Reader Forum: How fast can service providers roll out new services? New time-to-market survey reveals the challenges and opportunities

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at:dmeyer@rcrwireless.comor tford@rcrwireless.com.
These days, people want everything fast – from fast food to fast cars, consumers want what they want, when they want it. That’s why it’s no surprise that the tech-savvy population collectively and impatiently tap their feet waiting for the newest services to hit their smartphones and their well-trained opposable thumbs.
A recent study by Amdocs and Coleman Parkes Research took a look at service providers’ attitudes on the status and importance of time-to-market – bringing new services to consumers and businesses –
over the past three years, and provided some eye-opening findings. The research, which interviewed 125 senior executives from 50 wireless, 50 wireline and 25 cable service providers around the world, revealed that the percentage of service providers that view time to market as important has increased from 59% in 2008, to 70% in 2011. Unfortunately, the amount that say it takes less than six months to deliver a product to market has dropped slightly, from 67% to 65%.
The research showed that service providers are coming up against some challenges as they work to efficiently bring products to market. For starters, the abundance of new mobile products and services is greatly increasing competition – pressuring providers to release new products to keep consumers interested. On top of this, the complexity of the technologies used continues to grow, making it harder for service providers to perfect and package offerings for consumers in a timely fashion. In fact, almost 60% of those polled admitted that the complex nature of mobile technology itself is the biggest difficulty when struggling with time to market.
Along with the increased complexity of systems comes an increased price tag when considering time to market. Fifty percent of participants admitted to experiencing a 15% increase in costs when supplying new services to customers.
With demand high for new services, what practical steps can service providers take to reduce time to market? They can start by investing in operations support systems, streamlining products and services into one focused catalog, and upgrading procedures – one step at a time. Even small modifications can help push products out sooner – increasing revenues and allowing service providers to invest even more into time-to-market best practices.
Investing in these areas should yield clear benefits. Out of the 33% of providers that claimed an improved time to market by 20%, 81% cited improved project management using a central catalog as the reason. An additional 79% cited improved organizational alignment as the cause, while 65% credited business and operational support systems integration.
Whatever the reason, it is clear that investing in operations software (OSS) greatly assists service providers in bringing products and services to market at a faster clip. This is good news for consumers who are eagerly waiting – “I need it today!” – for the latest mobile technology advancements to seamlessly align with their on-the-go lifestyles.