Meeting the Communication Needs of SMBs and Large Businesses. Amdocs OSS Service Fulfillment White Paper

Transcription

1 Meeting the Communication Needs of SMBs and Large Businesses Amdocs OSS Service Fulfillment White Paper

2 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES Contents Executive Summary...3 Telecom Market Characteristics...4 Enterprise Customer Needs...5 Small and Medium-Sized Business Needs...5 Large Enterprise Needs...6 Challenges Facing Service Providers in the Business Segment...7 A New Solution for the Enterprise...8 The Amdocs Enterprise Fulfillment Solution...9 Key Components...11 Conclusion...11

3 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 3 Executive Summary Service providers recognize the importance of the growing business customer segments to their long term success. The business market represents 33 percent of service provider revenues and is expected to grow substantially. Service providers must be able to create and deliver new services quickly and easily in order to capture a large share of the important business market, and to increase their appeal to small and medium businesses (SMBs) and large enterprise businesses. Many differences exist between the communications requirements of the large enterprise, SMB and small office, home office (SOHO)/residential markets. The SOHO and residential market typically uses relatively simple services and is rapidly becoming more and more commoditized. The SMB and enterprise markets require far more complex, sometimes customized, multi-site services with significantly more robust and flexible order-to-activation processing. Effectively serving small, medium and enterprise-sized businesses requires innovative mass customization and service factory strategies, investments and new ways of doing business. It is vital that service providers provide fast, versatile and error-free delivery of services, reduce order completion times and decrease the risk of service failures and service level agreement (SLA) violations. This white paper provides an overview of how service providers can effectively serve small, medium-sized businesses and enterprises with solutions tailored to specific business needs. With many new services being provided to businesses over the cloud, the variety of services is growing rapidly, increasing the dependency of businesses on their service providers. Businesses in different industries require different solutions, services and support levels. Business services implementation times are lengthy and constantly changing requirements are a fact so for service providers, flexibility and robust processes are key.

4 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 4 Telecom Market Characteristics Residential & SOHO High volume, simple orders Standard product offerings SMBs High volumes and customized service bundles Components in the bundles are simple Providing many services for one customer is complex Few sites, minimal organizational hierarchy Most SMBs use a standard offering a mix-and-match model Enterprise Low volume, complex orders Providing many services for one customer with a number of organizational or geographical hierarchies is complex Multiple sites Customized, feature-rich solutions Little or no changes High volume of change requests High volume of change requests Tried and tested delivery Little focus on customer experience Limited use of self-care for advanced service manipulation Tested delivery combined with the complexity of mixing additional services SLAs are a factor Reliable services are a key requirement because SMBs rely on the communication services to run their business Self-care functionality is a key service differentiator Complex, tailored delivery Stricter SLAs Advanced service manipulation through self-care is a fundamental requirement for hosted services Self-care is used with complex network services, primarily for monitoring

5 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 5 Enterprise Customer Needs Small, medium-sized businesses and large enterprise organizations are experiencing a growing need for improved connectivity, communications functionality and robustness. Customers in health care, education, government, financial services and other markets want secure, fast, reliable, errorfree services tailored to their particular needs, combined with top-notch customer support. However, a few key differences exist between the needs of these two classes of businesses. Small and Medium-Sized Business Needs SMBs need: Security network equipment must be accessed in a secure manner, with the ability to provision security features Flexibility to mix-and-match different services from different bundles Control self-service and self-care tools for managing many activities Ease-of-use for saving time and money Scalability to allow for future growth SMBs want service providers to handle all of their security, communications and IT needs and make it work. Unlike large enterprises with internal IT capabilities, many SMBs (law firms for example) lack an IT department, so IT computing and storage solutions are also frequently needed. In addition, many SMBs want an external IT communications expert to help augment resources and talent, strengthen business continuity, improve performance and availability, and help support business initiatives. Finally, self-care capabilities for manipulating business services are increasingly important to this sector. SMBs Are Vital to the European Economy SMBs are a large source of jobs and economic growth for Europe: Businesses employing less than 250 people account for 99.8 percent of all enterprises active within the European Union 67 percent of the European Union workforce is employed in one of nearly 20 million active small businesses* 58 percent of the European Union economy s value-added goods and services are generated by this sector* *Eurostat

