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What is Network Automation?

Paul Bloxham

In this Article

Network Automation and NetDevOps are hot topics in the network engineering world right now, but as with many new concepts, it can be confusing to decipher the meaning from the noise in the quest to achieving optimal efficiency and agility of network operations.

A useful starting point would be to first define what network automation is not:

  • Network automation is not just automated configuration generation or inventory gathering
  • It is not just using the same network management system (NMS) as today but faster
  • It is not just performing patching and OS upgrades faster, or network engineers suddenly becoming software developers
  • Network automation is not going to work in isolation of changing lifecycle and deployment processes, nor is it a magic toolbox of all-encompassing applications, frameworks and code.

At CACI, we view network automation as both a technology and a business transformation. It is as much a cultural shift from legacy deployment and operations processes as it is a set of tools and technology to implement speed, agility and consistency in your network operations. Infrastructure is changing fast, and with Gartner reporting 80% of enterprises will close their traditional data centres by 2025, the only constant in networking is that change will persist at faster clip.

So, how does Network Automation work? What differentiates network automation from NetDevOps? What difference can it make to modern IT operations, and which best practices, technologies and tools should you be aware of to successfully begin your network automation journey?

How does Network Automation work? 

Network Automation implements learnings from DevOps developments within the software development world into low-level network infrastructure, using software tools to automate network provisioning and operations. This includes techniques such as:

  • Anomaly detection
  • Pre/post-change validation
  • Topology mapping
  • Fault remediation
  • Compliance checks
  • Templated configuration
  • Firmware upgrades
  • Software qualification
  • Inventory reporting.

In understanding how these differ from traditional network engineering approaches, it is important to consider the drivers for network automation in the post-cloud era – specifically virtualisation, containerisation, public cloud and DevOps. These technologies and approaches are more highly scaled and ephemeral than traditional IT Infrastructure, and are not compatible with legacy network engineering practices like:

  • Using traditional methodology to manage infrastructure as “pets” rather than “cattle”
    • Box-by-box manual login, typing CLI commands, copy-pasting into an SSH session, etc.
  • “Snowflake networks” which don’t follow consistent design patterns
  • Outdated (or non-existent) static network documentation
  • Lack of network validation and testing.

Network automation aims to change all this, but to do so, must overcome some obstacles:

  • Cross-domain skills are required in both networking and coding
  • Some network vendors do not supply good API or streaming telemetry support
  • Screen scraping CLIs can be unreliable as CLI output differs even between products of the same device family.
  • Cultural resistance to changes in both tooling and practice
  • Lack of buy-in or sponsorship from the executive level can compound these behaviours.

What differentiates network automation from NetDevOps? 

You may also have heard of “NetDevOps” and be wondering how – or if – this differs from network automation. Within CACI, we see the following key differences:

Table showing the differences between 'Network Automation' and 'NetDevOps', listing out the clear different aspects

We often see our clients use a blend of both in practice as they go through the automation adoption curve into the automation maturity path, from ad-hoc automation, through structured automation, into orchestration and beyond:

What difference can network automation make to modern IT operations? 

Network automation aims to deliver a myriad of business efficiencies to IT operations, helping reduce labour and hours worked, time to deploy and operational costs while improving performance and agility. This has proven to be transformational across our wide and varied client base, with improvements demonstrated in the following ways: 

Increased efficiency 

Much of networking is repetition in differing flavours – reusing the same routing protocol, switching architecture, edge topology or campus deployment. A network engineer is often repeating a task they’ve done several times before, with only slight functional variations. Network automation saves time and costs by making processes more flexible and agile, and force-multiplying the efforts of a network engineering task into multiple concurrent outputs.

Reduced errors 

Networking can be monotonous, and monotony combined with legacy deployment methodology can cause repetition of the same error. Network automation reduces these errors – particularly in repetitive tasks – to lower the chances of reoccurrence. When combined with baked-in, systems-led consistency checking, many common – but easily-avoidable – errors can be mitigated.

Greater standardisation

Networks are perhaps uniquely both the most and least standardised element of the IT stack. While it is easy to have a clean “whiteboard architecture” for higher-level concerns such as application development, the network must often deal with the physical constraints of the real world, which, if you’ve ever tried to travel to a destination you’ve not been to before, can be messy, confusing and non-sensical. Network automation ensures the starting point for a network deployment is consistent and encourages system-level thinking across an IT network estate over project deployment-led unique “snowflake” topologies.

Improved security 

Increased security often comes as a by-product of the standardisation and increased efficiency that network automation brings. Most security exploits are exploits of inconsistency, lack of adherence to best practice or related – which ultimately pivot around “holes” left in a network (often accidentally) due to rushing or not seeing a potential backdoor, open port, misconfiguration or enablement of an insecure protocol. When combined with modern observability approaches like streaming telemetry and AIOps, network automation can help enforce high levels of security practice and hardening across an IT estate.

