Broadband Services Takes Kinks Out Of Cable's Supply ChainBroadband Services Takes Kinks Out Of Cable's Supply Chain

Broadband Services Inc., which has its roots in outsourced design and network fulfillment services for cable companies, on Monday will unveil a new focus on helping those organizations manage their assets and supply chains. Its MapVantage service lets operators track their infrastructure and run queries about their physical networks by making the data stored in computer-aided design drawings of those networks available via a relational database and its Supply Chain Management service, which promises savings by increasing inventory turns and eliminating problems such as overstock of technically obsolete products, are designed to help these businesses move to a free cash flow model, according to the company.

"The market hasn't dealt with this effectively," chief technology officer Andy Paff says. Ninety-six percent of the country now is built out for cable networks, a figure that's "staggering and amazing, but now is the time to focus on how cash is spent." The company says that by going from three inventory turns a year to 12, for instance, cable operators could save $120 million annually.

Cable operators want to maximize their existing capacity, not rebuild their assets every five years. Using MapVantage, the company says, they can determine how best to use existing assets to increase capacity on the fly--for instance, to redirect more capacity to users requesting video-on-demand services. These days, cable operators are finding their growth in such new services, as opposed to simply adding channels and raising costs. The company expects to disclose its first MapVantage customer in June.

In some ways, moving to Broadband Services' supply-chain services will represent a culture shift as much as a technological one within the cable industry, which typically has erred on the side of keeping warehouses full to support infrastructure building and consumer-equipment needs. "We'd even like to go to 24 inventory turns," says Joshua Ginsberg-Margo, director of client services at Broadband. "That's possible but scary for cable companies." He says service-level agreements would protect them against repercussions from stock outages. But he doesn't expect that to be a problem, given the dedicated planners and supply-chain analysts that will be assigned to customers. "In the supply chain, there's a flow of goods, of money, and of information," he says. "Information flow is the most vital. To effectively buy you must know what you have and need." Currently, Charter Cable Co. is a customer of this service.

Both services are available via a hosted model; pricing depends on variables such as data-storage requirements and the number of supply-chain transactions.