“If you want to be around in 10 years you’ve got to do something to differentiate yourself from the pack.”
Chris Evans
In Building a Business Case we indicated examples of the business case models that can be used to build a compelling story for implementing a new OctopOSS, including:
- Brand security (ie being able to respond to faults expediently and avoid brand damage via major outages),
- Speed to market (getting new products to market faster than competitors or provisioning services to end-customers faster),
- Flexibility (being able to get innovative solutions to market faster than competitors),
- Efficiency gains (ie reducing the bottom line in resources, be that human resources, hardware, licencing, support, etc),
- Revenue protection (identifying leakage with a potential for rapid payback periods), innovation (eg services that attract new customers and gain new revenues and/or market share).
- Service-centric (delivering a customer service that is unrivalled by competitors, particularly in the area of value-added services or for customers who require special support)
- Self-service (providing the mechanisms for customers to service their own needs with minimal interaction from the CSP)
- Partnership (combining the diverse talents of multiple organisations to deliver a compelling joint solution)
Irrespective of the strategy chosen, the OSS must be designed / implemented in such a way that it delivers a sustainable competitive advantage and/or sustainable differentiation mechanism for the CSP.