Whats stopping you

from improving your

time to market?
By Hadas Haran
At a glance
Revisiting the past 04
Time is of the essence 06
Times change (except for time to market) 08
Timely OSS investment 12
An industrious approach 14
The service factory, at your service 16
The four key elements 18
Regional snapshot 22
A nal thought 24
About the author 25
About Amdocs 25
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03
Revisiting the past
04
Although it was some three decades ago, when I was much, much younger, I can still remember
the excitement and anticipation of waiting to receive a postcard from a friend traveling abroad.
Now, 30 years later, who sends postcards? But its not just technology thats changed we have
too. We want everything now; we dont have the patience to wait. We communicate instantly, using
different means, from any location. If in the past we had only one identity, today we have multiple
ones: social, professional, family and so on. And for each identity, we have different needs and
consume different services.
Consumers (myself included) now demand an incessant ow of ever-new communication and
entertainment services, and they all have to be top quality. But are service providers actually
prepared to support this market dynamic?
Three years ago, Amdocs commissioned an independent research project to carry out a detailed
analysis of the challenges around time to market for products and services. We revisited this topic
in early 2011 and discovered some pretty interesting ndings.
Read on you might even be tempted to send your friends a postcard about them!
05
125 senior executives at wireless, wireline and cable providers from
every region in the world were interviewed.
The questionnaire was designed to gain a better understanding of:
> How long does it take service providers to introduce new services?
Has there been any change? And if so, why?
> What are the key factors impacting time to market? And where are
service providers investing to improve time to market?
> Has the cost surrounding new services increased?
Line of Business Number of interviews
Wireline 50
Wireless 50
Cable 25
Total 125
The increasing importance of time to market to the business
Its no surprise that time to market is important (after all, why would any
company want to wait to launch a new product?) but it has denitely
become a more critical objective today.
Time is of the essence
06
Very
important
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
70
59
38
27
%
Total 2008
Total 2011
2 2
1 1
Fairly
important
Fairly
unimportant
Not at all
important
Its driven by customer demand for new services and
the pressure on service providers to remain competitive
and protable:
Why the change?
> 68% of service providers cited speed of
new product creation as a key business
differentiator
> 95% stated that fast time to market has
a positive impact on revenue
> 95% reported time to market as
impacting brand image and 91% said it
helps achieve customer loyalty. Service
providers who fail to improve time to
market therefore risk customer churn
and missed revenue opportunities
70% of the service
providers polled in 2011
regarded time to market
as VERY IMPORTANT,
compared to 59%
in 2008.
07
Times change
(except for time to market)
It might be viewed as more important, but when it comes to the average time to market for
introducing new products, not much has improved between 2008 and 2011. In fact, the number
of service providers able to bring a product to market within six months has actually
fallen; in 2008, 67% of service providers said it took six months or less to bring a new product to
market, compared with 65% now.
Despite its growing importance, no real change in average time to market
08
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
26
39
26
1
4
25
42
24
3
6
2008
2011
Less than
3 months
3-6
months
6-18
months
More than
18 months
Unsure but
too long
So while service providers believe that quickly introducing new services has a positive impact on
customer churn/loyalty, revenue generation, customer experience and brand reputation, most of
the service providers we interviewed havent been able to meet their target.
The survey shows that as many as one in three service providers failed to achieve their
target of delivering new services within six months over the last three years. The majority of
service providers would like to be able to introduce new services in less than three months, but for
most of them it takes between three to six months.
Indeed, there is a signicant gap between the achieved time to market and what service providers
actually aspire to achieve. This is especially true in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA),
where twice as many rms (44%) have less than three months as their target time to market
compared to those who actually achieve it (21%).
09
Actual time to market vs. target
Current
Target for next 3 years
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
39
38
14
0
5
26
39
26
1
4
Less than
3 months
3-6
months
6-18
months
More than
18 months
Unsure but
too long
But while the average time to market hasnt changed, 50% of service providers have seen their
costs of providing new services increase by 15%.
Times change
(except for time to market)
10
100
80
60
40
20
0
50
29
21
Increase
15% average
cost increase
20% average
cost decrease
Stay the same Decrease
Cost of introducing new services
The costs of introducing new services have gone up and this is directly linked to the complexity of
service providers current systems.
It simply takes service providers too long to change the processes and systems for new projects,
(and any change also signicantly impacts existing products as well). Blame the numerous legacy
systems and the hard-coded processes that surround them from past changes.
The complexity of the technology is also a time-to-market challenge. Even IP technology (which
simplies things in some respects) still includes many parameters that need to be deployed and set
up when introducing a new product or service.
And on top of this theres the issue of B/OSS integration, which service providers have been facing
for many years and is now more crucial than ever.
Biggest challenges in bringing products to market in 2011
11
Organizational alignment
Delivering differentiated quality of service
Project management and control
Changes to systems and processes for new products
B/OSS integration
Data quality
Complexity of technology environment
50
0 20 40 60 80 100 %
46
49
58
46
46
59
Timely OSS investment
The survey demonstrates that service providers who invest in addressing operational challenges can improve
their time to market and positively impact their bottom line: those who invested reaped the results!