Cost savings

Given its position as the base of the tech stack, the network is often a costly proposition – with vertically-integrated network vendors, costly telco circuit connectivity, expensive physical world hosting and colocation costs, and so on – the network is often a “get it right first time” endeavour which can be cost-prohibitive to change once live and in service. Network automation encourages cost savings through the creation of right-the-first-time and flexible network topologies and in performing design validation which can minimise the amount of equipment, licensing, ports and feature sets required to run a desired network state.

Improved scalability

As both consumer and enterprise expectations of scale are set by the leading web scalers of the world, the enterprise increasingly expects the flexibility to scale both higher and lower levels of the IT stack to larger and more seamless sizes, topologies and use cases. Network automation aids in achieving this through the enforcement of consistency, modularisation, standardisation and repeatability for network operations.

Faster service delivery

IT service delivery is increasingly moving away from being ticket-led to self-service, with the lower-level infrastructure elements expected to be delivered much faster than the traditional six-to-eight-week lag times of old. As telco infrastructure moves through a similar self-service revolution, so too does the enterprise network require the ability for self-service, catalogue-driven turn-up and modularised deployment. Network automation enables this by optimising network performance to the required parameters of newer services and applications in the modern enterprise.

What are the best practices for network automation?

Network automation is as much a cultural transformation as it is a technology transformation. Much as DevOps disrupted traditional ITIL and waterfall approaches, NetDevOps similarly disrupts current network engineering practices. We find the following best practices to be beneficial when moving towards network automation:

Choose one thing initially to automate

  • Pivot around either your biggest pain point or most repetitive task
  • Don’t try to take on too much at once. Network automation is about lots of small, repeated, well-implemented gains which instil confidence in the wider business
  • People love automation, they don’t want to be automated. The biggest barrier to adopting automation will be keeping colleagues and stakeholders on-side with your efforts by showing the reward of that they provide to them and to the wider business.

Choose tooling carefully

  • Stay away from the “latest shiny” and pick open, well-used tools with large libraries of pre-canned vendor, protocol and topology integrations, and human-readable configuration and deployment languages
  • Maintain your specific business context during tool selection
  • Think ahead for talent acquisition and retention – writing custom Golang provisioning application might be handy today, but you could struggle to get others involved if the author decides to leave the business.

Optimise for code reusability

  • Build and use version control systems such as Git, GitHub and Azure DevOps from day one and encourage or even mandate their use
  • Advocate for the sharing of functions, modules, routines and snippets written within code, runbooks, IaC and state files within scrapbooks and sandpits. The flywheel of productivity increases exponentially within NetDevOps as increasingly more “we’ve done that before” coding and practices accelerate the development of newer, more complex routines, IaC runbooks and functions
  • Code should be written with reuse and future considerations in mind. While it may be tempting to “save ten minutes” so as to not functionise, modularise or structure code, this will catch up with you in the future.

Use templating for configuration generation

  • Templating programmatically generates the vendor-specific syntax for a network device based on a disaggregated, vendor-neutral input format (such as Jinja2, Mako or Markdown) which is later combined with data (such as specific VLANs, IP Addresses or FQDNs) to generate the vendor-specific syntax (such as Cisco IOS, Arista EOS or Juniper Junos) for the network device
  • The act of creating the templates has an added by-product of forcing you to perform design validation. If your design document doesn’t have a section covering something you need template syntax for, it could well be due for an up-issue
  • Templates become a common language for network intent that are readable by all network engineers regardless of their individual network vendor and technology background, aiding in time to onboard new staff and ensuring shared understanding of business context around the IT network.

Which tools, frameworks and languages enable network automation?  

There are a myriad of network automation tools, frameworks, languages and technologies available today. DeThere are a myriad of network automation tools, frameworks, languages and technologies available today. Deciphering these can be confusing, but a good starting point is categorising the distinct types of network automation tooling available:

Network Configuration and Change Management (NCCM)

  • Enable patching, compliance and deployment (rollout)
  • Often align to network management systems (NMS) or BSS/OSS (Telco space)

Network Orchestration

  • Enable programmatic device access (CLI, API, SSH, SNMP)
  • Often align to DevOps engineering usage

Policy-based Automation

  • Abstract network device box-by-box logic into estate-wide, policy-driven control
  • Often align to industry frameworks and controls (SOC2, HIPAA, CIS, PCI/DSS)

Intent-Based Networking Systems (IBNS)

  • Translate business intent through to underlying network configuration and policy
  • Are starting to become the “new NMS”

It would be exhaustive to list all possible tools, frameworks and languages available today, but these are some of our most seen within our client base today. Our current favourites can be seen in What are the most useful NetDevOps Tools in 2023?:

