Turn Five Communications Industry Challenges into Real Competitive Opportunities
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Turn Five Communications Industry Challenges into Real Competitive Opportunities
- 1. Perficient Perspectives Turn Five Communications Industry Challenges into Real Competitive Opportunities
- 2. Our Speaker Randy Shillman Director, Perficient’s Communications Practice Randy has over 17 years of experience in the communications industry. He began his career with Andersen Consulting (Accenture). He later joined Objective Systems where he was instrumental in establishing a Europe, MIddle East and Africa (EMEA) office to deliver communications OSS and NMS solutions to service providers. Randy joined BoldTech Systems (which was later acquired by Perficient) in 1998. At BoldTech, Randy was responsible for growing its Revenue Assurance practice from inception to a multimillion dollar service offering in just over a year, and later assumed practice management responsibilities for the entire communications industry, which comprised over half of BoldTech's annual revenues. In 2007, Randy assumed the role of VP of Operations for the AmberWatch Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to protecting children from predators. He returned to Perficient in 2009 where he now is a director of its Communications Competency Center(C3). 2
- 3. Layer Network Protocols Communications service providers (CSPs) have traditionally been strongest down in the network… Application HTTP, SIP, SMTP …and Net Neutrality regulation is making it harder for CSPs to provide differentiated service to these OTTs …while at the same time these network technologies are converging …while at the same time the CSPs themselves are converging (e.g. CenturyLink/Qwest, AT&T/T-Mobile, Windstream/PAETEC) Presentation SSL, MPEG Session Sockets, RPC Transport TCP, UDP Network IP Unfortunately, revenue growth is happening with rich content, apps and cloud services from “Over the Top” (OTT) providers like Apple and Google…. Datalink The Communications Industry Dilemma In a Nutshell Ethernet WiFi PPP Physical DSL CDMA POTS
- 5. Div. Yield % = 5.84% (AT&T and Verizon are highest yielding on Dow)
- 7. CapEx expected to increase at compound rate of 2.4% to 2015 3
- 8. The Third best performer over 1 year on S&P 5004Comparison of iShares Dow Jones US Telecom (blue) to DJIA (red)1 Sources: 1 Yahoo! Finance 2 http://pages.stern.nyu.edu 3 http://economictimes.indiatimes.com 4 Money Magazine, August 2011
- 9. Competitive Products Require Efficient “Quote to Cash” Process & Data 5 Ordering Provisioning Activation Order Management Order Item Service Order Order Entry Designer Customer Order Item Designer People – Accurate Introduction, configuration & ordering of complex products through content-driven portals and an integration-oriented approach Order Item Engineer Order Item Order Decomposition App Engineer Engineer CSR Compete Through Innovation Order Item App App Order Item Order Management Organization Process – Improved order management and provisioning through integration, service-oriented architectures and business process management App Network Service Design Organization Service Delivery Organization Survive Through Operational Efficiency Systems/Data – Accurate representation of product, network, service and billing data through network audits, inventory management and revenue assurance. Retain Through Intelligence & Assurance
- 12. Program dependencies get missed and timelines slip
- 13. Defect management takes a back seat, impacting quality
- 16. Change management and Governance
- 17. Process Re-Engineering and Defect Management
- 18. Quick Start RulebooksTM and Readiness Dashboards6
- 21. New protocols/technologies (e.g. XMPP, Jingle, SIP) are still arcane
- 23. CSP Content-driven Customer Portals
- 26. Carriers are opting for SOA vs. COTS for operational efficiency
- 28. Entrenched manual swivel-chair ordering
- 30. SOA for Complex Product Catalogs
- 31. Extending SOA for Business Process Management8
- 34. Inability to trace data through the infrastructure results in long delays in accessing data and stale reporting
- 36. ETL/Data Warehouse Infrastructure Reverse Engineering
- 38. Business intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management
- 41. ARPU is often flat (e.g. declining voice revenues)
- 43. What to do with the bandwidth hogs?
