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management assets are at the heart of our strategy to help our clients more effectively manage new and advanced value-added services, introduce these services quickly, and evolve these new offers at market speed." It's a matter of strategy.
Other companies, such as Tribold, ConceptWave, and Comptel (especially after its acquisition of Axiom) have paid a great deal of attention to PLM and the product catalog. Likewise, major OSS players like Amdocs and Telcordia have been sure to include a focus on the product catalog as a part of their wider OSS offerings.
In a release related to a Tribold-sponsored webcast, Martina Kurth of Gartner phrased it this way: "Carriers today have a strong need to implement a single product catalog. This becomes even more crucial as carriers need to increase operational efficiency to be competitive. Moreover they need to prepare for more complex customer-centric services today as well as in the future." Indeed, a product catalog is a forward-looking measure. "A single product catalog," Kurth continues,
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Creating a product catalog is far from easy, especially for larger carriers with numerous service offerings. |
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puts it in her article on PLM in this very issue, "Let's be clear: this is not magic.... It took years to create the chaos; we have to realistically expect it to take a few months to unwind and rebuild." (You can read the full article here (http://www.pipelinepub.com/1208/
AC1_1.html).
Indeed, a product catalog is neither a quick fix nor a panacea. It is a difficult project to undertake, and one that will solve many problems, but cannot be expected to fix everything. However, in the end, it is certainly a useful step in improving the overall CSP environment.
The state of the product catalog in the CSP space is still subject to development and discussion. At TM Forum's Management World in Orlando last month, we sat down with
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"plays a significant role for carriers to achieve both business and IT objectives. It will facilitate future product and service requirements that will have an impact on carriers' future competitiveness".
Indeed, CSPs like Telekom Austria have demonstrated a commitment to creating a product catalog, and others, like BT, are moving in that direction. The TM Forum has been driving some of the innovation, and is attempting to make CSPs aware of the benefits of a product catalog.
However, creating a product catalog is far from easy, especially for larger carriers with numerous service offerings. Furthermore, as more CSPs attempt to diversify their offerings, the task becomes more and more complex. As Barbara Lancaster of LTC, International
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representatives from Tribold (CEO John Rainger and Director of Product Marketing Ernest Margitta), industry analysts (LTC's Barbara Lancaster and Stratecast's Nancee Ruzicka), and Forum Chairman Keith Willetts to discuss the state of Product Management. We'll have a full report on the panel in next month's issue, but here are a few thoughts from the discussion:
"Particularly in the last year, what we've seen amongst our customers is a lot more alignment around the needs of the space... and the recognition that Product and Service Lifecycle management is a core integral part of your roadmap is pretty widely accepted," Margitta said, drawing on his experience from his time at Telstra, as well as his experience with Tribold. Furthermore, he confirms that the situation is becoming more and more
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