As telecommunications service providers leave their mass-market, one-size-fits-all approach to services behind and begin to offer targeted, even on-demand services, their product lifecycle management styles need a makeover.

Stratecast calls for a new dynamic product lifecycle management approach to replace the traditional one it says is no longer relevant. The research firm’s new report, “Dynamic Product Management for Communications Services Providers – The Time is Now," commissioned by Tribold, discusses how the manual bundling and unbundling of services and features is ineffective in today’s environment.

Nancee Ruzicka, senior research analyst at Stratecast and author of the report, said her research clearly shows that the rate of change in the telecoms industry -- in the number of products and services available and customer demand -- has not been matched by a change in how CSPs manage their product portfolios. “Providing customized bundles of products for specific customer segments is within reach of CSPs today, but only if they adopt a dynamic approach to product management,” Ruzicka said.

The research report sited three examples of service providers using dynamic product lifecycle management and a centralized product catalog to reduce the time and cost of bringing new products to market by up to 80%. One company saw savings of more than $11m in addition to revenue increases of more than $13m following its adoption of the new approach to product lifecycle management.

“Stratecast’s research report sets out in black and white the compelling business case for dynamic product management and the role of a centralized product catalog in achieving it,” said Simon Muderack, COO of Tribold in a statement. “As the report’s title says, the time is now for CSPs to re-think their approach to product management. Failing to do so will mean an inability to meet customer demand and maintain any competitive advantage.”

Ruzicka said in her report that twenty years ago, telcos may have gotten by with manually maintained product catalogs that included, at most, 100 to 200 offerings. Today, with thousands of products being offered, the telco approach to product lifecycle management is “sadly lacking.”

She also said that while offering “unlimited” bundles address the frustration of consumers around confusing product and services, it is not a long-term solution. “Rather than commoditizing their services, [service providers] are better served to deliver only those combinations of products and features that customers want and are willing to pay for.”

It also is important to improve the process of product introduction overall, or as Ruzicka said: “getting it right the first time.”

Product Lifecycle Management

She calls for a dynamic product lifecycle management process that makes particular use of a single, dynamic product catalog. The report concludes that product lifecycle management (PLM) is currently being promoted in one of two ways, either as a way to gain control of multiple, disconnected product catalogs and pricing plans or as a way to rapidly and inexpensively deploy individualized services to customers by taking advantage of reusable components. Both approaches, the report said, deliver significant value to service providers and ultimately must be combined to deliver product lifecycle management from ideation through retirement.

The Tribold Product Portfolio Management solution is cited as one approach that delivers both of these key benefits. The Tribold Product Portfolio Manager is a single, integrated suite of enterprise product lifecycle management applications that empower service providers to put products at the heart of their business. Tribold PPM is based on a Centralized Product Catalog (CPC) and includes Product Data Management (PDM), Product Data Integration (PDI), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Product Business Intelligence (PBI), and Product Channel Management (PCM) applications.