Asset Management Systems (AMS) are a critical tool for TowerCos and the telecom industry. The right telecom asset management system can minimize costs and maximize revenue by streamlining maintenance processes, speeding development of new sites, and ensuring optimal utilization. Telecom asset management software can be difficult to evaluate, however; AMS are complex systems that offer a wide range of functionality and components and can require customization and setup for optimal use.
The first step in selecting an AMS is to work with the widest variety of stakeholders possible to define specific problems and project goals. For the global telecom industry, needs can differ dramatically by region and by business focus. Is the primary goal accurate financial analysis and valuation of assets? Streamlining maintenance procedures? Facilitating development and new builds?
When the goals are defined, the list of potential solutions can be narrowed based on features: but there are some overarching issues to think about when choosing a provider. At vHive, we’ve worked with AMS providers and TowerCos around the world to improve data accuracy and provide the top visual understanding of physical assets.
Based on our experience, here are three of the most important factors to consider when choosing an AMS for your TowerCo.
Three Must-Have Characteristics to Look for in Telecom Asset Management Software
Implementing an AMS represents a significant investment in money and time for your company. To ensure that your choice will meet your company’s needs for a long time, the system should offer:
- A centralized view of portfolio assets
- Integration with ecosystem tools
- A future-proof platform that allows flexible growth as the telecom environment evolves
Let’s take a deeper view into each characteristic:
-
Centralized view of portfolio assets
Almost all the telecom asset management systems on the market provide asset insights. As the industry experiences unprecedented movement through a historic pace of mergers and acquisitions and the rapid rollout of 5G, a centralized view of the entire portfolio becomes critical for decision making. Your portfolio may be changing in specific regions or across the globe; now is the time when a centralized portfolio view combined with robust custom reporting can provide the insights needed to stay ahead of the competition and negotiate better deals. Some of the more advanced AMS platforms not only centralize the tower information, but also provide an integrated, cross-linked perspective of the tower site with asset, contract, and billing information.
-
Seamless integration with ecosystem tools
The TowerCo sector is relatively new, and supporting technology is developing rapidly. Systems that allow integration with other crucial technologies in the Tower lifecycle ecosystem allow companies to leverage the tools that are most useful to them in a seamless way, optimizing the value of the AMS for all stakeholders.
For example, At vHive, our Partner API integration allows customers to ensure that the data held in their AMS is a reliable and accurate single source of truth for the entire organization: users can compare data gathered in the field to data stored in the AMS. Our autonomous, drone-enabled data capture and digital twin platform provide a deep visual understanding of towers: integrating that visual understanding into an AMS platform can help smooth workflows in areas like inspection, billing, maintenance, and development. Integrating other tools already in use, such as work order and billing systems, remote monitoring systems with IOT devices, document management tools, and more, can contribute to greater adoption of the AMS throughout the company and provide a greater ROI.
-
Future-Proof
Environmental conditions are constantly changing for telecom providers and TowerCos. As AI and machine learning tools evolve, new methods of work and new revenue opportunities appear. When choosing an AMS, it’s important to verify that the platform you’ve chosen will grow with you.
Many industries have experienced the problems faced when custom built, legacy systems become obsolete: eventually, cluttered code and increasingly out of date user interfaces make an expensive and painful replacement the only option. Open platforms with a proven history of development, offering new capabilities and modules on a regular basis, can help you to future-proof your systems and avoid having to upgrade before you’ve realized the maximum return on your investment.
Ask your AMS service provider how they have future-proofed their solution. How have they adapted to remote work environments? How have they ensured scalability? How often do they deliver updates, and how difficult or time-consuming are those updates to deploy?
The Top 5 AMS Systems in the TowerCo Industry
Working in the TowerCo industry since 2016 with major AMS providers around the world, vHive helped tower companies gain new insights on their physical assets. These are the top AMS systems we see customers utilizing:
- NexsysOne
- Sitetracker
- Tarantula
- Siterra
- Atrebo
Here, we’ve characterized each system to help you narrow your search based on the needs of your organization.
NEXSYS-ONE
NEXSYS-ONE was founded in 2001 with its headquarters in Dubai, office locations in US and UK, providing its cloud-based enterprise software globally. Its suite of software solutions offers advanced capabilities of managing tower equipment and provides a wide array of modules to efficiently manage deployments, operations and maintenance of global telecom projects. See the latest partnership between NEXSYS-ONE and vHive’s digital twin platform.
