How to Build a Strong Service Provider Business
By: Matt Reath, CTO
The world of the service provider, specifically for cable and telco providers, is becoming an ever-changing environment. Previous funding models, like USF and ConnectAmerica, are in flux. Customer demands are shifting from lower bandwidth consuming web browsing to immersive video, cloud services, the Internet of Things, and other bandwidth intensive applications. These changes, if not planned for and adapted to, can weaken service provider operations and customer satisfaction.
Developing a strong service provider business that can pace itself with these changes and stay profitable along the way requires focus in four primary areas:
- Customers
- Service Offerings
- Talent
- Network
Customers
It is essential that each provider understand their customer’s
motivators and incentives for adopting certain technology and use
patterns. Cisco VNI forecasts 132 Exabytes per month of IP traffic by
2018—over 2X more than 2013 traffic (figure 1). Embrace this growth
rather than fight the adoption of new technologies like peer-to-peer,
video streaming, and cloud applications by creating services with
marketing programs that embrace and celebrate the growth of broadband. Be the customer advocate—make your customers fall in love with your services.
Make sure to keep current and understand consumer technology and the
implications it will have on your business. If unable to attend the CES,
follow it in social media or through other sources. Understand where
consumer technology is evolving to and adapt the business strategy for
customer adoption of these trends.
Keep your customers, their feedback and behavior at the center of your service strategy.
Figure 1. Cisco VNI Forecasts 132 Exabytes per Month of IP Traffic by 2018
Service Offerings:
It is hard to stay profitable by offering only broadband and
make the network changes required to keep pace with data consumption
patterns. Providers need to create business models that provide
additional customer-focused services for residential, mobile and
business customers. Use customer feedback and industry trends to create a
unique, differentiated set of services that meet the potentially unique
demands of each provider’s serving areas. These new services should
become the most profitable. As the services become ubiquitous or
expected, new services should be developed to keep customers engaged or
sticky.
Some common services offered today include:
- SP WiFi – Cisco VNI forecasts substantial growth in WiFi by 2018 (figure 2). Capitalize on this growth and create new revenue opportunities by blanketing common areas, downtown corridors, venues and other high population areas with WiFi to provide cell offload, analytics, location services, hotspot access for customers, and pay for access. Also providing custom SSIDs, portals, and advertisements for businesses are a compelling value add.
Figure 2. Global Internet Traffic, Wired and Wireless
- Managed IT – Businesses should be focused on what they are best at and options for outsourcing their IT needs to their local provider can be compelling.
- Managed Security – Security for businesses and even residential users is a growing revenue source for providers. From managed firewall services to hosted malware protection— there are plenty of options to customize for different customer types.
- Cloud + Circuit Bundles – Guarantee SLAs by building a private or hybrid data center. Providers can offer 1G or 10G pipes to their business customers in conjunction with DR storage or hosted applications.
Cisco Q2 FY’15 shows Data Center and Wireless as large growth areas
(figure 3). This is in line with the above analysis of creating
service-oriented businesses and networks.
Figure 3. Cisco Q2 FY’15 Revenue Highlights (from Cisco’s Investor Relations website).
- Linear content + Video Anywhere – Create a uniquely branded solution by developing a ROKU-based solution that brings together linear or live content in conjunction with video anywhere options like HBO Go or the up and coming Disney and CBS.
- Many other services are out there—for example, Hosted VoIP or Collaboration.
Talent
The saying goes, keep your employees happy and they will keep your
customers happy. Every provider should have a strategy built around
attracting, acquiring and retaining knowledgeable and talented
employees. Happy and knowledgeable employees work more efficiently and
are more likely to go above and beyond to solve customer problems and
keep customer satisfaction high. This doesn’t mean you have to hire the
most expensive employees—sometimes that’s just not in the cards. Develop
strong training programs and development plans for as many employees as
possible. Provide employees with a career progression and attainable
goals to go after. Don’t only focus on technical skills but train soft
skills, especially those that are related to customer and social
interactions. By engaging and mentoring all employees you will bring out
the best talent, and in some cases, talent you didn’t know you had.
Network
A provider builds the foundation for success by creating a customer
centric strategy, researching and building a compelling service set, and
training and hiring the best talent. The last piece of the puzzle is to
create, manage, and maintain the infrastructure that delivers the
service to the customer. Always plan ahead and have a running 3-5 year
network and infrastructure plan. This plan should be built and modified
based on customer feedback and trends as well as what service offerings
will be relevant both short and long term. Tie your customer and service
plans together with your network and infrastructure plan.
Build the infrastructure in as redundant of a way as you can afford.
Reliability of delivery is one of the main customer satisfaction
metrics. It only takes one outage to tarnish a reputation but takes a
long time to get that brand value back. Don’t skimp here.
Create a modular and adaptable network. MPLS provides efficient ways
to transport different types of traffic. By creating a base physical
layer with a logical MPLS network on top, “virtual” architectures can be
created using VPLS, AToM and L3VPNs. This combined with network
function virtualization (NFV) can enable modification of services and
delivery without rolling a truck to make the changes. The idea is to
create the architecture and network in way that it can handle different
types of services without making major changes to the network. It must
be able to adapt.
Conclusion
A service provider can create a strong business by focusing on the
four primary areas: Customers, Service Offerings, Talent, and Network.
Customers will be satisfied, engaged and willing to work with the
provider to evolve their experience. Each provider will see satisfaction
increase when focus areas have strong strategies in place and are kept
at the center of decision making.
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