While the majority of service providers (67%) reported they had failed to improve their time to
market, 33% reported an improvement, and by 20% on average an impressive number. When
asked for the key factors enabling this improvement:
> 81% cited improved project management and control
> 76% said it was a result of improving organizational alignment
> 65% reported business and operational support systems integration
Which of the following are the key factors that have allowed
you to improve time to market over the last 3 years?
12
Organizational alignment
Better project management and control
(consolidated view of product, services and resources)
Changes to systems and processes for new products
B/OSS integration
Increased investment in appropriate technology/tools
Reduced complexity of technology environment
0 20 40 60 80 100
%
76
81
65
75
75
55
The survey shows that service providers recognize the need to address operational challenges:
70% of service providers cited the need to modernize their operational environment in order to
bring products to market faster.
However, the reality is that many service providers are still being held back by a siloed, legacy
infrastructure that denies them the speed and agility needed to ensure constant updating of the
services and applications they offer to customers.
And the new market dynamics are making life even more challenging. 45% of service providers
reported that the increasing demand for support of third-party services, such as app stores or IPTV
and additional connected devices, has increased time to market.
Service providers agreement with key statements
13
We need to modernize our operational environment
in order to bring products to market faster
The rapid change in customer expectation is
driving us to launch products too quickly
Improving time to market will help reduce
customer churn
Time to market is the number one focus for the
business in this year
We appreciate the nancial impact that time to
market can have, but the issues are outweighing
our ability to make signicant improvements
We are trying to uplift our product prot margins
through faster time to market
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 60 80 90 100 %
54
81
66
70
46
79
An industrious approach
Despite the importance of time to market in todays connected world 68% of service providers
cited the speed of new product creation as a key business differentiator service providers
are missing their targets and have failed to improve their average time to market over the
last three years.
With new market dynamics adding more complexity and the cost of introducing new services
increasing, this failure to improve time to market can no longer be ignored.
So, whats the right approach to improving time to market?
As the survey shows, theres no single area of OSS that provides the answer by itself. Those who
invested in OSS did so in several areas, such as: better project management and control (providing
a consolidated view of product, services and resources); B/OSS integration; simplifying the
changes to systems and processes for new products; and improving organizational alignment.
By investing in these areas, service providers reaped signicant rewards as their investment
enabled them to operate in an agile, efcient way, allowing them to focus on their customers
needs without being hampered by organizational structures or legacy systems infrastructure.
14
Like companies in other global industries that have grown and
reached a point beyond which they are unable to compete
efciently, these providers have undergone a process of
industrialization to become more agile, efcient, productive
and innovative. And like any other industry, the communications,
media and entertainment industry needs to industrialize its
operations in order to progress.
15
The service factory,
at your service
Car manufacturers, for example, face similar challenges to
service providers in terms of trying to differentiate themselves in
a very competitive and price-sensitive market. One automobile
success story is the MINI, where each car is built precisely
according to customer specications, based on an extensive
set of conguration and customization options. Out of every
1,000,000 MINIs, only 10 will be absolutely identical!
This is made possible by combining re-usable components
and exible assembly processes into a single production line,
thereby allowing the factory to manufacture virtually any number
of car variants out of a nite set of parts and components.
Service providers can also adopt an industrialized approach
to service creation and execution, building a wide range
of services out of standardized components. For service
providers, operations is the factory where products need
to be put together in order to provision and fulll them when
customers place orders. A factory approach means that
each product component already has standard processes for
fulllment associated with it.
16
When a factory approach is adopted, operations knows that for each product component there is
a standard fulllment process and system that is tested and ready to go. This means new products
and services can be created by combining existing product components, secure in the knowledge
that fulllment systems are already in place to provision them. In this way, systems become an
enabler for speedy time to market, rather than a barrier.
Standardization minimizes the complexity of the fulllment process and its impact on underlying
technology, as well as avoiding misalignment between the business and operational groups since
new products can only be created from standard components, business groups can rest assured
that any new product offering created in this way will be possible to deliver. It also reduces B/OSS
integration challenges or endless changes in processes and systems for new projects.
In fact, this service factory approach creates a lean, effective, ready-to-go and automated
operation, allowing customers to receive the services they want and enabling service providers
to thrive and foster innovation in a competitive and dynamic environment.
Setting up this approach requires four key elements...
17
The four key elements
1. Centralized product and service catalog
Today everyone is struggling to stay on the same page. There are too many BSS and OSS systems
and these systems need to communicate with each other. There are also too many catalogs, some
of which overlap and are not aligned, and on top of this, someone needs to congure the process
between the related systems.
Just imagine instead that every time you create a new offering, you only have to dene it once
and that denition then trickles through and drives all of the BSS and OSS systems required for
you to enable customers to order, receive and pay for their new service.
This is where the centralized product and service catalog comes in.
