Competitive Advantage Powered by Managed Services

The 2010 World Cup will be held in 9 cities across South Africa from 11 June to 11 July. During this period, hundreds of thousands of soccer fans will flock to the country, which will put enormous extra pressure on the telecommunications network. To deliver high quality mobile services, Cell C, the country’s most dynamic mobile operator, chose ZTE as their Managed Services partner. By leaving their day-to-day operations to ZTE, Cell C can focus more on their customer needs and new product launch. ZTE’s Managed Services team employs outstanding operational procedures to achieve the winning goal. 

In recent years, intense competition and growing challenges in the telecommunication market have compelled operators to look for new ways of doing business. An outsourcing model allows them to share the burden of network management with a Managed Services Vendor (MSV) and focus more on long-term strategic initiatives that will enhance the value provided to customers.

ZTE believes Managed Services enable outsourcing to be effectively used by operators in their customer relationships, brand management, and in offering innovative solutions. This helps operators gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly challenging marketplace.

 In the past few years, ZTE has won more than 50 Managed Services contracts for round-the-clock operation of worldwide telecom network infrastructure. It has established 13 Regional Centers, 12 Training Centers, 9 Regional Distribution Centers, 7 Regional Customer Support Centers, and 42 Local Customer Support Centers to deliver outstanding services to customers across the globe. ZTE has become a leading provider of mutually profitable Managed Services solutions.

Nowadays, operators are facing tough challenges such as the 2G-3G-LTE evolution, heavy debt loads, slow penetration growth, and declining APRU. To release operators from complicated network operation and management, ZTE has launched professional and cost-effective Managed Services solutions that address stringent operational requirements. As a long-term partner of operators, ZTE always sticks to the following essentials to increase profit and efficiency.

■   Reducing OPEX

OPEX occupies a greater portion of operators’ TCO. It is 3 to 5 times the CAPEX. To reduce OPEX, operators place greater requirements on their service providers. ZTE’s Managed Services solutions help operators improve their profitability by reducing operating expenses. Analysis from ZTE’s past experience indicates that a well thought-out and well-run outsourcing contract can reduce operational expenses by 15% to 20%.

■    Optimizing CAPEX

To keep a competitive edge, operators need to optimize their investment to significantly reduce CAPEX. There are many synergies between ZTE’s universal system platform and Managed Services portfolio. These synergies provides optimization including convergent services (voice and data convergence, 2G-3G-LTE evolution), leveraging DSL benefits to improve cost structure, and increasing the addressable market by developing the small and medium enterprise markets.

■   Improving efficiency and performance

Operators expect a solution to bring better performance and lower cost. Outsourcing network operations, billing, or contact center operations leads to quicker customer responsiveness, better network availability, and lower churn rate. The implementation quality of the outsourcing contract is measured by the agreed Service Level Agreements and Key Performance Indicators. In this way, operators can outsource their network operations to a vendor without sacrificing control of the entire network.

■   Integrating complexity

As many operators do not consider field operation and maintenance a core competency area, they prefer to outsource the maintenance of their towers and base stations. Outsourcing to an MSV can integrate multiple business systems, capacity management systems, and call center systems onto a more consolidated platform. ZTE has set up a centralized National Network Operation Center to take care several operators’ networks in India.

■   Managing risk

Outsourcing to ZTE is a way for operators to manage multiple risks including workforce management, investments in unproven markets or technologies, and simply upgrading internal systems. Outsourcing these tasks offers a way of hedging against the risks. First, it is easier to decommission a team from ZTE than an entire internal team; this provides more flexibility if an investment proves to be unwise. Second, a tailored solution to meet rapidly increasing market demand is more easily accomplished by an outside group with a dedicated professional team. Third, operators do not need to invest in training and education for their own workforce on new technologies, platforms, or processes, and are free to focus on their core businesses.

■   Migrating infrastructure

Technology transition to 3G or 4G networks enables operators to outsource their networks to a third party. ZTE’s Managed Services solution can hedge the risk of failure when a new network is commissioned, and ensures the transfer of knowledge to the operator’s organization.

As an important and fast-developing component of ZTE professional services, ZTE’s Managed Services portfolio covers network planning, operation and maintenance, optimization, program management, expertise support, and other fit-for-need services. The portfolio is designed to satisfy the all-round service needs of operators and provide a high level of flexibility in the network operation field.

With more than 10,000 employees engaged in professional engineering services around the world, ZTE has become a unique provider able to deliver a wide range of convergent offerings, addressing different market segments with a clear and outstanding value proposition in the Managed Services market.

Fast market growth requires operators to seek infrastructure investments and network upgrades with the lowest possible TCO. With ZTE’s Managed Services solution, operators will be much better equipped to meet the challenges from the market with an innovative portfolio supporting aggressive pricing and much better customer value.