Partner Article

The future-proof telco – part 3: Why partnership is critical to the success of operators’ application business

As discussed in my previous blogs, I addressed the need to prepare for the future and how going it alone with your own technology can often present major risks.

Therefore, the challenge is to find partners that can add value and help the business meet its goals.

For those operators who have used third parties, there is often a risk of creating more complexity around service creation. Therefore, the main function of the outsourcing partner is to provide the operator with a solution while delivering its expertise.

Phil Braden, senior vice president of technology and applications at PCCW Global explains how partnership is important to the success of operators’ application business.

Phil says: “Operators need to offer more valuable applications and services to their customers, however, they may not have sufficient experience and expertise to develop and deliver a wide range of valuable applications.

“Partners that can simplify the service creation process, create cost-efficiencies and deliver ROI help a telecoms operator to stay ahead of competitors and grow its margin.”

To create, fill, manage, bill and deliver an end user experience that is aligned and cost-effective, the outsourced services partner can be contracted to design a new product as well as the customer experience that goes around it.

Once the partner has created the service, the operator can adopt fully formed services and can use expertise in OSS and BSS as well as customer experience.

Phil concludes: “To compete in the future, telecoms operators will look at the simplest and most cost-effective way to sell more services and that may be from a mix of partner-created services as well as internally-created services that they want to keep closer to home.

“The opportunity to differentiate your business is there and future success will be linked to service creation and delivery as well as the flexibility operators can offer their customers with new services.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Scott Goodwin .