6 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 6 Large Enterprise Needs Large enterprise organizations are typically multi-site and thus require more multi-point network services (such as VPNs) than SMBs. As these organizations grow, the complexity of their network services grows as well. Large businesses require services tailored to their specific needs, with the ability to customize for different sites, classes of users and organizational hierarchies. Large enterprises (like SMBs) need communications services, such as Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC&C), hosted business VoIP, Internet connectivity and the security solutions that surround that connectivity. To remain competitive and increase revenue, service providers must be fully versed in how large enterprises do business. This will help them provide customized services with: Speed of delivery of secured network and subscription services Reliability for fast, error-free delivery services Flexibility to allow frequent changes to orders, including those in-flight; ability to provision complex orders with multiple services Minimum fallouts (service failures) An excellent customer experience with: - Self-care portals for service adds and changes - Quick response on technical issues as they arise - Monitoring of the implementation with constant feedback Realistic SLA to meet expectations on-time and with required quality Leading U.S. Cable Provider Like many cable providers, when this company began selling to businesses a few years ago, they experienced rapid growth. In the beginning, the focus was mainly on SOHO (selling more residential bundles). However, once the vast potential of the business market was apparent, this provider started to invest accordingly to ensure it had the right capabilities to address mid-sized businesses, as well as large local/enterprise companies. In order to fully address this lucrative market, this provider needed the right systems in place to simplify the process and reduce failovers. With Amdocs Enterprise Service Fulfillment Solution, the provider launched their full Metro Ethernet services for businesses, including Ethernet private lines, VPNs and Ethernet-dedicated access. This well-known operator: Reduced order-to-activation time: site provisioning time was reduced by more than 80 percent from 1.5 hours to 15 minutes Reduced order fallouts by using validated data to provision services Eliminated 17 manual handoffs and other activities

7 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 7 Challenges Facing Service Providers in the Business Segment The unique needs of SMB and large business customers present many challenges for service providers. Network services, such as IP VPN and subscription services (including business VoIP) are typical requirements, and customized features across multiple sites, classification of users and organizational hierarchies are also necessary Service providers face a disconnect between their customer-facing systems and their fulfillment systems, both in: - The design phase (Quote-to-Order), when a customized solution needs to be priced - The implementation phase, when the customer needs a self-monitoring tool that will enhance control Fulfilling network services orders takes a long time and requires various network and engineering expertise The process is difficult to automate because fulfillment for many of the services requires human decision-making (design) and manual activities, such as site surveys Frequent changes are the norm Contract and SLA breaches are common and can result in penalties Unfortunately, in many cases, business customers are not entirely satisfied with how they are currently being serviced. Key gaps continue to exist between customers expectations and the actual services they are receiving: A December 2011 Frost and Sullivan* survey conducted for Amdocs indicated that 30 percent of enterprise customers believed order fallout was experienced fairly often, very often or always. Service providers, meanwhile, believed only 5 percent of orders fall out. More troubling, the survey found that only 45 percent of service providers have automated systems to keep track of order fallout, typically as part of the overall contractual obligations In addition, the survey found many enterprise customers remain highly dissatisfied with issues regarding customer service, recurring order problems and lack of service quality all major reasons for them to switch to a different service provider For service providers to be successful in the SMB and enterprise market, they must provide an excellent customer experience and deliver tailored services quickly, efficiently and more cost-effectively. * Frost and Sullivan, Service and Support Approaches for Business Customers, December 2011

8 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 8 A New Solution for the Enterprise New enterprise solutions have emerged to enable service providers to grow revenue, provide an excellent customer experience, decrease time-to-market for new offerings, reduce costs and manage SLA expectations. These solutions, tailored to the unique needs of SMBs and enterprise customers, provide an agile framework for faster time-to-market for new services. They also provide a flexible, mass customization approach for real-time service fulfillment, including monitoring and management of the processes. The most advanced service fulfillment solutions utilize a single instance of a product catalog for ordering systems and OSS fulfillment systems to: Integrate ordering and fulfillment processes to reduce both time-to-market and delivery lead times for services implementation Enable the business customer to mix-and-match services across multiple sites and hierarchies Allow the service provider to create special service bundles with little or no additional effort Provide the business customer with better visibility into the service creation process Significantly reduce order re-work and failure rates Provide change management capabilities for comparing a changed order to the original order, and identifying the changed area to allow in-flight order amend with no overall interruption These solutions help service providers increase profitability by better serving business customers with high-quality, flexible solutions that improve efficiency and the customer experience. Major South American Service Provider Brazil, the largest telecommunications market in South America, is experiencing both massive growth and consolidation. One major Brazilian service provider was using homegrown systems that could not cope with IP networks, resulting in an inability to launch new products quickly. The other problem was that because this provider had a lot of leased lines, they did not own the last mile. Clearly, there was an incentive to switch to an all-ip environment in order to reduce the number of expensive leased lines. Together with Amdocs, this service provider embarked on a large transformation project in order to run fully automatic processes. With the Amdocs Enterprise Service Fulfillment Solution, this service provider: Recovered network assets and reduced leased line costs Reduced the time to deploy services to customers by offering services on a metro Ethernet network Increased operational efficiency by reducing fallouts and re-work

