CSP Outsourcing For the Long Haul

By Al Brisard

Outsourcing continues to gain adoption among Communications Service Providers (CSP) as the real value is better understood. These adopters have often relegated the management of existing operational activities and legacy services to an outsourced group, enabling the CSP’s internal team to bring next-generation products and services to market. Unwillingness lingers to entrust outside resources with responsibility for new product development, launches and ongoing management and process optimization.  But as the pace of change continues to accelerate and market demand for faster innovative new technologies increases, CSPs that believe they can meet all their needs internally, without a key outsourced partner in the mix, are likely to lose in the long run.

Momentum is building in both CSP executive and IT camps to incorporate some level of outsourcing in their businesses, but too often outsourcing is considered simply a cost-cutting measure, and the move to develop a close long-term relationship with a truly multi-faceted outsourcing partner is still a rarity. Currently, much of the outsourcing used by CSPs is focused on consistent and basic tasks that need to be performed in great volumes. Moving forward, CSPs will begin to evaluate outsourcing companies on total value such as their efficiency, predictability, flexibility, timely delivery of quality services and the ability to improve as well as execute processes.   

I would add to that worthy list the ability of an outsourcing partner to be still more. The partner should have the ability to become an extension of the CSP itself; to become a trusted and valued resource with depth of experience in a wide variety of professional services, extensive telecom domain expertise, highly skilled process-oriented technical abilities – and not in silos within the partner organization that are independent of each other, but all fully integrated under a single unified partner entity.   

Rather than outsourcing to a variety of organizations with expertise in just one of many silos on an occasional basis, I recommend that CSPs should definitely consider a chosen outsourcing organization as a partner, and contract with them on multiple projects over an extended period of time. In this way, the outsource partner will gain a true understanding of the CSP’s operations, be able to quickly fill in the gaps with complementary resources wherever necessary and help the CSP achieve realistic growth and diverse service goals. Roles and responsibilities between the CSP and its partner will be better understood, and solid working relationships based on mutual respect will be developed.

The result: The CSP will be able to rely on an experienced partner to add value in all facets of the business, new and existing. But most importantly, CSPs will be in a position to react to changes in the market sooner and meet customer and market demands faster and more cost effectively.    

Al Brisard is vice president of marketing and business development at Vertek Corp. , a leading provider of end-to-end business process outsourcing, business consulting and managed business assurance offerings that allow communication providers to reduce costs, improve customer experiences, grow revenue and ultimately improve profitability. Contact him at: abrisard@vertek.com.