Tools

  • Terraform – An open-source automation and orchestration tool capable of building cloud, network and IT infrastructure based on input Infrastructure as Code (IaC) code via HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) that defines all attributes of the device and configuration blueprint required. Terraform is highly flexible and has a vast array of pre-built modules and providers for most network engineering concerns via the Terraform Registry.
  • Ansible – An open-source automation and orchestration tool typically used to configure within the device rather than provision the underlying Baremetal or cloud infrastructure the cloud, network or IT device sits atop, which is based on input IaC code via YAML that defines the attributes and device configuration required. Ansible is versatile and has a large cache of pre-built runbooks and integrations for network engineering concerns via Ansible Galaxy.
  • NetBox – The ubiquitous, open-source IP Address Management (IPAM) and Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tool, which acts as the Network Source of Truth (NSoT) to hold a more detailed view of network devices, topology and state than could be achieved via alternative approaches such as spreadsheet or CMDB. NetBox is highly customisable, with a rich plugin ecosystem and customisable data models via YANG to adapt around business-specific topology data models.
  • Git – The de facto version control system, which is the underlying application that powers GitHub and GitLab and supplies a mechanism to store IaC, configuration and code artefacts in a distributed, consistent and version-controlled manner. Git is pivotal in enabling the controlled collaboration on network automation activities across a distributed workforce while maintaining the compliance and controls required within the enterprise environment.
  • Nornir – An automation framework written in Python to automate a network, streamlining and simplifying automation for network engineers already versed in Python.

Frameworks 

  • Robot framework: A generic test automation framework allowing network automation code and IaC runbooks to run through acceptance testing and test-driven development (TDD) via a keyword-driven testing framework with a tabular format for test result representation. It is often used in conjunction with tools such as pyATS, Genie, Cisco NSO and Juniper NITA.
  • PEP guidelines: Short for Python Enhancement Proposals (PEP), these are to Python what RFCs are to network engineering, and provide prescriptive advice on setting out, using, structuring and interacting with Python scripts. The most commonly known of these is the PEP8 – Style Guide for Python.
  • Cisco NADM: The Cisco Network Automation Delivery Model (NADM) is a guide on how to build an organisation within a business around an automation practice, addressing both the human aspect as well as some of the tooling, daily practices, procedures, operations and capabilities that a network automation practice would need to take traction in an IT enterprise landscape.

Languages

  • Python: The de facto network automation coding language, utilised as the underlying programming language in tools from NetBox, Nornir, Batfish, SuzieQ, Netmiko, Scrapli, Aerleon, NAPALM and more, popularised by its extensive network engineering-focused library within PyPi. Python is the Swiss army knife of NetDevOps, able to turn its hand to ad-hoc scripting tasks through to full-blown web application development using Flask or API gateway hosting using FastAPI.
  • Golang: An upcoming programming language, which benefits over Python in terms of speed via a compiler-based approach, parallel-execution, built-in testing and concurrency capabilities when compared to Python. On the downside, it has a significantly steeper learning curve than Python for new entrants into the realm of development and has far fewer network engineering library components available to use.

What does the future of network automation look like? 

Machine learning (ML) in conjunction with AI are becoming increasingly embedded into network operations and the demand for network automation and NetDevOps professionals is undoubtedly on the rise. This is a trend that we at CACI expect to continue as budgetary pressures from the macroeconomic climate accelerate and trends like artificial intelligence (AI) begin to challenge the status quo and push businesses to deliver seamless, scalable network fabrics with more expectation of self-service and less tolerance of outage, delay or error. With this, automation will continue to shift from reactive scripts to intelligent networking capabilities. 

We see more of our clients moving up through the automation maturity path towards frictionless and autonomous network estates and expect this to accelerate through the coming years with ancillary trends such as NaaS (Network as a Service), SDN (Software Defined Networking) and NetDevOps set to continue and embed the NetEng Team firmly into the forthcoming platform engineering teams of tomorrow. 

How can CACI help you on your network automation journey?

With our proven track record, CACI is adept at a plethora of IT, networking and cloud technologies. Our trained cohort of high calibre network automation engineers and consultants are ready and willing to share their industry knowledge to benefit your unique network automation and NetDevOps requirements. We are a trusted advisor that ensures every team member is equipped with the necessary network engineering knowledge from vendors such as Cisco, Arista and Juniper, along with NetDevOps knowledge in aspects such as Python for application Development, NetBox for IPAM and NSoT, Git for version control, YAML for CI/CD pipeline deployment and more.

Our in-house experts have architected, designed, built and automated some of the UK’s largest enterprise, service provider and data centre networks, with our deep heritage in network engineering spanning over 20 years across a variety of ISP, enterprise, cloud and telco environments for industries ranging from government and utilities to finance and media.

