What is telcos’ major objection and how do you counter this?
When an operator considers strategic sourcing, they want to ensure they can minimize the impact to their employees and disruption to customers. They also don’t want to lose control or visibility into their billing operations.
To adress these concerns, at Amdocs we have a formal transition methodology that includes considerations for employee training and potential re-badging. To ensure adequate knowledge transfer, so as to avoid disruption to customers, there is a period of “shadowing” in which our team shadows the operator, and then “reverse-shadowing” in which we’re accountable for operational tasks and the operator shadows us to make sure it is performed correctly. Only then, is there a full transition of responsibility to the Amdocs strategic sourcing team.
We also provide the necessary tools and reporting/dashboard mechanisms to provide real-time, daily, weekly, or monthly visibility into the “health” of the managed environments, applications, and processes – in addition to current vs. target service levels. We also work with the operator to define and implement a joint governance model to resolve any escalations and issues related to operations and to set periodic reviews of ongoing business objectives and associated SLAs.
Is there one path to moving these services to a third party or are there a number of options for operators to take?
It depends. In most cases, a phased approach is preferred to allow adequate time for transition activities. But if we’re talking about a “greenfield” operator launching a new line of business (e.g. Wimax operator in India), then a “big-bang” path could be considered, since end-user disruption is minimal.
What is the significance of your recently announced extension of managed services contracts with two operators in North America?
The AT&T and Bell Canada contract extensions reinforce how service providers can achieve significant operational and business benefits by transitioning infrastructure management, application management, and business process operations to Amdocs.
We leverage nearly 30 years of experience in the communication industry and apply our lessons learned/best practices from other global managed services engagements (and product implementations) to continuously look for opportunities to generate ongoing cost efficiencies and operational improvements for our customers.
In addition, these extensions reinforce Amdocs’ support and commitment for both Amdocs and non-Amdocs environments (legacy or third-party applications).