How to Prove Your Network Operation Center (NOC)’s Effectiveness

If you're a telecom provider, you already know that the network operations center (NOC) is integral to service delivery, maintaining uptime, and continuous optimization. These and other vital functions are what empower you to provide seamless service for your customers and stay one step ahead of your competitors.

Your team knows all of this already, but how do you demonstrate the effectiveness of your NOC to external stakeholders and leaders? Even if these individuals are completely supportive of your NOC, it never hurts to break its effectiveness down in terms that everyone, network team and otherwise, can understand.

This is where NOC KPIs come into play. The best way to prove the necessity of your initiatives in the NOC (or, indeed, pretty much any technology initiative) is to tie it directly to lifts in customer satisfaction, employee experience, the bottom line, and much more.

Today's conversation focuses on NOC KPIs, and how to use them to leave no doubt in your stakeholders' minds as to your NOC's necessity.

Why are NOCs Essential to Telco Success?

Your team knows why the network operations center is essential, but when you're pitching its importance to other stakeholders, it can be handy to begin with a quick rundown of the fundamentals. With that in mind, let's quickly review the NOC's key functions:

• Monitoring Network Performance: The NOC continuously monitors the network's health and status, identifying potential performance issues like downtime, slow connections, and hardware failures.
• Incident Response: NOC teams are responsible for identifying and addressing network incidents such as outages, security breaches, or performance degradation. Auto-remediation technology is a huge help here.
• Network Maintenance: NOC teams perform routine maintenance, updates, and upgrades to the network infrastructure, ensuring that systems are running optimally.
• Troubleshooting and Diagnostics: NOCs use a variety of tools and techniques to identify, diagnose, and resolve network-related problems.
• Security Monitoring: The NOC team monitors network security, looking for potential threats like unauthorized access, malware, or DDoS attacks.
• Data Backup and Recovery: NOCs ensure that network data is regularly backed up and can be recovered in case of system failures or data loss.
• Reporting and Documentation: NOCs produce performance reports, incident response logs, and operational reports to provide stakeholders with detailed insights into the health of the network.

Now that we've teed the NOC conversation up with a review of its basic functions, it's time to get to the heart of the game: KPIs. More specifically, we're going to cover the KPIs that stakeholders within and outside of the NOC love the most!

NOC KPIs: The Best of The Best

Whether you're quantifying your NOC's success to stakeholders or looking for new ways to measure experience improvement, here are a few KPIs that are sure to paint a compelling picture:

1. Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): The average time it takes for teams to identify and detect an issue or fault within the network after it occurs. It's a key percentage for assessing network monitoring systems' responsiveness in identifying problems such as service outages, degradation, or performance anomalies. MTTD for high-severity issues should be no higher than five minutes.
2. Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): This percentage represents the average time a team takes to respond to an issue once it has been detected. A quick response is critical to prevent issues from escalating and to restore services as quickly as possible. An MTTR of 30 minutes is generally considered excellent for NOC teams.
3. Incident Volume: The total number of network incidents or events detected within a specific period. Ideally, less than 5% of your network components should be generating incidents. A higher incident volume can indicate underlying issues in the network infrastructure or equipment, suggesting the need for further investigation or optimization. Likewise, a lower incident percentage indicates NOC strength and success.
4. Network Uptime (Availability): The percentage of time the network is fully operational and available for use. Maximizing network uptime is critical for business continuity; it's also a goal that the NOC and the entire organization share. 99.99% uptime (sometimes called the four nines) is considered the gold standard within telecommunications.
5. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Compliance: The percentage of incidents and issues that are resolved within the timeframes stipulated in SLAs. This is a big one, because SLAs are agreements with customers or internal stakeholders that specify acceptable response and resolution times. SLA compliance is crucial for customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Aim for a 99% compliance rate or higher.
6. Root Cause Analysis Rate: The percentage of incidents for which the root cause is successfully identified and addressed. Proactively addressing root causes can prevent recurring issues and improve long-term network performance. Hopefully, it goes without saying that your team should always be aiming for a 100% success rate!
7. Security Incident Response Time: The average time it takes to respond to and mitigate security threats (e.g., DDoS attacks, malware, unauthorized access). Anything over 15 minutes is not ideal here. A quick response to security incidents is crucial for minimizing damage and maintaining network integrity. It also demonstrates NOC effectiveness!
8. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): The percentage representing how satisfied users or clients are with the NOC's services and responses. High customer satisfaction is an indicator that the NOC is meeting user needs and expectations, further demonstrating value. An 80% CSAT score is good; a 90% score is exceptional.
9. Network Traffic Analysis: The volume and type of traffic passing through the network. Understanding network traffic patterns helps predict and prevent potential bottlenecks, congestion, or security issues.
10. Cost Efficiency: Another big one. This is the ratio of the NOC's operating costs to its ability to maintain uptime, remediate issues, and meet service goals. A cost-efficient NOC maximizes the return on investment and contributes to the business's profitability. NOC cost efficiency is generally calculated as total operating costs divided by value delivery; the lower the ratio, the higher your efficiency and cost management.
11. Escalation Rate: The percentage of issues that cannot be resolved by the NOC team and require escalation to other teams (e.g., network engineers, security teams). A high escalation rate (15% or higher) could indicate that the NOC lacks the necessary resources or skills to address complex issues. A low resolution rate, by contrast (5% or lower), can indicate NOC effectiveness.

This might seem like a large range of KPIs, but the idea behind this list is to cover as many areas of potential stakeholder interest as possible. It's also important to focus on KPIs that yield percentages and quantify as much NOC success as possible. Every organization is different, but by paying close attention to your stakeholders, your overall business and automation goals, and your bottom line, you can discern which KPIs your sponsors care about the most, then emphasize those come reporting time.

Now it's time for a quick review on presenting those KPIs and giving your NOC the highest possible chance for continued operation!

Presenting NOC KPIs

We've covered the NOC functions to emphasize to stakeholders. We've taken a look at the most pertinent KPIs your sponsors will care about. Now it's time to bring it all home with the final step: working those NOC features and KPIs into additional sponsorship and continued operation!

• Trends and Comparisons Over Time: One of the best ways to illustrate where you're going is to show how far you've come. Demonstrating progress over time helps stakeholders see the long-term value your NOC is adding. It also shows that the team is proactively improving and adapting to challenges.
• Benchmarking Against Industry Standards: Comparing your NOC's KPIs to industry benchmarks or best practices effectively demonstrates how you stack up against peers. To illustrate your NOC's performance in a broad context, be sure to include a comparison between your MTTR, MTTD, and other KPIs versus industry averages or competitors' performance.
• Focusing on Business Outcomes: Align NOC performance with the bottom line and tangible outcomes (e.g., improved customer satisfaction, reduced downtime, enhanced service delivery). Present KPIs that directly tie to business results, such as network uptime or CSAT scores.
• Customer Success Stories: Leadership loves hearing stories about the organization making a difference. Real-world examples make KPIs more tangible, because they demonstrate your NOC's practical value in a context that stakeholders can relate to.

Any NOC KPI presentation that includes these elements is sure to delight stakeholders and gain your team additional sponsorship.

The Next Round of NOC Success

Making the most of your NOC KPIs comes down to understanding what the NOC does, identifying the KPIs most pertinent to stakeholders, and then presenting them in a way that garners enthusiasm from those stakeholders. By bearing these principles in mind, network professionals can ensure continuous sponsorship for their NOC, strengthening the bottom line and creating meaningful experience improvement for your customers.