9 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 9 The Amdocs Enterprise Service Fulfillment Solution The Amdocs Enterprise Service Fulfillment Solution supports complex network and subscription services for SMB and enterprise customers, with comprehensive, efficient and automated service fulfillment. Specifically designed for SMBs and large enterprise customers to improve operational efficiency, the Amdocs Enterprise Service Fulfillment Solution: Reduces order-to-activation processing time by more than 50 percent for network services Significantly reduces order fallouts by formalizing and automating fulfillment processes, including manual activities Reduces order re-work from 30 percent to less than 5 percent for network services Reduces average time-to-market for new products and services by as much as 75 percent Supports multiple orders within the same project Allows human intervention in-flight for orders requiring change management Provides early-stage service feasibility checks and service provisioning usability Incorporates SLA management to monitor services and service provider risk Provides self-care and self-manage tools for subscription services Several scenarios clearly illustrate how the solution can be used, specifically in the areas of quote-to-order, in-flight changes, taking new products to market and self-care of subscription services (such as Business VoIP). Quote-to-Order Quote-to-order is a complex process that involves both commercial order management and technical order management (OSS) aspects of the business. Typically, the complexity of services and their actual implementation in the field requires technical design and planning, as well as negotiations between service providers technical personnel and the enterprise customer. For complex network service offerings, service providers face challenges in delivering feasible, accurate and profitable quotes in a clean, timely and competitive manner. The Amdocs Enterprise Service Fulfillment Solution uses indicative orders to provide enterprise network services customized for each enterprise, and incorporates a technical negotiations phase to design the service, validate it, reserve the needed resources and create a quote. By using a tightly-coupled system that has the same product catalog for ordering and fulfillment, and a defined interface between the commercial level and the technical level, service providers can: Check the feasibility of their planned offering before providing a quote Create a high-level service design, to better price the service and ensure that correct and profitable quotes are based on the network level design and product catalog Reserve network resources for an order to avoid overbooking a resource by two different services, thus preventing fallout An enhanced quote-to-order process improves service provider profitability, as well as the customer experience. Service providers can win more business and close deals faster, lower the cost of sale and delivery, and reduce the chance of re-works and fallouts. Enterprise customers in turn enjoy fast response times, superior handling of technical issues and better pricing, as well as a professional experience with an account manager who can truly help them fulfill their needs.

10 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 10 In-Flight Changes Because of the dynamic nature of the SMB and enterprise market, frequent service changes are common. These businesses need the flexibility to change existing orders while in-flight, but without impacting existing services or delaying the order. The solution identifies the change, compares it to the original order and then makes the relevant change using catalog-driven fulfillment. In addition, because of the catalog-driven, customized approach, different services for different sites can be mixed-and-matched according to the specific requirements of each site. For example, if site 1 needs functions A, B and C, and site 2 needs functions A, B and F, the system can accommodate those needs and create the fulfillment process on an ad hoc basis. For the service provider, robust in-flight change capabilities reduce both the time-to-deliver and order fallouts. The SMB or enterprise customer receives an improved experience, flexibility and faster service. Taking New Products to Market Self-Care Service providers continually encourage businesses to use more of their hosted services. However, when choosing a hosted service over an onsite service, some businesses fear they will lose the ability to manage the service to their exact requirements. To counter this argument, service providers must offer their hosted products and services through intuitive self-care portal frameworks. These self-care portals should be simple enough so that non-technical business administrators can use them. And, they must also be fully functional, so that almost every service change required by the business can be completed through self-care. Another important aspect of the self-care portal is the savings it provides. In a large enterprise, the availability of an intelligent, fully-functioning self-care portal effectively removes Level 1 support from the service provider and places it in the hands of the business. Self-care thus enables service providers to concentrate on providing the best Level 2 and 3 support possible. The competitive nature of the telecom market dictates that service providers must always be one step ahead of the competition in providing the solutions customers need. The ability to quickly and easily create new value-added services or bundles is paramount. For example, let s say an operator wants to bundle storage services over the cloud with IP VPN services. Using the Enterprise Product Catalog, the existing VPN service can be changed to include cloud storage. The two services are joined as one offer, the necessary tests completed and the new service is ready to be launched. This capability reduces the time-to-market for new products and services by: Re-using processes and sub-service creation, meaning less time coding and testing Creating or changing products and services in one Enterprise Product Catalog instead of three (OSS, Billing and Charging, and CRM) The service provider reduces costs on both coding and new services testing, and goes to market with new services very quickly.