Get in touch with us today to discuss more about your network automation and NetDevOps requirements to optimise your business IT network for today and beyond.

Three ways digital twins can transform small airports

Harsh Tandon

In this Article

When people talk about digital twins, they often picture a virtual representation of a physical thing such as an airplane, allowing simulation of changes to design and measuring against different variables to see the impact of those changes. This leads to innovative designs, because the risk of R&D is greatly reduced when able to test hypotheses in the safe space of the virtual world.  
The beneficial impact of digital twins doesn’t end with physical assets, however. The same principles can be applied to whole systems, be it the communications system used on board that plane or the whole ecosystem required to get the plane safely off the ground, with the right passengers, the right baggage, the right fuel and the right flight plan. 
Whether a sprawling international hub with thousands of flights per day or a smaller airport like the one we visited in Staverton, digital twins can enable rapid optimisation and growth and great reductions in waste and errors. So, what are three pivotal ways in which digital twins can make a difference? 
A Digital Twin — a virtual replica of a physical asset or a system capable of revolutionising how regional airports manage their resources, optimise operations and plan for the future. Gloucestershire Airport, servicing private aircraft, helicopters and even emergency landings, is the perfect example of where this innovation could have a real, immediate impact. 
1. Fuel Management: beyond just “how much?” 
Fuel is the lifeblood of an airport’s operations, and in smaller airports, every litre counts. By deploying sensors on refuelling tanks and storage facilities, airports can continuously monitor both the quantity and quality of fuel in real time. Moisture ratings, contaminant detection and temperature controls would ensure fuel meets strict aviation standards, minimising the risk of supply issues or quality failures. 
Using historical demand patterns combined with predictive analytics, a digital twin could forecast fuel usage trends, allowing smarter resupply scheduling. Not only would this optimise operational costs, but it could also reduce the carbon footprint associated with frequent, unnecessary fuel deliveries. 
2. Full operational visibility: from touchdown to take-off 
Imagine a live, data-driven view of the entire airport, from a helicopter’s landing and its passengers’ disembarkation to baggage handling efficiency. A digital twin could integrate sensor data, RFID tracking, business systems and operational logs to create a single pane of glass for airport managers. 
Delays in passenger flow? The system would spot them instantly. Baggage bottlenecks? Highlighted before they become a passenger satisfaction issue. Even emergency landings could be better coordinated with real-time scenario simulations. 
3. Learning from the past and testing the future 
One of the most powerful advantages of a digital twin is its ability to simulate “what if” scenarios without touching the real-world setup. 
Historical analysis: Why did baggage handling slow down during the last peak season? Where could staffing have been more efficient? 
Virtual experimentation: What happens if a new refuelling procedure is trialled? What’s the impact of changing the location of helicopter landing pads? 
By creating a safe environment to design and test improvements virtually, smaller airports could avoid costly, disruptive errors and implement proven optimisations with confidence. 
How CACI can help you reap the benefits of digital twins
Digital twins aren’t reserved for the world’s largest airports or organisations. They offer just as much– if not more– value to smaller, agile organisations where every efficiency gain translates to a significant operational advantage. 
The future of aviation infrastructure isn’t just about scaling up. It’s about scaling smart, starting with embracing the power of a digital twin. 
Discover more about Mood’s cutting-edge advancements in digital twins with our latest video, created in collaboration with CyNam. We delve into real-world applications of digital twins, offering insights into how these virtual replicas can address challenges and drive innovation.

Case study

Activating data for a flagship customer experience project for the RAC

Summary

The RAC provides complete peace of mind to more than 12.7 million UK personal and business members, whatever their driving needs. They’re famous for breakdown assistance, but they also provide motor insurance and a range of other services, including buying a new or used car, vehicle inspections and checks, legal services and traffic and travel information.

Company size

1,000 – 5,000

Industry

Transportation & Logistics

Services used

Marketing Technology

Products used

ResolvID

Challenge

The RAC had outgrown its relatively basic campaign tool. They needed something more flexible and efficient to transform the existing manual and time-intensive process for campaign delivery. Their on-premise SQL solution was hosted by a third-party agency. Poor access to data constrained the RAC marketing team, which needed to be more self-sufficient in campaign operations.

The RAC’s Data and CRM Strategy Leader, Ian Ruffle, says:  “Because the legacy technology wasn’t efficient, it took over 48 hours to refresh the data. If it fell over, as it often did, because we were at the limits of the solution’s capability, it could take up to ten days from a customer being acquired to reflect that in the marketing solution. This was becoming a real problem.”