This master database serves as a single point of truth and the single entry point for all product
and service information. It addresses the specic needs of multiple stakeholders to dene and price
product offerings and customer/resource-facing services, including technology options. It does so
while taking advantage of all the benets of a single common data model, making B/OSS integration
much easier and removing technological and process barriers to product innovation.
By mixing and matching existing services and their related resources, the centralized product and
service catalog allows service providers to quickly and efciently dene and blend product offerings by
re-using existing resources or sharing resource specications across services and lines of business.
18
19
2. Dynamic order execution
Adopting and dening new and existing processes to address new offerings is becoming
increasingly important and, as we see from the survey results, even more challenging. With more
and more offerings containing third-party elements, fulllment is now more complicated than ever.
To make your fulllment process efcient, you need dynamic decision points generated during
the process based on eligibility and serviceability, feasibility, as well as rainy-day scenarios or other
change or provide scenarios that might appear during the process.
For most service providers, supporting these kinds of changes is difcult, since processes tend
to be hard-baked so that they can be automated. So long as the fulllment process is always the
same, this works ne. But when changes occur, systems are inexible. And more often than not,
changes do occur.
A better approach is to avoid a hard-coded process, and instead make denitions for processes in
the catalog, which is already at the heart of the order management and fulllment process. Doing
it this way means that processes can then be altered and updated even while they are in ight
ensuring the best of both worlds: an automated approach that can also handle exceptions and
changes as they occur. This reduces the high order fallout rate, addresses customer requirements
for order changes and accelerates the order-to-cash cycle.
The four key elements
20
3. Monitoring tools
A consolidated and up-to-date view is essential for operating in a factory mode, so it is not
surprising that this is one of the key areas service providers invested in, according to the survey.
Business activity and monitoring is a valuable management and operational tool. On the one hand,
it provides measurements and reports for management; on the other, it provides operations the
means for ongoing improvements to achieve the desired efciency without compromising on
customer experience.
4. Organizational alignment
Adopting the right tools is not enough; one of the key improvements that must be
implemented is the alignment of the organization to the business needs. From the survey,
we see that those service providers who improved their time to market invested in
organizational alignment to the new process and tools.
21
> Speed of new product creation is more important as a differentiator to companies in North
America and Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) than in other regions. Interestingly, the
percentage of companies saying time to market is very important has not changed in North
America over the period, while in all other areas it has increased. EMEA shows an increase
from 51% (2008) to 68% (2011) and Asia Pacic (APAC) records a large jump from 69% (2008)
to 83% (2011)
Regional snapshot
Average current time to market for new products, 2011
APAC
EMEA
CALA
NAM
22
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
21
27
22
33
43
41
40
33
23
26
20
31
0 0 0 0 0
9
6
7
Less than
3 months
3-6
months
6-18
months
More than
18 months
Unsure but
too long
Total average
26%
Total average
39%
Total average
26%
> As the chart shows, one-third of APAC rms currently achieve less than
three months to market for new products, higher than the global average,
but 40% are setting this as their target for the next three years
> In EMEA, service providers able to bring new products to market within
six months fell from 72% in 2008 to 62% in 2011. Also in EMEA, more
people were involved in product creation: 76% of service providers in
2011 (compared to 60% in 2008) reported that creating a new product
involved more than 10 people
> 40% of APAC-based businesses reported a quicker time to market
(compared to 33% globally), due to key investments in B/OSS integration
and in technologies/tools
> 80% of CALA providers were unable to improve their time to market
between 2008 and 2011
> The new market dynamics mostly impact North American service providers:
53% said the impact of increasing demand for support of third-party
services has added unnecessary complexity. In comparison, in APAC only
20% of service providers said the impact of increasing demand for support
of third-party services will add unnecessary complexity
23
The fact is that an investment in operations pays off. Investing in a service factory approach will
speed up a service providers introduction of new services, create better end-user experiences and
grow consumer protability. These benets will be achieved while lowering costs and increasing
internal efciencies as well as removing their OSS from the critical path.
And while theres no magic wand to wave to improve time to market, there are a number
of tools and processes that will get you there:
> A single design environment, powered by a centralized product and service catalog
> Dynamic order execution driven driven by standard yet congurable processes
> Monitoring tools
> Aligning your organization to your business strategy
Whats holding you back from improving your time to market?
For an in depth look at the research nding click here.
A nal thought
24
Hadas Haran is a seasoned telecommunications marketing professional with extensive
market knowledge of operators worldwide. She has more than 10 years of experience in the
communications market, with marketing, technical and customer-facing roles at Amdocs,
Comverse and Trivnet.
Please feel free to get in touch with Hadas if youd like to discuss any of the points in
this ebook.
About Amdocs
Amdocs is the market leader in customer experience systems innovation. The company combines
business and operational support systems, service delivery platforms, proven services and deep
industry expertise to enable service providers and their customers to do more in the connected
world. Amdocs offerings help service providers explore new business models, differentiate through
personalized customer experiences and streamline operations. A global company with revenue of
approximately $3.0 billion in scal 2010, Amdocs has over 19,000 employees and serves customers
in more than 60 countries worldwide. For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.
About the author
25
www.amdocs.com
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