- 44. Lack of 360 degree views of customer
- 45. Too much focus on outbound instead of inbound marketing
- 50. Communications domain subject matter specialists each with an average of over 15 years of cable and telecommunication industry experience
- 51. Reusable industry-specific intellectual property
- 52. Assessments/roadmaps leading to multimillion-dollar revenue and expense improvements
- 53. Expertise across full lifecycle (Design, Develop, Test, Implement, Operate)
- 54. Integration with many legacy and leading modern OSS/BSS systems
- 55. Deep experience with market leading technologies– IBM, Oracle, TIBCO, Microsoft
- 59. 2010 Revenue of $215 million
- 60. 20 major market locations throughout North America
- 61. Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fairfax, Houston, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Louis and Toronto
- 64. 500+ enterpriseclients (2010) and 85% repeat business rate
- 65. Alliance partnerships with major technology vendors
- 69. Business Process & Workflow Consulting
- 70. Usability and UI Consulting
- 73. Package Selection, Implementation and Integration
- 74. Architecture & Application Migrations
- 76. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- First slide is OSI stack? – layers set standards from lowest physical network all the way up to the apps you use.Carriers used to be organized by the lower levels (e.g. wireless, wireline), type of network (e.g. ISP) or geography but those distinctions are going away with industry consolidationConvergence is about being able to use the apps regardless of which of the lower level protocols are being used.The focus is on the app and tailoring to the individual and user experience (e.g. long tail). A whole new term “OTT” characterizes companies like Google who provide content over the carrier networks.Obviously, these companies want Net Neutrality so carriers do not have power over them.Carriers do not want net neutrality so they can offer differentiated serviceIs differentiation still just driven by bandwidth?
- Over last year, the industry performance has mostly approximated the overall market and in some cases outperformed.Service providers are very capital intensive and much capital spending driven by 4G, FTTx, etc. to get to universal broadband deploymentThree-Legged Stool – CapEx, Revenue, Op ExCap Ex arguably factor leading to consolidation (e.g. AT&T acquiring more network capacity with T-Mobile rather than building out)ARPU is a much tracked metric – declining for many services such as voice while the hunger for data and more expensive smartphones and data plans are increasingWith increasing CapEx requirements, uncertain monetization trends and ARPU risks, cost cutting and operational efficiencies are key
- It all starts with having a competitive product that you can get to market faster, cheaper and better.In a rush, key things get overlook, corners are cut and shortcuts are takenPartner management is more important than ever given that many new products involve multiple vendors (e.g. Media companies for content, Verizon/AT&T ISIS and Sprint/Google Mobile Wallet retail payments with banks on cell bills, M2M sensor mobile solutions). Revenue assurance here can be critical.The old long cycle waterfall methodology has to change both within IT development as well as culturally with the BusinessHaving a disciplined methodology and tools to manage product launches will enable a quality launch without all the errorsPerficient’s Solution Approaches:Program leadership: re-baselining programs, validating business cases and program and vendor managementChange management: governance/accountabilities, business readiness and trainingProcess definition/improvement around planning, communication, status, methodology and defect trackingTangible intellectual property toolkits for business cases, operational readiness dashboards, Quick Start RulebooksTM, architectural roadmaps, project planning templates, etc.Example case study - Program managed a major product launch of mobile service offerings for one of the largest cable broadband providers in the US, addressing previous slipped timelines, inefficient processes and untracked defects to deliver successfully
- The portal can be the customer’s primary means into the organization for information, support, sales, self-service, etc.What is different than many other industries is the portal can also be a mechanism to deliver service (e.g. streaming video, online messaging)It is with this content that competitors are taking share away from carriers that have been slower to build differentiation around.In order to build this differentiation, the foundation has to be sound with flexible and easy-to-change web architecturesThe introduction of mobility, VoIP, etc. introduces new protocols and technologies that are aren’t yet ubiquitous (e.g. SIP, Android SDK) Could be talking about massive amounts of content that needs to be managed (i.e. not just web pages)Perficient’s Solution Approaches:Web architecture modernization: increase web channel conversion rate, increase business agility, reduce time-to-market Integrate CSP services into the customer portal for competitive differentiationSelf-care portals that integrate e-commerce with customer experienceWeb content management that enables near-real-time changes to contentExample case study - Re-architected an aging, fragmented and inflexible web infrastructure for one of the largest cellular providers in the US to improve new product introduction, e-Commerce web channel revenue, self-care portal customer experience, and near real-time web content management automation.