Solution

The RAC and CACI worked together to implement a suite of tools to transform the RAC’s marketing capabilities and to create the efficiencies and flexibility they needed. The first step was to build a single customer view (SCV) database using Snowflake. The pay-by-consumption processing function made it scalable and cost effective as well as future-proof. This gave the RAC direct access and control of their own data, which was a key requirement. Within Snowflake, CACI built a secure, accurate and compliant dataset, in line with GDPR requirements.

The database is hosted in the MS Azure cloud, and is refreshed and managed using Azure Functions, event triggers and DBT models. CACI’s resolution identity product, ResolvID, also plays a part in the solution. It’s hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and consumed in real-time as event-triggered files are added into the database. This gives the RAC a complete view of each customer across multiple datasets and sources, allowing them to engage their customers in a more holistic way.

CACI implemented Adobe Campaign, Target and Analytics. For the campaign implementation, the team created 42 different tables and two different data structures – one for the B2C side of RAC’s business and one for the B2B side. Then, the RAC and CACI worked together to migrate all their existing campaigns from their legacy solution into the new Adobe Campaign instance, automating everywhere that was possible.

Adobe Triggers mean that web-based events from the customer can feed through into Adobe Campaign in real time. The RAC are using this for their enhanced abandoned baskets campaign. Communication can be triggered instantly, catching customers at a key point in the purchase lifecycle.

With Adobe Target, customer journeys can be personalised throughout the RAC’s website. Now, when a customer lands on the home page, they see personalised content based on interaction they’ve had with the brand before and products that they have or have not purchased.

Results

CACI’s team worked closely with the RAC design team to create them an on-brand template within the CACI Email Studio application. This reduced their previous dependency on third party creative agencies. Now, the RAC team is empowered to control and to create their own emails, without needing an HTML skillset. Email Studio delivers confidence in the usability and the rendering of emails when they land in the customer’s inbox, making sure it’s a positive experience throughout.

Ian Ruffle quantifies the value of the transformation: “Our marketing activation project has delivered a seven-fold improvement in data latency. We’re getting a reliable daily build of the core tables, plus many tables maintained in real time or via hourly batch processes, to meet the various trigger needs of the business.

“75% of the campaigns in the new solution are fully automated. We’re in the process of embedding this for newer campaigns. This gives our teams a huge amount more time to think about how to optimise the campaign and get the best ROI. At the roadside, when customers aren’t sure where their patrol was, they phone us. We’ve seen a 6% reduction in these calls, which is huge for us. It’s a massive cost saving and a much better customer experience, to be kept fully informed”

Case Studies

Case study

How Cygnum helps Caerphilly County Borough Council move projects, scheduling & services forward remotely

Caerphilly County Borough Council logo

Summary

Caerphilly County Borough Council uses Cygnum to operate its Home Care and Reablement services. These provide vital care and support to those in need within the borough, supporting people to stay at home. The smooth running of these services is vital to ensure that Caerphilly can look after those in need in a timely and appropriate manner. To operate an effective service, Caerphilly relies upon a team of approximately 300 staff, which it schedules through Cygnum.

Industry

Transportation & logistics

Services used

Products used

Challenge

Frontline services didn’t stop during COVID-19: councils still needed to deliver their key services and Caerphilly was no different. With previously office-based staff now working from home, it necessitated a rethink in how Caerphilly received account management, training and support from CACI in its use of Cygnum.

Solution

Caerphilly County Borough Council has been using Cygnum from CACI for over a decade to provide its workforce management solutions, ensuring that it has the right people in the right places, performing the right tasks. As a council, Caerphilly must monitor several different areas, making flexibility a requirement that must sit at the heart of its operations. It was vital, therefore, that Caerphilly quickly found nimble solutions when faced with the mandatory lockdown put in place at the outbreak of COVID-19.

FUSION is CACI’s project management delivery methodology, which helps its clients shape, create and utilise its services. FUSIONhub is an extension of this methodology designed to encompass and embrace off-premise project delivery.

Acting as a virtual consultancy, FUSIONhub enables all users to keep in touch and keep up to date, wherever they are. All of CACI’s processes, tools and deliverables are available whenever and wherever they are needed. Taking advantage of an increasingly connected world, FUSIONhub delivers unparalleled flexibility in project management and delivery.

Results

During the 11 years that Cygnum has been supporting Caerphilly, a well-established relationship has formed along more traditional lines. Remote meetings and training have always been a possibility, but have never previously been a necessity.

To continue delivering a smooth and flexible service, Cygnum uses CACI’s FUSIONhub methodology to ensure that all meetings, training sessions and other deliverables can be completed remotely. Using third party software, it means that the Cygnum team was able to deliver training to Caerphilly via their preferred platform, in this case Zoom. FUSIONhub is available via other virtual meeting rooms such as GoToMeeting, Teams and Skype, too.

