How American Tower Standardized Processes and Optimized Workflows with Siterra

The Company  

American Tower (ATC) is a global digital infrastructure company, serving customers through tower sites and other communications real estate in 25 countries around the world. Its global portfolio includes over 224,000 communications sites, including: 

• Nearly 43,000 properties in the United States and Canada 

• Over 181,000 properties internationally 

• A highly interconnected footprint of U.S. data center facilities 

Think of a tower site like a “vertical office building.” These towers have been and will continue to be the backbone of global wireless networks as network traffic continues to grow steadily. As a leader in supporting wireless connectivity around the globe, American Tower plays a significant role in fostering connectivity in a responsible, equitable, and sustainable way. 

So how does it operate? ATC provides the basic infrastructure, and its customers—or tenants—lease space on its sites to meet the connectivity needs of those they serve. Its customers include: 

• Mobile network operators 

• Multinational telecommunications companies 

• Media and broadband providers 

• Government agencies  

• Other industries who reach people through wireless communication technologies 

The company’s core 'neutral host' shared infrastructure business model is inherently sustainable. Hosting multiple customers on the same physical infrastructure results in lower infrastructure costs for them and reduces the number of sites that need to be built. This, in turn, minimizes energy consumption and the use of materials and resources. 

The Challenge  

Prior to Siterra, American Tower was using 30+ applications to manage processes and store business-critical data. This required users to work across multiple applications to complete their daily activities.  

To rectify these issues, they needed a solution that offered:  

SATISFACTION 

• Simplification of ATC processes to industry norms 

• Real-time integration with customers and contractors 

• Reduced time and errors due to reentry of data 

• Allow customers and contractors to share in the creation and completion of tasks, entering and updating their own information 

• Improved user experience through single UI 

SPEED 

• Real-time access to all operational tasks 

• Remote accessible/mobile platform 

• Improved cycle times, through timely processing 

QUALITY 

• Ability to adopt industry practices, processes and workflows 

• Flexible data validation and fewer reentries/handoffs 

• Integrated data warehouse, providing robust reporting 

• Simplified on-boarding time for new users (one tool)  

• Real-time help and training support 

RISK MANAGEMENT 

• Increased levels of accountability, compliance and user-level auditability 

• Improved asset information for capital expense decisions 

• Proven and contractual system stability and accountability 

IT Driver 

• Buy not build 

After a comprehensive RFP process, the company found that Siterra met all these needs and allowed the ATC team to standardize processes and combine them into one application. Specifically, they liked that Siterra was purpose-built for the wireless industry, that it is a market-leading solution, and that Accruent significantly increased product investment post-acquisition.  

The Solution  

ATC's primary goal when they implemented Siterra was to create a single source of truth for Assets and Projects. Their Siterra instance is integrated with Oracle, Salesforce, OfficeTrack, and several custom applications. It is also integrated with vendor and customer applications. Most of the integrations are via Mulesoft, although some are direct API calls from vendors and customers.  

Overall, ATC uses Siterra to manage all ATC assets. It also uses Siterra to manage many core business processes and use cases, including:  

• Collocation 

• Lease cancellations  

• Lighting and monitoring  

• Permit management  

• Condition, corrective, and preventive maintenance  

• Site decommissioning and relocations  

It has over 50 different business workflows in Siterra.  

The Results  

ATC was able to reduce 30+ custom applications into a single tool. The advantages of a single tool allowed all business groups to work in the same application and reduced the amount of effort to maintain data and reduced the number of manual communication activities. This resulted in a large reduction of cycle times related to those projects which, in turn, allowed for quicker recognition of revenue, reduced cost, as well as better customer satisfaction.  

Siterra offers further key functionalities that helped ATC standardize and optimize processes. These include:  

•  Site Management: Easily identify and quickly move on the best locations, improves the site selection process and enhance site upkeep 

•  Project Management: Track all aspects of your development and construction projects so you can compress schedules and stay within budget 

•  Lease Administration: Manage rent payments and core lease data, ensure that you are in lease compliance, maximize rent revenue and control occupancy costs 

• Utility Billing: Although not the intended design of Siterra, ATC utilizes Siterra to support utility billing in several countries. In many undeveloped countries, ATC provides off-grid power to its customers. Those customers then reimburse ATC for power and fuel. The company tracks those costs through forms in Siterra and integrates with tools that facilitate the billing related to those costs.   

And the improvements have been significant. Here are the improvements when updating one milestone out of 45 tasks in a workflow:  

As Glenn Veatch, Sr. Director of Global Operations Process Excellence, summarizes, “I think Siterra has a place in our industry. For companies that want to drive process standardization that includes proof of work completion, Siterra meets this requirement well. When we made the change to Siterra, we had many customized solutions that were specific to the different work areas in our business. We were able to quickly build a workflow that encompassed all these processes and tools into one. With durations and predecessors, we were able to create efficiencies and focus our resources on the most important tasks for each day. This reduced our processing times dramatically and resulted in improved customer experience. In addition, it has allowed us to harmonize our business processes globally across 21 countries and 5 continents.”