Because telcos’ business has become a lot more challenging in recent years, largely because of the OTT players, their way of sourcing equipment is changing. No longer do they simply write an RFP, which leads to a contract and then deployment, said Paul Scanlan, president of Huawei’s business and network consulting group.
As telcos rationalize their businesses to cope with declining voice and SMS revenue and tighter margins on data services, competition among vendors also has become fiercer. Nowhere is there more evident than in the managed services sector, where scale and execution are everything, according to ABI Research’s Joe Hoffman.
Hoffman notes vendors are not simply competing on price -- cost-effective performance is a given -- they are expanding their portfolio of services for which operators often are happy to off-load.
Understanding that the telco world is evolving and to change how it engages with telcos, Huawei two years ago set up the hybrid business and network consulting group – the result of merging the newly created business consulting unit and its carriers solutions group.
One way it is doing that is to improve relationships at the CxO level – beyond the CTO, which Scanlan said tends to be a cost center.
As it engages beyond the CTO level, it aims to leverage its trust on the technology side and bring in new types of business, like a go-to-market strategy for 4G. The focus shifts to a business perspective from a technical one.
He said telcos are huge organizations and are fighting a lot of fires. “They hire consultants for a number of reasons. Sometimes it’s for nothing more than being able to bring teams together under a common theme.”