Learn more about Cygnum

Case studies

Case study

Enhancing Gwynedd Council’s use of Cygnum’s reporting functionality remotely

Gwynedd Council Logo

Summary

With disruptions to traditional training methods increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic, CACI’s FUSIONhub along with the Cygnum team helped ensure Gwynedd Council could successfully deliver remote training and keep projects progressing remotely.

Industry

Transportation & Logistics

Products used

Challenge

In normal circumstances, CACI would have arranged for the course trainer — in this case, Cygnum Product Manager, Matt Lewis— to visit Gwynedd Council’s offices to deliver a two-day training course to stakeholders in person. With lockdown rules in place, however, this was not possible.

“Neither Chris, the Systems Manager, nor myself were in our current posts when Cygnum was first implemented at Gwynedd,” says Mark. “It is something I’ve inherited following an internal restructuring and I was keen that we get up to speed with the system as quickly as possible to get the most from it.”

“Chris was more familiar with the system than me, having been trained on it by his predecessor, but we wanted some formal training to better understand Cygnum’s reporting functionality.”

Solution

Gwynedd Council has been using Cygnum for a decade to support its care services across the county, scheduling carers and keeping track of those in care. Deploying a team of 330 carers to operate their services, these essential services remained in full flow throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, proving to be vital to ensuring the ongoing safety of those in care and those providing the care.

Despite many changes — not least in personnel during that time — Mark Hughes, Systems Manager at the Council, required training for himself and his colleague, Chris Griffith, Systems Officer.

CACI devised its FUSIONhub project delivery methodology around virtual management to continue driving projects forward despite people avoiding the office during the pandemic. This was not only vitally important to CACI, but to customers as well.

Cygnum Product Manager, Matt, used Cygnum’s standard training course in a way which was responsive to Gwynedd’s specific needs around Cygnum’s reporting functionality. The course was delivered across four half-day sessions rather than the usual two full days via Microsoft Teams.

“Matt was very professional and really knew his stuff,” Mark explained. “He ensured that the sessions were very informative and interactive and kept it interesting at all times. Matt was brilliant, to be honest.”

While there was some apprehension for Gwynedd around delivering such an important training programme virtually, it was a step that needed to be taken.

Results

“The training has been invaluable,” Mark said. “It enabled us to make richer use of Cygnum’s reporting functionality and to improve some of the work processes we have in place. We managed to automate several reports and decrease the manual intervention to format others, giving the end user and managers better quality reporting to use across our services.”

Learn more about Cygnum

Case studies

Case study

Using FUSION to power and project manage major upgrade work

Summary

CACI’s FUSION methodology is designed to deliver projects on time and in budget. Following three key phases – shape, create and utilise – FUSION sets out the vision, goals and timelines of all customer delivery and internal development work. This case study looks at how CACI’s Cygnum workforce management and scheduling software went through a major enhancement project to deliver a new release, Cygnum 2020, overseen internally using FUSION. This included improving the software, ensuring future compliance for users and the release of a mobile app to support enhanced usability of Cygnum.

Industry

Technology

Products used

Solution

As with all projects, it is important to fully understand, as a team, why we are creating a project and what it needs to achieve. “We had been working alongside our customers for a number of years to deliver software development projects which were often bespoke,” explains Luke Brown, project manager for Cygnum 2020. “Components of these projects were actually beneficial to all our customers, so a new release made it possible to amalgamate these as standard for everyone. Research and development we had been working on internally was also included, as was any ongoing compliance updates, be they for data and security regulations or third-party compatibility.”

This would bring benefits to everyone by delivering enhanced functionality and the creation of a common platform for future development. A release like this also makes customer support of Cygnum more straightforward by having commonality in use of the system and satisfying compliance concerns for all.

“Once we understood what the project needed to achieve, it enabled us to focus on the mobilisation and discovery stages of FUSION,” says Luke. “A good example of this is the mobile app that we wanted to create for Cygnum. Extending the usability of Cygnum made a great deal of sense and was something that customers were keen to see. We identified the need to cover mobile forms via the app, essentially making the capturing of data for field-based workers available in real-time, so that they could log data on the move. This would then bring more benefits to more of our customers.”

“Once we had established an agile approach to the FUSION methodology that was to drive the Cygnum 2020 project, we went into a phase of building and testing, building and testing,” says Luke. “This helped the Cygnum team to ensure that everything was coming together as planned.”

Since Cygnum was undergoing a number of functionality enhancements, it was important that the team then started working on the Cygnum user guides to incorporate the changes that Cygnum 2020 would introduce. This started with a number of internal sessions to upskill the team to help them prepare for the launch of Cygnum 2020.

