If the telecom market seems like it's in a state of flux - you're right. According to a recent white paper from Alcatel-Lucent, that's because "traditional operators and emerging players vie for competitive advantage by delivering a wide array of new content and service offerings."
Operators need a new strategy in order to differentiate and compete successfully, the paper finds: "Instead of relying solely on the deployment of new technologies and rollout of new services, operators need to think in terms of adopting new strategic operations approaches and outsourcing business models."
Among other useful content, the paper outlines several approaches:
Assistance and consolidation. This can be viewed as something like consultancy and support. The operator has decided to implement change management but not to outsource the processes to a partner; rather, the operator calls on the managed services partner for help in analyzing the processes, to propose the change that's needed, and to implement the change. The operator, meanwhile, maintains operation of the network, but begins to consider a managed services approach for operations with cost or technology challenges.
Read more here.
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A recent look by Alcatel-Lucent at the way service providers are losing out even as traffic volume increases finds the three following to be true:
Operators can monetize multimedia services by selectively exposing high value network capabilities. Service provider network assets offer quantifiable value to third-party developers. And application enablement helps operators identify key network assets to deliver multimedia services.
In other words, there's no reason why service providers shouldn't be seeing more of a return on the increases of traffic than they are.
"Service provider returns are diminishing. An increase in traffic volume driven by multimedia consumption and direct-to-consumer application services is eroding service provider value," Alcatel-Lucent officials say. "Service providers must increase their influence on the content delivery value chain by adding unique value to it."
Relevance in this ecosystem can bring new market opportunities in the following areas:
Read more here.
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"In a lead generation process it is important for marketing folks to pull in the sales team and establish the criteria for sales ready leads," writes industry observer Merlin Francis.
"Sales ready leads do not fall from the sky, and every company needs a multi-level strategy to ensure there is enough production of sales ready leads," Francis writes, noting that there are several lead generation tools available in the market: "The most popular of these are the ones which either focus on e-mail campaigns or Web visits with the key objective as converting sites into a source for generating leads."
Francis gives some ideas for how to identify sales-ready leads:
Authority. What is the job title of the inquirer or their department of responsibility? If you sell your products primarily to purchasing managers, it's unlikely that a sales ready lead would have the job title of administrative assistant.
Timeline. How soon does this inquirer plan to buy the product? The sooner they plan to buy the hotter the lead. The lead management system should instantly distribute hot leads to the appropriate sales person.
Read more here.
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Ever try to return to a brick and mortar store something you bought from their online store?
Oh sure they tell you it's no problem, just waltz in and waltz out a few minutes later, problem solved. All right, those of you who've tried it can stop laughing now.
Spare a thought for industry observer Michael Krigsman, who subjected himself to this procedure recently. The difference is that being a customer service writer, you get to share your pain with a broad readership.
Krigsman attributed his travails, in the main, to "incorrect customer transaction data and information sharing limitations between online and local stores," in his case at clothing retailer the Gap.
Read more here.
