2011 will be the year of OSS transformation, with customer experience management a growing motivation, according to Cassandra Millhouse, VP Marketing for Amdocs’ OSS Division.
Millhouse said that 30% of service providers polled in research carried out by Amdocs will begin or start OSS transformation in 2011. That means that 70% of the 33 service providers polled will have begun OSS transformation projects by the end of this year.
“What’s interesting is that although we have been talking about this for a number of years, we are seeing this year that more service providers are starting the process,” Millhouse said. “It’s a more mature process that recognises that OSS needs to be endlessly flexible – a recognition that change happens and service providers need to address that change.”
Respondents to Amdocs’ survey, which was carried out by Telesperience, said that the key reasons for OSS transformation are to improve operational efficiency and to reduce opex, but the ability to improve the customer experience and speed up product rollout were also high up the list.
However, according to Telesperience, European CSPs were less interested in using OSS to drive CEM improvements, and are still more focused on cost control. However, they are looking to be more agile, and to support new service enablement.
Telesperience’s findings broadly reflect those of PwC, which has carried out a survey on behalf of Oracle into CSP IT strategy. PwC said that 46% of CSPs said improving customer experience is one of the top three drivers of IT strategy.
The CIOs reported that a smarter use of customer relationship management (CRM) applications is the area of greatest focus for system replacement or upgrade, reflecting the prioritisation of customer.
PWC, who interviewed 30 CIOs, said that CIOs are also planning a move towards more standardised, off the shelf applications as well as a more strategic use of outsourcing in order to simplify their in-house IT.
The interviews revealed that 67% of bespoke applications are delivered with a “substantial” budget overrun (74% have some level of budget overrun) and that 60% of CIOs currently spend more than half of their opex budget on ‘maintenance’