11 MEETING THE COMMUNICATION NEEDS OF SMBs AND LARGE BUSINESSES 11 Key Components The Amdocs Enterprise Service Fulfillment Solution consists of the following comprehensive products and services to best serve the needs of service providers: Amdocs Products Service Order Manager orchestrates the fulfillment process. Using a catalog-driven approach, it dynamically executes activities, allowing numerous options without hard-coding Enterprise Product Catalog is the single system of record for all products and services. It consists of an integrated creation environment to design product and service structure and the fulfillment process Amdocs Resource Manager provides one data source to support all operational processes. Resource Manager Inventory manages the allocation of network resources and the rules for how they can be used Amdocs Universal Activator automates network configuration and simplifies activation by providing a single activation engine for all lines of businesses and media types. This provides investment protection for service providers. There is no need for re-work, as services are extended across new network/media types. Amdocs Universal Activator also includes an extension (APSdp) that provides subscriber-centric management of enterprise services and intelligent self-care portal capabilities Amdocs Services Amdocs unmatched expertise in consulting, systems integration and delivery experience helps service providers determine their enterprise strategy and fine-tune their implementation requirements: Amdocs Consulting services help service providers realign their business functions in order to meet business objectives. This is done using both Amdocs products and other products Amdocs Systems Integration services work to deliver the project on-time, on-budget and on-target, with the highest levels of quality. Amdocs advanced methodologies, extensive project blueprints, pre-configured tools and best practices deliver proven results and minimize risk. Amdocs may serve as the prime system integrator, integrating both Amdocs and other products Conclusion Service providers today realize a different approach is needed to effectively win, fulfill, differentiate and support small and medium-sized businesses and enterprise customers. They increasingly recognize the business customers need for speed, reliability and flexibility of secure services, as well as a solution uniquely tailored to specific customer needs. Customer service issues must also be addressed. By utilizing an approach that provides fast, efficient and transparent delivery of customized network and subscription services to a wide variety of businesses, service providers can gain a competitive advantage and succeed in this important market.

12 About Amdocs For 30 years, Amdocs has ensured service providers success and embraced their biggest challenges. To win in the connected world, service providers rely on Amdocs to simplify the customer experience, harness the data explosion, stay ahead with new services and improve operational efficiency. The global company uniquely combines a market-leading BSS, OSS and network control product portfolio with value-driven professional services and managed services operations. With revenue of $3.2 billion in fiscal 2011, Amdocs and its over 19,000 employees serve customers in more than 60 countries. Amdocs: Embrace Challenge, Experience Success. For more information, visit Amdocs at Amdocs has offices, development and support centers worldwide, including sites in: THE AMERICAS: ASIA PACIFIC: EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: BRAZIL AUSTRALIA AUSTRIA ISRAEL SPAIN CANADA CHINA CYPRUS KAZAKHSTAN SWEDEN COSTA RICA INDIA CZECH REPUBLIC THE NETHERLANDS UNITED KINGDOM MEXICO JAPAN FRANCE POLAND UNITED ARAB EMIRATES DUBAI UNITED STATES PHILIPPINES GERMANY RUSSIA SINGAPORE IRELAND SOUTH AFRICA TAIWAN THAILAND VIETNAM For the most up-to-date contact information for all Amdocs offices worldwide, please visit our website at Copyright 2012 Amdocs. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution other than for intended purposes is prohibited, without the prior written consent of Amdocs. The trademarks and service marks of Amdocs, including the Amdocs mark and logo, Intentional Customer Experience, CES, Clarify, Ensemble, Enabler, Return on Relationship, Intelecable, Collabrent, XACCT, DST Innovis, Stibo Graphic Software, Qpass, Cramer, SigValue, JacobsRimell, ChangingWorlds, jnetx, OpenMarket Inc., MX Telecom Inc., MX Telecom Ltd, Streamezzo, and Bridgewater Systems are the exclusive property of Amdocs, and may not be used without permission. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.