Beatriz Butsana-Sita: Managed services can reduce capital
expenditure by avoiding costly engineering of solutions in-house
                                        

                                      
The evolving wholesale managed services portfolio from BT GTM helps operators
address their challenges effectively 
                                      
                                      
Operators need to do more with less. That means introducing new services, generating new revenues and delivering cost efficiencies across their businesses. However, the budgets aren’t there for costly new service development and the market is now moving too quickly for traditional approaches of building telecoms support systems. Speed of deployment is more critical than before and, throughout the history of telecoms, speed has always come at a cost.
Operators need to look outside their own businesses for means to achieve these aims within their specific constraints on time and investment. They need to take a closer look at options they previously considered and discarded. Among these are managed services, where an external provider delivers a network, service or portfolio under contract.
With managed services operators can realise a range of benefits including the reduction of required capital expenditure, significant savings in operational costs, but also accelerated innovation and easy entrance into new markets or customer segments.
BT has a track record of delivering those advantages to its wholesale customers to help them succeed. Based on the experience both in the UK and in global markets BT is offering a strong portfolio of wholesale managed services ranging from voice to data to consultancy helping operators meet their challenges.
Tangible benefits delivered by managed services
First, managed services can reduce capital expenditure by avoiding costly engineering of solutions in-house and source flexibly instead. Managed services providers like BT can work alongside the operator’s internal resources and the customer benefits from tapping into the BT experience to replicate proven operational blueprints. This managed services approach enables operators to focus the freed capital on their core business and customers. They can move away from capital- intensive approaches with the associated risk to return on investment. Pay-as-you-go managed-services models are more closely related to the revenue generated and avoid underutilisation while offering scale for growth.
Second, managed services propositions are not just about refocusing capital. They can also offer substantial savings on operational expense (OPEX) by optimising a service provider’s running cost base, reducing requirements for staff or making existing staff more productive. Greater productivity is especially important for growth scenarios in emerging markets and for new service launches. Service providers can also reduce OPEX through consolidation of existing relationships and management of technologies and infrastructures. Further, managed services approaches offer greater flexibility than building and operating solutions in house. They enable optimisation of the cost base over the time of the contract, leading to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and improved return on investment.
Third, beyond addressing requirements to reduce capital and operational expenditure, managed services can assist carriers to innovate faster and grow their businesses. Taking advantage of BT’s global know-how and capabilities enables an operator to enter non-footprint geographies with relative ease and without the need to build new resources. And with white-labelled managed services, they can gain access to new customer market segments without the requirement to build those portfolio elements themselves. Last, through accelerated technology migration backed by managed services, operators could benefit sooner from transformation to IP, giving them an advantage in their competitive positioning and overall evolution.
BT’s managed services for global telecom markets
BT’s portfolio comprises of solutions enabling the operator to achieve the described benefits on capital and cost reduction, flexibility enhancement and accelerated innovation. All those offerings capitalise on the experience BT has gained globally and in the UK by managing major long term managed services contracts.
This managed services portfolio includes Global Inbound Services which are offered by BT for operators that want to enhance their portfolio for corporate customers with advanced contact centre solutions. This can be extended to optimise a customer’s existing call centre set-up, including required technology refreshes. Virtual Data Centre is a managed service enabling the operators and their customers to benefit from cloud-based computing, storage and security with high automation levels that significantly reduce total cost of ownership. BT’s Managed Voice and Network Services encompass optimisation, operation and sourcing of various aspects of an operator’s voice and data networks with the help of BT via such options as Legacy Network Optimisation. Illustrating the breadth of the BT managed services portfolio, it also offers Subsea Cable Management with services for building and managing subsea cable infrastructures, for example in emerging markets.
Within the Managed Voice and Network Services category, BT offers tailored solutions for international voice and data networks. Especially the area of international voice outsourcing and optimising mobile voice and data networks is currently in the focus of operators, combined with a need to automate field force and reduce associated expenditure while increasing customer experience. Let’s look at those specifically. 
                                      
                                      
Optimisation of voice, data services and field force through managed services 
                                      
Through its International Voice Optimisation Service, BT provides a three-phase approach to assessing an operator’s current international voice business and developing a future IP strategy. The first phase involves analysis of the state of the key areas product, sales and marketing, commercial management, network management, and billing and settlements. Analysing organization, process, systems and key performance indicator gaps against best practice, this phase delivers an optimisation plan for the business. The second phase includes development of a financial baseline for the international voice business and produces a TCO financial model with recommendations for implementing it. This phase also covers voice traffic and revenue analysis. The final one moves from planning to solution backed by managed voice services and voice outsourcing services from BT. Areas addressed include the outsourcing of elements of the operator’s legacy international operations to BT and its partners. Also in focus is delivering key operational benefits while moving towards an IP future with BT as a partner for the operator’s international IP voice traffic.
Another Managed Voice and Network Services receiving a lot of market interest is BT’s 3G Radio Access Network Optimisation. All 2.5G-, 3G- and LTE/4G-based services comprise a complex set of components that require enhancement to deliver the best quality at the most favourable cost. Put simply, 3G operators have to optimise to operate effectively because 3G networks often suffer from silo-based planning and need better measurement for root-cause analysis. Moreover, configuration of network elements in isolation can result in inefficiency. Operators therefore can benefit from improved measurement capabilities to monitor traffic flows through the 3G service. With sophisticated techniques they can analyse and optimise their network topology and configuration and implement end-to-end planning and modelling. By choosing managed service from BT, operators can access BT experience and its vendor-agnostic approach to deliver quality and performance improvements in their 3G networks. BT can help them meet the challenge of growing data usage in their mobile networks and offer their customers an excellent service experience.
A further managed service from BT that directly impacts an operator’s customer service performance and benefits the bottom line is BT Field Force Optimisation. Drawing from its experience of managing a 25,000-person field force, BT can optimise the way an operator manages its off-site employees to maximise productivity and generate significant savings. BT Field Force Optimisation enables operators to schedule their staff and equipment in the field effectively so they can provide their corporate and consumer end users with customer service backed by the right skills in the right place. Typical results include a reduction in operational cost of on-average 15% because fewer administration people are required. Automated intelligent scheduling increases productivity by reducing idle time and assigning jobs based on the nearest location. As the field force responds more quickly and is more likely to provide a lasting fix, customer service and customer loyalty improve. In addition, the operator can achieve significant reductions in fuel usage, carbon footprint and fleet size.
These propositions form part of the BT Global Telecom Markets managed services portfolio designed to enable operators to stay competitive and optimise their businesses. BT is constantly enhancing this portfolio with a strong roadmap underlying it.
Summary
Customers benefit from the experience and track record that BT has earned from its own operations and from furnishing managed services to other telecoms providers. By adopting a managed services approach, operators can achieve the benefits of more flexible and agile sourcing and address their operational and capital expenditure challenges while they accelerate the development of new revenue-generating. They can optimise their operational cost base, focus their capital where it matters most, and position themselves for growth and service innovation to succeed in the market place. GTB

Beatriz Butsana-Sita is managing director of BT Global Telecom Markets