FEATURE ENTERPRISE SERVICES
Whether operators
are targeting the large
multinationals or the small
to medium sized enterprises,
there needs to be a
fundamental rethink in the way
communications are handled
There are four tariffs available to 3’s business
customers. The first is a flat rate plan,
where users pay a monthly access charge
of £11 and then pay fairly competitive per
minute rates for usage. Then there are two
bundled offers known as the Business 600
and Business 900 plans. And finally, there
is a sharer tariff, which offers the customer
the option of buying a bundle of voice, text
and internet usage that can then be used by
a pre-determined group of handsets.
Of course, there’s more to launching an
SME service than releasing some cut price
tariffs. Logica’s Hicklin says: “You need to turn
your products with technology into clearly
understood propositions that have some real
business benefits. It is easy to be hard on
operators and technology providers by saying
‘you’re not being business driven enough’, but
actually trying to package up some of this
technology into things that are easy to set up,
use and support with a minimal complexity,
isn’t always that straight forward.”
As Charles Pangrazi pointed out, it seems
like the SME market is ripe for a business focused
MVNO. “We’ve been looking at a number
of partner organisations that are considering
that type of approach,” says Hicklin. “I do think
the business MVNO space will be an interesting
one for operators to bring things to market.
The analysis has been doing the rounds for
years now, in terms of what is required, and an
MVNO model would enable someone to bring
it to market in a more focused way.”
According to Hicklin, business focused
MVNO candidates could well originate in
the IP space. “I think everyone is looking at it
42
from different perspectives. I’ve been looking
at this area and we are talking to our traditional
telco partners, but also firms in the IP
space in terms of what people are trying to
do there and see what sort of offers can be
shaped,” he says.
Ultimately, whether operators are targeting
the large multinationals or the small to
medium sized enterprises, there needs to be
a fundamental rethink in the way communications
are handled by a lot of enterprises,
and operators should be helping to drive that
change, so thinks Pangrazi.
He reckons companies need to “grow up
on the phone thing,” and that mobile phones
need to be managed as part of a company’s
IT estate in much the same way that laptops
now are, “because phones are no longer simply
communication appliances, they are information
appliances.”
“IT departments and CIOs need to start
to get their arms around managing these
devices properly from a security standpoint
and from a productivity standpoint,” says
Pangrazi. “IT directors tend to think of things
in terms of exposure and downtime, and so
they don’t really think of upsides and in fact
mobile phones are a great productivity tool
once we start to extend the applications out
to where people need them.”
So how can the carriers engineer this mind
shift? “The operator needs to act like a grown
up SI [systems integrator] or a consulting
company and start to offer IT-like services to
the enterprise,” says Pangrazi. Of course, the
tier-one suppliers like Orange and Vodafone
will argue that they already do this. “They do,
but if you compare how Morse, Accenture or
Atos would do an IT project with how the
average mobile operator would do a project,
there is still quite a big gap,” he says.
Pangrazi suggests operators need to rethink
their sales teams. “Take a look at the cross section
of the types of people on the sales staff
and ask ‘are they the consultant-types that an
SI might employ, or are they people who have
grown up selling voice?’ And that gives you an
indication of who they can talk to and what
kind of deals that can do,” he says.
Laurent Gervais of Atos says operators need
to pay particular attention to who they’re
dealing with, particularly with the larger
accounts, it could range from group CIOs
to facilities managers. “The operator needs
to synchronise his approach among all the
countries and identify in advance the structure
of the accounts—the way that decisions
are taken, the key countries or areas in terms
of influence and decision making—and to be
able to propose something that covers the
needs of those accounts in all the countries
that they have to cover,” he says.
Pangrazi agrees: “In a lot of cases the IT
director isn’t involved in the procurement of
mobile phones and the whole voice estate,
it is still stuck in a lot of companies in the
facilities department, so the same people who
buy desks and contract for cleaning services
will also do the contracts on mobile phones.
So what kind of decision do you think they
will make on procuring mobile phones? Well,
it is going to be price-based.”
The enterprise service sector is clearly
something of a minefield, but with the correct
preparation the rewards are great. The
biggest challenge of all would appear to be
understanding the customers’ needs. Orange’s
Glock warns: “If he thinks he’s buying product
and you’re trying to do a customised bid,
he won’t recognise the value of what you’re
bringing to him. But if you are the other way
around and he thinks he wants you to customise
something for him and you try and push
product, he is going to get very frustrated
with the fact that you are inflexible.”
Flexibility is key. Building an enterprise
service proposition is a careful balancing act.
On one side sit a few demanding but lucrative
multinationals, on the other sit thousands of
smaller slightly less demanding, but when
added up no less lucrative SMEs. Are the operators
getting it right? Laurent Gervais laughs,
“I’m not sure, from what I have seen they can
do it far better.” �
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