Operators worldwide are struggling to manage the increased complexity in their product offerings, with 84% saying product management was a major challenge and most admitting their existing OSS/BSS systems were inadequate in dealing with the expanded offerings.
According to a survey by Analysys Research, which was sponsored by Comptel, 79% of the operators questioned said they see the value of implementing a centralized catalog solution to support their daily operations or as a key element in their future IT architecture.
The research, which polled over 20 global operators in both the fixed-line and mobile sectors, showed that operators were aware of the need to update their product management solutions to take account of aggressive product roadmaps, increased costs and inadequacies in other core systems - most notably billing.
Tom Harden, an analyst at Analysys Research, said there was demand from operators for solutions to help link customer-facing commercial views of products with technical network views of component services. "Most of the operators we spoke to were facing challenges in managing increasingly complex products."
Jukka Nyman, director of business intelligence and strategy at Comptel, said: "The results of the research were surprising in that there was very little regional variety in the responses. Operators in Europe and Asia Pacific were both very similar in their understanding of the challenges surrounding product management. It was also clear that most operators have a poor understanding of the role service catalog solutions can play in helping to manage this complexity."