Audits and Data Validation

Audits are where many implementations begin, and often the audit is where many companies make a critical mistake. The act of physically auditing the network seems deceptively simple, and many organizations feel that this is an area where they can safely save money. So they hire the least expensive contractors they can find to perform the audit. After all, how difficult can it be?

So the auditors venture out into the network with notebooks and spreadsheets, gathering information about the layout of the equipment, the cabling and the crossconnects, the bays and the shelves. And when they attempt to load the data, the following happens:

1. The data is outdated. Due to the time that it takes to perform the audits and prepare the data for loading, the data may be inaccurate before it even makes it into the system. Network change control is a daunting task, one that demands a real database in order to undertake it. This is why customers are implementing the Granite^® platform in the first place. Handwritten logs, spreadsheets and Post-It^® notes just don't do an adequate job.
   
   
2. The data is inconsistent. Inexperienced auditors do their best, but there are many different ways to represent any given piece of equipment, which in turn limits how you can represent the connections and paths of the network. Without proper auditing tools and experience with both the Granite® platform and telecom, the data you’ve so expensively gathered is guaranteed to be difficult or impossible to reconcile.
   
   
3. The data is incomplete. When you are performing a physical audit, it's important to know what information is needed. You can't just send a team with orders to "get everything". Without a clear understanding of what data is essential for the Granite^® platform to perform properly, you can't guarantee that the auditors won't miss important data that can't be entered without expensive and time-consuming re-audits.
   
   
4. The data is too complete. The flip side of item #3 above is that the auditors, not being sure of what's really needed, gather enormous amounts of extraneous data: model numbers for out-of-scope equipment, physical measurements when no visualization is required, etc. The extra data clutters the good data, and requires more processing prior to loading. Worse, the audit team has been wasting time and money gathering information that's of no value to you, the customer.
   
   
5. The data is wrong. Worst of all, the data is simply incorrect. This is a particular problem when gathering cabling information. The cable bundles in a central office are huge and tightly laced, and the equipment labels are often vague, misleading or missing. So when you can't entirely trust the labels, and physically tracing cables just isn't possible, what do you do?
   

You fall back on experience. Telecom equipment has a pattern and a flow to it, and an experienced auditor can extrapolate that pattern, even when there's little physical evidence to follow. It comes from years of exposure to different environments and equipment, and from understanding what that equipment does and how it has to be connected in order for it to work.

Sincera can help you avoid these pitfalls. Our staff includes people who have years of experiences in telecom and in all sorts of networks from wireless to CLEC to backbone carriers. We also have tools that we have built specifically for gathering data for the Granite^® platform. These tools use the same validation information that the Granite^® products use, so the data that gets collected will match the customer’s models exactly.