OSS are too important to be just cost centres

When we distill it down, what are telcos selling?

They’re selling connections.
Whether it’s connecting with information, a group, another person, even a virtual assistant or machine-to-machine, we tend to use communications services to connect.

Networks are an important component to establish those connections. OSS go a step further. They help to establish a connection but also help to maintain the ability to connect – via change, incident, problem, capacity customer and other service management tools.

That makes OSS pivotal to each telco’s revenue stream. And yet, OSS are most commonly seen as cost centres. Is that because we collectively don’t really tie our metrics to what is being sold? If anything, our OSS tend to be more closely aligned with metrics related to loss (eg network outages, faults, SLA degradation, etc).

We’re a step removed from all of the positive stuff. Examples include:

  • The selling process
  • The billing process
  • The revenue collection process
  • The product design process

But we enable all of those tasks as well as allowing the part that actually sells – connections.

So, how do we change those perceptions? Two possibilities spring to mind:

  1. We get better at understanding (and facilitating) why customers want to connect (and why they want to connect elsewhere); and
  2. We need to better demonstrate how influential we are at establishing and maintaining connections, And part of that is as described in yesterday’s blog on omni-channel experience orchestration

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