Service Solution Huawei Network Outsourcing Service Fuels Operators Business Successes By He Wenwei, Xie Mingming 11 2010 ISSUE 01. Vol. 11
Editor: Annie Huang Email: hjm@huawei.com Top 4 Challenges for Operators In the increasingly competitive telecom market, operators are facing growing pressures and challenges. 1. Competitive environment: As subscriber needs are becoming increasingly diversified, operators need to focus on subscriber segmentation in order to identify and acquire new subscribers. Meantime, operators also need to develop and launch new products and services constantly to expand ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) source hence to boost revenue. Under the increasingly fierce competition, ARPU is tumbling and subscriber churn rate is climbing. Operators need to reinforce sales and marketing efforts focusing on subscribers, such as customer care, brand awareness, service innovation, etc., to better maintain subscriber experience and satisfaction, therefore retain subscribers and increase revenue. 2. Operational Expenditure (OPEX): Network related OPEX is growing quickly and its contribution to TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is also increasing. Moreover, the global financial turbulence results in more cost and cash flow pressures on operators. Thus, there is an urgent necessity for operators to reduce their TCO, especially OPEX. 3. Network complexity: Network convergence continues to grow. Network is increasingly complicated and hard to manage. Operators are expected to provide end users with best quality service by retaining and improving network quality continuously as part of their network management effort. In addition, they wish to optimize their organization structures and processes and improve efficiency to manage networks more effectively. 4. Technologies evolution: Product and technology lifecycles are shortening. Rapid technologies evolution has created business opportunities and potential growth for operators and they tend to rely increasingly on technologies evolution to compete in the market. Operators are increasingly plagued by the need to grasp new technologies swiftly. Facing these challenges, more mainstream operators are moving toward network outsourcing. For example, leading multinational operators, such as Vodafone, Telefonica/O2, FT/Orange, MTN, and Hutchison, are looking for reliable network outsourcing partners to respond jointly to the ever-changing market and network trends. Network outsourcing is a model, in which an operator outsources network maintenance and management to a vendor and focuses on its core business. The operator's original maintenance personnel, assets, and service contracts may also be transferred to the service provider as part of the network outsourcing project. Huawei is committed to providing flexible network outsourcing solutions, helping an increasing number of operators respond effectively to challenges and achieve business success. 2010 ISSUE 01. Vol. 11 12
Service Solution Huawei's Network Outsourcing Service Solution Huawei's solution covers two phases: Transition, and Operation & Transformation. Transition Phase Operation & Transformation Phase Analyze Transition Plan Transition Establish & Realize Transition Handover & Close Transition Operation & Transformation Management Operation Transfer Employee Transfer NOC Operation Network Performance Management Field Operation Spare Part Management 3rd Party Contract Transfer Asset Transfer Multi-vendor Management Others (Customized) Focus on the exiting network and take over part/full network O&M responsibility from operator. In the Transition phase, operation and maintenance (O&M) responsibilities, personnel, assets, and third-party contracts will be transferred from the operator to Huawei. Based on best industry practices and its own insight, Huawei provides a complete set of mechanism and methodology to manage the Transition phase and minimize the impact on networks and services caused by the changes. During the Operation & Transformation phase, Huawei offers maintenance and management services for the operator's network in accordance with the predefined scope of work, responsibility matrix, and agreed KPI and SLA. Such services include routing operation and maintenance activities that range from NOC operation, field operation, spare parts management, and network performance management. A number of previous projects have demonstrated that Huawei is wellplaced to maintain and manage networks that build on its own equipment and those constructed of equipment from multi vendors. Huawei can customize its network outsourcing solution to suit various regions and operator requirements. In order to create more value for customers, Huawei will continue to improve efficiency and network quality continuously by optimizing processes, IT tools, organization, individuals' skills, and delivery model, etc., as the project progresses. 13 2010 ISSUE 01. Vol. 11
Huawei's outsourcing solution features the following key success factors. 1. Cutting-edge network O&M process and outsourcing business process In partnership with Oliver Wyman, the industryleading consulting service provider, Huawei has developed a leading network O&M process based on etom and ITIL. and will continue to optimize the process based on its worldwide project experience. In addition, Huawei has partnered with IBM and Accenture to design an end-to-end (E2E) outsourcing business process that accelerates the outsourcing business. 2. Mature global delivery platform and strong R&D expertise The full-fledged global delivery platform underpins Huawei's success in outsourcing projects. So far, Huawei has established globally: 130 service branches; 3 global technical support centers and 8 regional technical support centers; 18 regional Managed Services centers; 3 global resource centers and 22 regional resource centers; 2 regional NOCs. In addition, Huawei has formed a 200-employee R&D team dedicated to researching network O&M OSS systems and IT tools, the team is seeking to provide industry-leading IT platforms and tools for O&M processes, contributing to Huawei's managed services development. 