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Learning from Other Industries

A positive note for telecoms is that many other industries are ahead of us and have had to face up to similar challenges. Automotive companies like Ford or VAG long ago stopped building new cars from the ground up, realizing that to do so sucked up far too much resource, not only at the design and build stage but in later servicing and support. Instead, multinational car companies now build a wide range of models for different brands, market sectors and geographies from standard platforms and components.

The effect of this philosophy on service quality is huge: cars can be assembled from pre-tested components and delivered to customers within days. And when service and support calls come in, the service engineer doesn't need to understand the configurations of hundreds of different models and variants – just a comparatively small number of engines, steering racks, audio units and so on. A similar comparison could be made with consumer electronics companies such as Dell or Panasonic. These companies have found that rationalization and normalization of data minimizes the amount of information that needs to be retained, managed, and accessed.

Managing product data in this way also allows additional service information, which is vital for good customer support to be carried, such as how different services, product components, technical capabilities, and equipment can be, or as importantly mustn't be, combined. This level of understanding is critical to resolving customer queries with the minimum of highly skilled (and expensive) resources, and to recommending valid upgrades or replacements. In this way, we see that effective product data management becomes a vital element not only in delivering a good customer experience, but in turning that service interaction smoothly into a natural sales opportunity.

Addressing the Product Lifecycle

Industries such as automotive and consumer electronics are applying effective product lifecycle management (PLM). They are rationalising data acr oss the product space in such a way that it can be easily and consistently accessed and used. This supports a more efficient design process, as different parts of the organization can collaborate around a common product view, and base much of their design on pre-tested components. But it also supports a much more efficient rollout of service (as processes and workflow also become reusable components) and a much more effective response to customer queries as product data becomes simpler and easier to understand without advanced engineering skills.