End-to-end fulfillment means defining, ordering and delivering value to each customer at the appropriate level of quality. It is a challenge to do it right, it’s an even bigger challenge to keep doing it right in a turbulent market place!
The Telecoms market is evolving, opening up and innovating rapidly. Traditional operators are struggling to keep their ‘average revenue per user’ at a healthy level. New entrants want to keep a rapid innovation pace. Parties not traditionally part of the telecom community are seeking added value benefits from packaging an array of services.
The current focus on triple play soon will make place for the hunt on the next killer application. New technologies like 3G mobile, All IP networks and the emergence of service delivery platforms like IP Multi Media Subsystem (IMS), Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE) or Connected Services Framework (CSF) are leaving managers with more questions than answers.
Leveraging Innovation
In response to these challenges we see an increasing number of companies considering or implementing demarcation lines between functional roles. The obvious challenge of course is to transform tightly knitted fulfillment processes into a high performance E2E fulfillment chain across the various role demarcations. As a consequence of the new, more federative way of working, companies need to change their approach to innovation and product/ service development. The DIY R&D type of innovation approach is often replaced by an open innovation model in order to create maximum leverage from initiatives outside the company.
Another key challenge is the shift from ‘once size fits all’ marketing approach driven by technology to a much more segmented approach with service packages and ‘customer experiences’ tailored to specific target groups. In order to do this in an efficient way it requires service providers to build generic white labeled services and deliver them through various brands by multiple packagers The way the fulfillment interaction with the customers also needs to be differentiated across target groups.
The rise of new ‘packagers’ from outside the traditional telecom market is a relatively new phenomenon in the wire line part of the industry. Parties with strong links to specific constituencies are looking to add more value to their members by packaging connectivity services with their traditional portfolio and delivering these on a retail basis. This will drive service providers to carefully select the services they are willing to deliver on a wholesale basis to these new packagers. As a consequence the wholesale offering will change as well as the wholesale fulfillment chain.
Developing Clear Roadmaps
Apart from the driving forces from the buyer market there is also an increase of force from the supplier market. New technology and new hard- and software are becoming available at an increasing pace. This forces providers to develop clear technology roadmaps and also think about how to deal with the migration of existing and new services across legacy and new technological implementations.
Atos Origin’s vast experience with service and network providers in various countries as well as our contributions to the industry in forums like Telemanagement Forum allow us to combine consult- build- integrate and operate capabilities with best practices and state of the art insights.
Chris van Iersel
Senior Business Consultant at Atos Consulting Business Innovation
Chris has over 22 years of international experience in the Telecommunication industry in management and advisory roles ranging from network design and planning to strategy, architecture, process management and service development. Prior to joining the Atos Origin consultancy community, Chris worked for KPN, Uniworld, AT&T Unisource, Infonet Europe and was actively involved in NMF and Telemanagement Forum.