- SOA mostly addresses the Process and operational expense aspects, which also enable getting new revenue fasterThe “traditional” approach to delivering service has been with COTS OE/OM/Prov/Inventory packages that are often silo’ed by product vertical (e.g. wireless)Convergence and the blurriness of product barriers requires agility that many of these COTS packages don’t haveThe approach with SOA is instead of point solutions, create an abstracted way of accessing information and executing process without having to understand all the underlying system and data specifics.Because SOA is based on web services, it also allows this integration to extend across partners, 3rd party developers, etc. which as discussed previously is intricate to new service offerings.TMF eTOM is a frequently adopted standard for process and SID for data.Many implementation of SOA using these approaches are supplanting previous COTS silosBPM takes SOA to the next level by allowing the business to define the process by orchestrating these services at a high levelPerficient’s Solution Approaches:Streamlining “quote to cash” with web service-based integration between BSS, OSS and partnersEvolutionary and iterative SOA for complex product catalogs as an alternative to MDMExtension of existing SOA infrastructures with effective business process managementExample case study - guided a leading wireless provider through complete SOA adoption with end-to–end LNP, Order management, Billing, Supply Chain and MDM solutions, meeting software ROI and reducing total cost of ownership
- Data is at the heart of operational efficiency – without good data, you have “garbage in, garbage out”Data is also what allows for business intelligence into the customer, their behavior, and possible churn or new opportunitiesRevenue and operational assurance is really just a unique form of business intelligence which tells you whether there are holes in the operational efficiency and customer services that are leading to leaking revenues or excessive costs.When service providers acquire other service providers, they are inheriting years of legacy data that has to be efficiently integrated into their systemsAt the end, data is an indicator to how you are PerformingLike for portals, unless you have a strong foundation with ETL, data warehouses, etc, you will not have the agility to provide effective business intelligenceData virtualization is a new solution approach that is similar to SOA in providing an abstracted view to data. It’s focus is fast, real-time views that bring data together for immediate transaction or decision-making support.Perficient’s Solution Approaches:Reusable system and data inventory tools, assessments and roadmaps to facilitate consolidationReverse engineering overly complex ETL/data warehouse infrastructures to provide full traceability of how flows through the organization and streamline for efficiency and qualityData virtualization/federation solutions that allow consolidated views of data quickly without underlying infrastructure changesEffective business intelligence and enterprise performance management with industry information modelsRevenue assurance implementations with immediate ROI through recovering leaking revenues and costsExample case study – completely reverse engineered the existing ETL infrastructure and reporting for a major wireless carrier that created a detailed understanding of the end-to-end flows of data from Billing all the way through Data Management to support both ongoing application development and operations.
- CRM was the hot topic 5-10 years ago when everyone was scrambling to implement systems that providing insight and support for Care.Marketing campaign management has traditionally been a distinct area.What PRM does is bridge CRM with Marketing in real-time to prevent customers from churning.Inbound vs. outbound-focusedDefining what retention is. What customer is. What to do with bandwidth hogs?This is critical because the market is saturated and service providers desperately need to hold onto their customers.Have the right information and promotions available right when the customer contacts.Perficient’s Solution Approaches:Real-Time Interactive Inbound Customer Promotion Management spanning engagement channelsCustomer Analytics that predict customer behavior and respond to it through both inbound and outbound channelsCapability roadmaps that balance cost/vendor/business convenience with ROI