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use that service provider’s network because of a corresponding perception (f) of significant valuable functionality developed by third parties that can be obtained by doing so. In other words, partner and suppliers’ growth drives subscriber growth, and vice versa, in a positive feedback loop that in similar industries has proven to be highly lucrative.
Furthermore, this dynamic creates a “lock in” effect. Partners and suppliers are resistant to building solutions for other networks (g), while consumers are resistant to using other platforms (h). The reason in both cases: sunk costs. Customers have invested in a richly functional communications infrastructure which would be at least inconvenient for a consumer to change, while being hugely disruptive and expensive for an enterprise customer, For partners and suppliers who have invested heavily in training, design, implementation and support all based on a given network platform, changing platforms would require significant re-investment in the alternative technology.
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Telcos must be able to rapidly and cheaply reconfigure OSS and BSS systems to support functions such as order entry, order management, billing, provisioning, customer care, and others. |
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all CSPs,” says the Yankee Group’s Avi Banerjee in his July 2009 report, End-to-End Order Management Automates the Service Provider’s Value Chain. “Because most CSPs view order management as a strategic vehicle for differentiation, it comes as no surprise that it is an area of significant investment…”
Banerjee goes on to quote specific numbers reflecting current service provider reality compared to their near-term priorities: two arenas in which there are significant differences. The time to launch new services is still 90 days to a year, yet service providers desire “near real-time” ability to change an offer. An order requires 25 to 50 minutes for
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Critical success factors here—which are not consistently followed by telecoms—are as follows:
The requirement for OSS speed and low cost, specifically in enterprise product catalog and order management: Since service lifetimes are shorter than in the past, and margins smaller, telcos must be able to rapidly and cheaply reconfigure OSS and BSS systems to support functions such as order entry, order management, billing, provisioning, customer care, and others.
There is an emerging consensus that an order management system, in particular, serves as a linchpin for success in this arena, both because of the significant downstream costs of ordering errors, and because ordering systems are typically highly integrated to many other back office systems. “OM solutions have … proven to be one of the key pain points for
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a CSR to record, yet CSPs wish to deflect calls to self-service portals. The back-end order fallout rate is 15 to 25 percent, yet CSPs wish to push this number to zero. Modern order management systems can bridge this gap.
The importance of the intangible perceptions (e and f in the figure): These can be influenced by the service provider supporting marketing and “evangelism” efforts, which serve to accelerate the cycle shown.
The importance of offering low-cost services to partners and suppliers as the model is established: Telcos must understand that the creation of the runaway dynamics in the above model involves two distinct phases. At first, it is critical to attract contributors away from competing opportunities through giving away (or providing at a nominal cost) training, conference, and other services.
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