- Product Name: NEXSYS-ONE, a choice of cloud-based enterprise software modules and solutions with ADMIN-ONE – self-administrative tool in the core of each platform
- Product Summary: NEXSYS-ONE provides a cloud-based SaaS product, offering a wide suite of configurable modules and APIs
- Product Focus: Total Project Management (Deployment / Operations / Maintenance), Tower Management, Asset Management, Task Management, Vendor Management, Access Management, Fleet Management, Site Management
- Sectors Served: Telecom, Renewable Energy and Public Safety
Sitetracker
US- and UK-based Sitetracker was founded in 2013 and is considered a flexible and easy tool to use by G2 reviewers.
- Product Name: Sitetracker
- Product Summary: Sitetracker is the global standard in Deployment Operations Management software and is based on the SalesForce engine. The platform provides project management tools that serve a variety of stakeholders throughout the Telecom or TowerCo enterprise, with powerful analytical tools. The Sitetracker software helps streamline deployments and bring vendors and project teams into the same space.
- Product Focus: Project Management, Asset Management, Financial Analysis
- Sectors Served: Telecom, Energy, Utility, Construction, Real Estate, and Media
Tarantula
Singapore-based Tarantula was founded in 1997 and owned by Lumine Group, with a promise to improve site profitability and operational performance.
- Product Name: Red Cube
- Product Summary: Red Cube offers a purpose-built end-to-end site lifecycle management platform with centralized asset management. Based on the Contract, Asset, Process, Project (CAPP) framework, and underpinned by a strong configuration engine, Red Cube comes with a selection of modules to help tower owners optimize order management, manage colocation contracts, manage property and tenant leases, acquire new towers, manage site inventory, bill for colocation tenants, manage field workforce, and optimize operations and maintenance activities. Red Cube’s integrated mobile app allows real-time asset information updates and streamlined work order approvals. Red Cube integrates information from the tower, asset, contract, and projects to minimize revenue leakage through unlicensed equipment installed on towers.
- Product Focus: Asset Lifecycle Management, Automation and Streamlining of Workflows, Deployment Project Management, Contract Management, Tenancy Billing, Operations and Maintenance
- Sectors Served: MNOs and TowerCos
Siterra
California-based Siterra was founded in 2001 and acquired by Fortune 500 company, Accruent (part of the Fortive Group) in 2011. Often celebrated for its high efficiency for relatively low cost, Siterra is named “the best product management tool for beginners” by G2 reviewers.
- Product Name: Siterra
- Product Summary: Siterra’s site and project management software is developed for the Telecom industry and is designed to scale for large customers, dealing with large data sets. The software is also highly customizable.
- Product Focus: Project Management, Lifecycle Management
- Sectors Served: Telecom
Atrebo
Atrebo is based in Spain and was founded in 2011. The company was awarded the Best Global Smart Infrastructure Solution at the 2022 Telecom Review Excellence awards, for its outstanding work in digital transformation of telecom assets and smart infrastructure management.
- Product Name: TREE platform.
- Product Summary: TREE specializes in digital transformation, utilizing a single, consolidated and centralized database. TREE is a tower operation management platform that allows the automation and management of its entire lifecycle. TREE is API first, which allows for an easy integration with external data capture platforms, like vHive, ERPs and any other tools the customer may need to connect. It allows towercos and MNOs to bring on their processes, benefiting from a full collaborative potential and based on its four main pillars: Processes, Data, Reporting & Analytics, and Integration. The platform is a global benchmark within the telecommunications sector as it is modular and open, with a wide range of possibilities thanks to its great flexibility and ease of configuration.
- Product Focus: Digital Transformation, End-to-End Lifecycle Management of Tower Assets, Financial Analysis, Process Automation
- Sectors Served: Telecom and Renewable Energy
Conclusion
Choosing an AMS for your organization may be challenging, but we hope this process helps makes sense of it all: set clear goals for deploying an AMS, and then make sure your choice of vendors includes the 3 must-have criteria; a centralized view of portfolio assets, integration with ecosystem tools, and a future-proof platform that allows flexible growth as the telecom environment evolves. Once you determine the above, it’s easier to filter between the top rated AMS providers in the market.
Whichever provider you choose, make sure to optimize your investment by integrating with a digital twin platform that will ensure data accuracy and allow you to leverage the full capabilities of your software solution.
vHive’s Digital Twin API Integration with AMS
vHive’s Digital Twin Platform provides a partner API that serves as a communication bridge between vHive and your systems, facilitating seamless data exchange. This integration empowers you to access a range of features, including pushing asset details and inventory to the system. The vHive Partner API smooths workflows throughout the organization, allowing users to easily compare provisioned equipment to detected equipment, helping to ensure revenue accuracy, or track changes over time with vHive’s change detection technology.
Talk to our experts about how vHive’s digital twin platform can optimize revenue from your towers, and drive better business insights in the current competitive landscape.