Orion will be replacing the Comcast Control Center (C3) in the near future. We started an internal pilot recently and are “swivel chairing” live opportunities from C3 into Orion. Some of you may have noticed a new value in the Stage field on your opportunities: Closed in Orion. This new value indicates that we have entered that opportunity into Orion and it has been Sales Accepted and is now in the hands of our Service Delivery team.
Our PAC team will make sure the financials on the Opportunity in C3 match the value of the signed contract. That being said, there are most likely a lot of questions about Orion – some of which are covered below. But rest assured, you will be receiving more information in the coming months.
Why Orion?
Comcast has been working on this project for some time. The goal is to provide a better and more seamless experience for customers. At the same time, we have also tried to make it easier for the many teams at Comcast to work together more efficiently by collapsing a number of systems and processes.
Where Orion really makes things easier is MACR activity. Selling to brand new customers has always been a pretty straightforward process, but making changes to an existing customer’s account has always been a bit tricky. Orion will make MACR activity much easier to accomplish. Orion also means the end of those Excel-based configurators.
Another important reason for Orion is CPQ has reached its end of life cycle with Comcast. As of 11/22/21 we will no longer be using CPQ to quote Ethernet services. Going forward, the order will either be configured in our manual Ethernet configurator, or moved to Orion for processing. That is why we ask that you continue to submit the attached Fiber Survey Request (FSR) form with your Ethernet opportunities so our PAC team can complete that configuration for you.
When can we start using Orion?
There are a few punch list items we are working on that should be completed in late February. Once we validate that development work, we should be ready to begin a pilot with a small group of agents. We are happy to take any volunteers first, so please let the C3 team know if you would like to participate in that pilot program.
For those of you that were around when we launched C3, we will handle this transition very similarly to how we pivoted from WebTop to C3: by rolling out the system to agent users in waves. As with any change, it will require some training and will take some time for users to get used to the new system. We want to make sure we can adequately support new users with troubleshooting and coaching during that transition time, so we will be thoughtful and conservative as we make this change.
What services are available in Orion?
As of today, the majority of our services are available in Orion, but there are some restrictions. We can sell all of our Ethernet services, Trunking services (PRI, BVE, SIP), and Business Internet & Voice. We are testing our ActiveCore services in Orion and by the end of Q2 expect to have all of our current services available for configuration with the exception for Business TV.
Will there be APIs for Orion?
The short answer is yes! Although we won’t start working on rolling out APIs until we get all of our services are available to quote and sell in Orion. There will be no impact to any APIs you are using today. The information used in the serviceability/salability APIs some of our agents are using today will also be used in Orion. Any of our agents that are using the Salesforce API connections we started rolling out earlier this year will only work for C3 opportunities.
