Reader Forum: Communications mergers in the air – what about speed to market?

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.
Major mergers have dominated telecom industry news in recent weeks, with deals springing up in the United States, Canada, Russia and the Middle East. Companies combine for a number of reasons, including the need to expand network footprints, realize new operational efficiencies and accelerate the pace of innovation. Sometimes, however, the speed-to-market that companies count on to make their merger a success is waylaid by an all-too-common problem: difficulty in rationalizing and managing product lines.
Not surprisingly, service providers that join together often find that their respective product catalogs speak different languages. When either or both companies rely on legacy back office systems, the problem is further compounded. Take a peek into the back office and you are likely to find:
–Product profusion: The scale of product management is massive and decentralized, with product portfolios built up over many years and often exceeding 1,000 different products within a single communications service provider.
–Product pile-up: Adding more layers on top of an already complex portfolio, a service provider on average launches between five and 25 new product initiatives each year, not including feature enhancements and upgrades to existing portfolios.
–Market viewed as a laboratory: Rather than being market-led and developing products in response to customer need, operators often rely on experimentation in product features and pricing.
In an environment where speed-to-market is often a company’s key differentiator, the above problems are not acceptable – neither for merged nor standalone communications enterprises. Particularly in today’s intensely competitive arena, the traditional product development and deployment cycle must be collapsed from months to weeks. Companies need systems that ensure the ability to launch, customize, take down and replace services in an efficient and speedy manner.
Reaching these objectives is made possible by comprehensive product lifecycle management systems that support the creation, management, dissemination and use of product definition data.
PLM is product management for the age of convergence: centralized, systematic and spanning the full lifecycle of convergent services from inception to product discontinuation. Among the benefits:
–Improved collaboration: Allows line-of-business, IT and network teams to collaborate more efficiently and effectively throughout the entire product development lifecycle.
–Simplified product definition: Supports the creation of a layered, multi-dimensional product model that includes the full technical, commercial and price definition of products.
–Increased control: Manages the revision of modeled entities and states of product definitions and provides full support for review and approval processes.
–Standardization: Uses information models that guide the product process, in compliance with TeleManagement Forum BSS/OSS standards.
–Integration with key systems: Provides real-time and export integration interfaces to enable external systems to consume or reference the product data maintained within the PLM application.
As companies merge, they can use PLM solutions to ensure a consistent face to the market based on integrated, centrally managed product lines. Providers can easily package services into more complex offerings, manage end-to-end product information and orchestrate diverse product delivery activities.
PLM gives the service provider one “look” across the catalog – a systematic definition of sellable product offerings disseminated across BSS/OSS systems so that the company can immediately begin taking and fulfilling orders. End result: faster order to cash.
M&A activity has always been a hallmark of the fast-paced communications sector. Now, thanks to the advanced capabilities of PLM, when companies decide to combine they can go to market quickly without product catalog hassles. But whether you merge or not, centralized control of product management – and the ability to control the evolution of every offering – will always be a must.