“Education of staff internally was hugely important,” stresses Luke. “Not only did it help team members to prepare on an individual basis, we were able to listen to their feedback and establish areas where we could perhaps be a little clearer in our use of language and terminology.“

“At the same time this supported the verify stage of the project. We were using QMETRY, a Jira add-on, which was supporting the constant process of building and testing that underpinned the create stage of Cygnum 2020. This helped us with the all-important stress testing, too, which consisted of two rounds of regression testing.”

Results

Once the shape and create stages of any FUSION project are completed, it is time to focus on the utilise aspect of the project. “A major aspect of the utilise stage for Cygnum 2020 was awareness,” says Luke. “We had to make everyone in our wider team aware of Cygnum 2020 and what it meant, before engaging with our marketing colleagues to establish materials and campaigns to help us with customer awareness.

“This included updating user guides, a webinar which was recorded by Cygnum solutions architect, Kristen Butler, supporting marketing materials including a teaser campaign and glossy, detailed release notes that our customers could use to generate interest in the upgrade work amongst their teams when they came to implementing Cygnum 2020. This relied heavily upon the work completed in the create stage of the project, since the team was able to draw upon its own internal education to help inform the awareness element for clients.”

Image of an office worker typing on laptop and updating software. A progress bar is shown superimposed above the keyboard.

This then turned into the transition phase of the project, with a go-live date for release established and a number of customer upgrade orders to fulfil immediately! The transition phase is ongoing, as is the final element of the project, evolve.

“The evolve phase has already started,” explains Luke. “We are already getting feedback from customers and our own internal processes which are informing the future roadmap for Cygnum; we’re not resting on our laurels and patting ourselves on the back for a job well done, we’re looking for ways to continue to evolve Cygnum and make it even better for the next release.”

Cygnum 2020 went live in May 2020. Using the proven project delivery methodology of FUSION, the team was able to operate the process smoothly, on time and in budget. FUSION is the delivery methodology that CACI uses for all of its projects, both internally and customer facing.

Case studies

Case study

How Transport for Greater Manchester increased value from data to understand the people behind travel patterns

Summary

A combination of Transport for Greater Manchester and CACI’s data created insight on customer profiles.

Company size

1,000

Industry

Transport & logistics

Products used

Challenge

Increase the proportion of journeys made by active travel and public transport

Understand variations in the customer profile across different modes of travel, and specific Bus, Metrolink, and cycle routes

Understand barriers to take-up for different user groups (e.g. geographic location, affordability)

Identify appropriate ways to engage with existing customers and target new users 

Solution

To overcome these challenges, Transport for Greater Manchester partnered with CACI on the following solutions: 

  • Acorn Postcode, Workforce Acorn, Paycheck and Retail Footprint to enhance its own datasets, including survey data (at the sampling, weighting and analysis stages) 
  • Use with GIS systems to identify spatial patterns and trends
  • Postcode-level analysis provides a granular understanding that allows for targeted intervention

Results

“CACI’s Acorn, Acorn knowledge base and supporting products (Paycheck, Retail Footprint), used in combination with our own datasets, increase the value we can get from our data and help us to understand in more depth the people behind the travel patterns.”

Rosalind O’Driscoll, Head of Policy Insight and Public Affairs – Transport for Greater Manchester

Case studies

Case study

How CACI helped optimise utilisation of storage capacity across the MoD estate

Summary

The MoD is the UK’s second largest landowner, in possession of 1.1 million acres across the UK (2% of the country’s landmass). Land Usage and Management is crucial to the MoD’s operation and CELLA is paramount in carrying out these critical activities.

In 2020, the Warehousing and Distribution Optimisation (WDO) began a programme to better understand and manage the estate. The WDO needed a central repository that would supply a consolidated view of the wider MoD landscape to bolster planning and decision-making. The solution needed to offer evidence and operational data for the MoD’s ability to function, with a high standard of consistency, accuracy and analytical reporting. This was crucial to the WDO’s objective of increasing efficiency and using reliable evidence to manage efforts, storage capabilities and limitations.

Company size

10,000+

Industry

Defence, National Security, Transportation & Logistics

Services used

Products used

Challenge

The MoD struggled to easily understand the space it maintains and the attributes of its various storage locations. This restricted their planning and decision-making for military operations or civil requirements, particularly storing PPE reserves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Warehousing and other storage facilities were managed on an individual basis without a centralised database or management system, and data storage was often highly siloed.

The WDO decided upon a bespoke solution delivery approach, as there was no readily available commercial off-the-shelf tool that met their complex requirements. The system needed to prompt users (via email) to provide updates, with the frequency of updates having to be configurable based on need (e.g. data for short-term storage facilities should be updated more often than longer-term facilities.)

The data held on the solution needed to be comprehensive, including everything from basic facility type to state of repair and security factors.

