Armed with fresh data gathered through a survey done jointly with Telecom Asia and his own deep insights into the back office, Karl Whitelock, senior consulting analyst of OSS/BSS Global Competitive Strategies at Stratecast, a division of Frost & Sullivan, has determined that BSS and OSS vendors should be feeling pretty good right about now, despite the troubles felt in the world all around them. He spoke with B/OSS upon his return from Singapore last week about the challenges that remain for service providers and the state of the software segment, through which he provided hints of his keynote address at the Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo next week in Las Vegas.
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| Stratecast's Karl Whitelock |
What were the highlights from your own BSS/OSS conference in Singapore?
In a joint survey we did with Telecom Asia, we asked operators what their most important OSS/BSS initiatives were. The top three answers were: (1) support for service quality, (2) support for network upgrades and convergence and (3) support for the more timely introduction of new services. The interesting thing is that their answers were the same as last year. Their priorities haven’t changed.
We also asked which business areas within their organizations were getting the most attention, as the initiatives [above] break down into operational functions. Two of the top three answers stayed the same as last year: customer experience management and customer care (and self care). The third top answer was new: business analytics and intelligence. This moved up because last year’s number three, rating and charging, dropped to eighth place — and that’s because operators are actually out there doing things supporting that.
A big change from last year, and an encouraging one, is that last year only one-third of respondents had CEM programs in place. This year it’s completely reversed. Sixty percent said they had programs underway or started. People are starting to pay attention to this.
The great news for vendors is that a full third said they would see only a minor decrease in actually spend for telecom IT infrastructure. Fifteen percent said there would be no change. Another 15 percent said they would actually see some level of increase compared to last year. Although 35 percent said there would be a more aggressive decrease, if you add it all up, two-thirds of operators said there would be only slight changes, positive or negatives to last year.
