Telecom Introduction for unified product catalogue
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Divij Dabbas
Industry Introduction As the telecommunication industry has evolved over the last few decades many new communication platforms have been steadily introduced. To remain competitive, operators have invested in the respective BSS and OSS for supporting all the communication platforms, leading to the current situation where operators have ended up with silos of business verticals where each silo caters to particular LOB. This set up raises a number of challenges for the operator and poses a threat against being competitive and profitable at the same time. The key challenges are – Rigidity – Operators are restricted to the process inherited by the respective BSS and OSS investments done for a LOB. Any improvement initiative for managing the product life cycle management for all the LOB's means changes to multiple systems which in itself is a time consuming process and may not justify the ROI expected. Operators are also unable to respond quickly to any market changes. High Operational expenses – As PLM for each LOB is managed as per the business process and limitations of the respective BSS and OSS, operator has to invest heavily in resources to manage the separate LOB's. This leads to an increase in operational expenses. Complexity – In absence of a standard approach of managing PLM for various LOBs operators are unable to automate catalogue updates. Each legacy product catalogue contains unique data formats, definitions and content requirements. Rolling out a new offering in the market must be accomplished through manual procedures and interfaces, an activity which may take a long time, which deprive the operator of the competitive advantage the offering presented initially. Restricted Cross LOBs offerings – In a market where the demand for dual, triple or quad play offerings is ever increasing, operators are struggling to bring together their legacy catalogues on a common platform and generate valid offerings in sync with the market expectations. Restricted product performance visibility – Operators put in lot of resources to analyse the customer base and generate market or customer segment specific offerings, however in absence of a unified approach for PLM operators are not able to effectively track product performance. Without this feedback operators are unable to truly judge the market expectations and stand to increase dissatisfaction in its customer base. Customer dissatisfaction – Order management for each LOB differs in absence of any unified approach and a user may have to access multiple applications to complete a customer order. This tends to lengthen order completion time and introduces irregularities in terms of how each order is treated, creating the recipe for a dissatisfied customer. Inhibition to Launching new LOB's – To be future ready operators intend to launch various next gen services and fastest way to do this is, is by investing in new BSS and OSS to supporting that LOB (such as cloud based services). This further adds to the complexity of managing various legacy catalogues. Slow to implement regulatory directions – Telecom regulatory bodies in all markets play a big role in defining how service must be delivered to the customers. These bodies keep on releasing notices to the operators from time to time to improve their services. With multiple legacy catalogues operators find it challenging to be compliant to the required regulatory obligation in the specified time, more over operators spend lot of resources to be compliant which negatively impacts profitability. These challenges highlight a clear opportunity for introduction of a platform which allows for unification of all the product and service attributes across all the LOB's operators are offering in the market. Such a platform should be able to relieve the operator from listed operational, IT and business concerns as well as making the IT investments future safe. An operator would expect certain benefits when they invest in a Unified product catalogue application. Some of the key benefits which such a platform must bring in are listed below – Operations - The platform should be able to accommodate the legacy catalogues currently being managed by the operator and introduce unified PLM, thus reducing the resource pressure needed to manage PLM via disparate catalogues. It should enable the operator to exercise unified order management so that order completion times and process are optimized to enhance customer satisfaction. The platform should relive the pressure of managing new catalogues whenever new LOBs are introduced. IT – Operators invest heavily in various OSS and BSS components to support the products and services they are offering. The platform should be able to reutilize this investment when creating a centralized product lifecycle. The platform must be compliant to Industry standards and principles such as eTOM, SID, SOA etc. to allow easy introduction to operator's IT landscape at the same time making the investment future proof. Business – Should reduce the go to market time of new offerings, allowing operators to establish competitive advantage. Allow operators to roll out cross LOB offerings such as dual, triple and quad play. Allow operators to perform detailed product performance analysis so that they can make necessary changes to current offerings and ensure high customer satisfaction. Should allow the operator to comply to regulatory body requirements in the stipulated time
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