, both can move independently to market. VC is free to be used with any STB and pairing to be done at the time of activation only.

Involving all stakeholders made the transition smooth, and helped in overcoming the change management issues. With few code level changes in all the systems involved, and rigorous testing at all stages, it was good to go.

The Results

To the surprise of all, entire changed process was seamlessly executed. Teams completely owned the solution, and are happy to be a part of it.

Now there is pairing and insertion of viewing card in Set Top Boxes resulting in :

• Saving of Labor cost for physical insertion. 22- 25 blue collar FTE.
• No pairing in SAP, resulting in 2 FTE savings.
• Less utilization of system resources, no more speed and performance issues.
• VC free to use with any STB, resulting in improved service TAT.
• Redemption of consignment stock becomes seamless – no predefined BOM and paired material restrictions.