Understanding the space available and its attributes

Restrictions on planning and decision-making

Solution

CACI worked with the WDO to optimise and classify their raw data and understand usage and users’ needs. Using Mood’s no-code software, CACI rapidly deployed an integrated solution that put relevant information at the fingertips of decision-makers.

A one-click/two-click navigation created an optimal user experience and encouraged the MoD’s goal of promoting self-sufficiency. Standardised terms and references enabled users to search the entire system, additional permissions-based access could be granted for those users who require it and automated email reminders prompted efficient action.

The Mood platform CACI delivered allows the input data to be filtered and combined in multiple ways to supply answers to operational and planning challenges, such as readiness for military or civilian emergency operations. Functional aspects such as the frequency of automated prompts is configurable to meet local conditions. Data can be exported for secondary reporting (e.g. using Power BI tools).

The frequency of email reminders can be configured on a site-by-site basis to ensure data is updated for sites where storage requirements change regularly while keeping effort low for sites used for long-term storage.

Results

Over 300 buildings are now listed within this tool and WDO users are working towards achieving comprehensive estate coverage. The WDO’s understanding of their operational assets and storage buildings has improved, helping them decide whether particular locations or sites are right for particular actions to optimise their estate. Since delivering the first phase of this programme, we have extended the CELLA capability by adding:  

  • Self-sufficiency: As the solution was being handed over to a central support desk, we ensured that wherever possible, users could maintain the solution themselves and not rely on CACI.  
  • User-specific information: Users’ home screens were updated to showcase information immediately, allowing them to focus on what needed to be done.  
  • Streamlined administration: Users can now access all necessary information about storage sites in one place without having to telephone individual sites and speak to multiple people. Stored items can be located and, just as importantly, storage opportunities can be identified quickly. 

The CELLA Data Management Tool (CDMT) team are now working their way around the country to load further sites and hardstandings into the tool. This will give the MoD greater insight into their estate of buildings that is expanding in the face of global instability. 

Learn more about Mood

Case Studies

Case study

How CACI’s GIS software accelerates business growth for Müller Milk & Ingredients

Muller logo

Summary

Müller Milk and Ingredients Distribution (MMID) is a milk business collecting over a billion litres of raw milk annually, distributing it to supermarkets, convenience stores and wholesaler customers across the UK. MMID has approximately 6,000 delivery points throughout the country and runs a mixed fleet of heavy goods vehicles, ranging from 26-tonne rigid lorries to 44-tonne artics. MMID also owns six dairies and 10 distribution depots along the west side of the country.

Company size

10,000

Industry

Transport & Logistics

Services used

Challenge

MMID is a large and complex business forming several types of delivery points of varying volumes. Due to the thousands of delivery points and farms that the business collects raw milk from, gaining a comprehensive and translatable view of customers has been a complicated task.

A lack of granularity into the visualisation of farms and depots had prevented MMID from innately analysing customer trends and ultimately supplying senior management with a digestible lay of the land that could enhance their decision-making and strategies.

Solution

MMID uses CACI’s market leading GIS platform and unique data solutions to create a map of the UK that highlights where depots, shops and supplies are located. The tool equips MMID with valuable visual insight that far exceeds the capabilities of a data spreadsheet in terms of highlighting customer patterns and trends that can be presented to senior stakeholders concisely. Key findings can be translated via a map when meeting with senior stakeholders and the map can be drawn on directly to illustrate any areas or circumstances that need to be addressed.

Anthony Helm, Central Transport Planner at MMID, explained the impact that having this detailed visual representation of these countrywide locations has had on their business operations.

“We recognise CACI as one of the major players in this sector and the tool as a leading solution. Our work with CACI has spanned over a decade and their ongoing support and consultancy along with the tool itself have made tremendous differences to our location planning processes and outcomes.”

Results

In terms of farm collection, CACI’s GIS tool has supported MMID by effectively refreshing and reviewing the boundaries between various operations. This insight enhances their planning for reducing overall costs and fuel consumption of their fleet, both of which are critical agenda points for the business to tackle when considering their carbon capture. On the delivery side, CACI’s GIS tool has aided MMID in strategically moving their customers to the appropriate delivery profile based on their geographic locations. This has bolstered the entire process of onboarding new customers.

Going forward, MMID is keen to explore additional optimisation products that would enhance their transport planning software, which is where CACI will continue to be one of the trusted providers.

With the climate agenda remaining a high priority for the business, reducing the miles travelled by their fleet and the amount of fuel used will continue to be key points that MMID will address. The business will also focus on optimising their cost savings strategy and assess where they should be heading strategically, which is what CACI’s GIS tool has proven to be particularly useful for. They also anticipate continuing to leverage CACI’s tool for ongoing support regarding the business’ directional strategy when presenting findings to the board.

Learn more about our GIS Solutions

Case studies