3. Sufficient global delivery resources Over the years, Huawei Service has set up a global service team of more than 18,000 employees, of whom 2,700 are devoted to managed services. These employees possess skills that span almost all telecom network technologies and equipment from leading vendors from fixed to wireless network, core to access network, transmission to application software. This has laid a solid foundation for Huawei's success in delivering managed services projects. Moreover, Huawei has taken over O&M staff from operators to reinforce its ability to deliver managed services projects rapidly and this also helps Huawei mitigate the risks of network handover. Huawei has accumulated extensive experience, established and prompted best practices in a number of key areas relating to human resource transfer, such as organization and process optimization, personnel skills' training, career development, corporate culture integration, and O&M efficiency improvement. So far, Huawei has built numerous successful cases in Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Based on these successful cases and in cooperation with Accenture, Huawei has developed a set of fullfledged human resource transfer methodology and operation procedures. 2010 ISSUE 01. Vol. 11 14
Service Solution Unique Value of Huawei's Network Outsourcing Service Huawei has its advantages over other managed services providers as it has built differentiated competitive edges to provide operators with the following benefits: 1. Support for all technological areas and product lines As an end to end telecom product and solution provider, Huawei offers a full range of product lines and technologies from mobile to fixed network, software and applications to terminals. Hence, in addition to a network outsourcing solution, Huawei can provide operators with network TCO renovation solutions to maximize the value for customers. For a GSM project in Africa, Huawei proposed an innovative energy solution based on its insight into the customer's OPEX concerns while providing an outsourcing solution. The innovative solution helped the customer save energy costs considerably as well as reducing network OPEX, and was well-received by the customer. 2. A leader in convergence technology Network convergence technologies, such as FMC, IT/IC, and All-IP, represent the evolution for operators' networks and provide a foundation for their business development. As a pacesetter in terms of network convergence technology, Huawei can identify the impact of network convergence on network O&M, such as O&M model, process, tools, and skill requirements. Therefore, Huawei is well-positioned to provide a customized solution swiftly and build capabilities paving the way for operators' smooth network evolution. 3. A reliable partner The customer-centric focus is reflected in all business activities of Huawei. In particular, Huawei Managed Services aims to serve the best interests of operators, and responds rapidly to operators requirements. Huawei can also readily adapt its solutions and delivery resources to meet requirements to guarantee high customer satisfaction. 4. Evolution of the outsourcing solutions oriented to E2E subscriber experience Huawei will evolve its outsourcing solutions in line with operators' business operation concepts evolving from a model driven by network problems to a model driven by subscriber experience. This prompts Huawei to shift focus from network performance to service performance to enhance subscriber experience and create more value for operators. Enabling O&M Governance and Re-modeling Synchronized tools development Skill set development All IP Networks Telecom + Media + Entertainment Enabling Managing increased network complexity Facilitating business & value chain convergence Enabling Fixed + Mobile Convergence Network convergence design Streamline process Reduce mgmt. overlap Improve efficiency Reduce OPEX 15 2010 ISSUE 01. Vol. 11
Success Stories Benefiting from the success factors and differentiated competitive edges relating to Huawei's managed services, Huawei has offered desirable network outsourcing solutions to many operators worldwide. For example, in an outsourcing project in the Middle East, the customer requested that Huawei take over network O&M responsibilities for core network, application and software, and thousands of BTSs within just four months. Through months of hard work, Huawei's project team successfully accomplished the transition within the specified time and was highly appraised by the customer's CTO. The customer praised that Huawei's Transition solution helped them avoid risks and achieve a smooth transition of network O&M. Another outsourcing project also in the Middle East, Huawei assisted the operator to manage a complex radio network that builds on multi-vendor equipment. After taking over network O&M, Huawei has improved network key performance indicators (KPIs) of equipment from other vendors (for instance, CSSR(Call Setup Success Rate) was increased by around 3% compared with the original maintenance performance) as well as delivering high-quality KPIs for Huawei's equipment. Huawei's outsourcing service not only satisfies the network quality assurance, but also makes effort to help operators sharpen their market competitiveness. For example, Huawei cooperated with the operator P in the Asia Pacific region. One and a half years after the customer outsourced network O&M to Huawei, network outage time was reduced by 73.2% and the user complaints against network performance were down by 86%. Remarkably, the operator's subscribers increased by 150%. Huawei's Managed Services help customers achieve business success. 2010 ISSUE 01. Vol. 11 16