OSS Brainpower
“The trouble with the future is that it usually arrives before we’re ready for it.” Anonymous. It strikes me that there are a lot of network experts in the world but there aren’t very many OSS experts, relatively. As such, OSS is a relatively more immature market in terms of the brainpower that has been […]
OSS Survey Results
“Therefore, let us not despair, but instead, survey the position, consider carefully the action we must take, and then address ourselves to our common task in a mood of sober resolution and quiet confidence, without haste and without pause.” Arthur Henderson. In a recent survey of OSS operators, respondents were asked two simple questions: What […]
Single customer view-point
“Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They’ll just walk away.” Marilyn Suttle. The customer is the single most important component of a CSP and customer support will be the next competitive battleground (if it wasn’t already). But are there any B/OSS that give a CSP’s call centre […]
Business metrics
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Albert Einstein (possibly). The B/OSS suite means a lot of things to a lot of people in a CSP’s organisation. If you are an executive at a CSP or were to put yourself at the terminal of the C-suite for […]
96% Transformation
“First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.” Napoleon Hill. Whilst doing some recent research I came across this interesting study by Frost and Sullivan. See slide 5 of this slide-pack. . Without knowing […]
Tasks and journeys to improve efficiency
“A task model is a description of the activities users perform in order to reach their goals. Task models can represent both real-world and digital activities. They help you understand how your product can fit into the users’ lives. User journeys are a method of expressing the ideal route for your product to facilitate these […]
12 reasons to choose a career in OSS
“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” George Bernard Shaw. Here’s my list of reasons why to choose a career in OSS: If you have ambitions to reach a senior position in a […]
Consultancy is a supply – demand equation
“Consultancy is a supply – demand equation. The reason I have so much great advice to give is because I produce so much but nobody ever wants to take it.” 😀 I am an OSS consultant but I have to face facts – the customers will always know their business better than me. The customer […]
Sequential product releases
“Watch the product life cycle but more important watch the market life cycle.” Phillip Kotler. In yesterday’s blog “What must I do today?” and an earlier post entitled “The television analogy” I spoke of the parallels between the television and the telecommunications industry. I have a few diagrams / tables to elaborate today. The standard […]
I need your help. What must I do today?
“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.” Eleanor Roosevelt. It’s a regular topic of conversation here (and elsewhere too of course), that CSP’s revenue streams are under pressure. CSPs have been in the game of selling technology-based services traditionally but just as we’ve seen in the television industry (please see earlier […]
Motivation-Big.Data-Gamification
“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” J.P. Morgan. At their core, OSS and BSS are primarily about efficiency. They are tools to make the management of the following (and many more) easier and more efficient: Order entry Alarm / event management Service […]
Massive inflection point
“A strategic inflection point is a time in the life of business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.” Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive. Let me start today by asking […]
CSP vs OTT
“Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.” Jeff Bezos. In yesterday’s blog, we cited a report indicating that CSPs across the globe could lose up to $172 Billion in revenues from voice and messaging services. The implication is that OTT (Over the […]
$172B Revenue Loss
“According to a research report published by Telco 2.0, telecom companies across the globe could lose up to $172 Billion in revenues from voice and messaging services [on a $375 billion base over the next five years].” Digital Service Cloud. In a nutshell, that’s $172B that won’t be available to be invested in big-budget transformational […]
Big ticket OSS (part 2)
“Here is a simple but powerful rule – always give people more than what they expect to get.” Nelson Boswell. In yesterday’s blog, we spoke of the imperative of providing a perception of having added more value to the CSP than the OSS has cost. If you’re an integrator, when you finish off your OSS […]
Michelin stars
“Like a waiter in a Michelin-starred restaurant, a service provider needs to strike the right balance between neglecting customers and being overly attentive.” Executive Leadership Summit. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has a tendency of kicking in when a customer calls a CSP, equivalent to a diner calling for the waiter to complain about the service […]
Pareto Listening
“Sometimes, we’re so eager to have an opinion that we skip the step of working to understand.” Seth Godin. I’m currently reading “Power Listening – Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All” by Bernard Ferrari. In it, the author speaks of applying the Pareto Principle to listening. In other words, spending 80% of the […]
Body Area Networks (BAN)
“Over the last decade, developments in miniaturization and low-powered electronics have led to the development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which are computational systems with the ability not only to sense their environments, but also to process and communicate the data obtained using a wireless channel. This book focuses on a specific class of WSNs, […]
Customer experience storyboards
“I do all my work by storyboard, so as I draw the storyboard, the world gets more and more complex, and as a result, my North, South, East, West directions kind of shift and go off base…” Hayao Miyazaki. Does your B/OSS have the ability to track each interaction relating to a customer, through all […]
The CSP’s front-line
“An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.” Stephen Covey, In yesterday’s blog, I described the importance of providing the field workforce with tools that improve the feedback of data into the OSS, thus improving data […]