Legacy culture stifling change at service providers
Legacy thinking, a lack of cohesion and internal politics is hampering operators’ ability to deal with the new communications environment, according to a survey carried out by the CMO Council.
Nearly three quarters of communciations service providers polled by the CMO Council think that they suffer from a poor alignment of their operations, IT, marketing and sales teams. This, combined with a reliance on legacy thinking that prioritises infrastructure and pricing structures, is hampering operators’ attempts to get to grips with the changing subscriber environment.
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The CMO Council, with sponsorship from Openet, surveyed 212 staff at operators, representing marketing and technology functions. It asked if these professionals thought their own companies were equipped to provide consumer-centric services, and respond to the changes in subscriber demands and increasing complexity.
Liz Miller, VP of Programs and Operations at the CMO Council, told Mobile Europe that 75% of those surveyed believe that lack of integration between data sources was hampering the introduction of new, more personalised and relevant services. 72% also thought that poor alignment between sales, marketing and IT was hampering efforts. 68% agreed that a traditional corporate mindset was “out of sync with new forms of competition”.
Additionally, 83% felt they needed to get a better handle on the network resource and support challenges presented by a more diverse and demanding customer base and the proliferation of new devices and service offerings.
Miller said, “There is a sense that operators are dealing with a legacy mindest that responds to subscriber demands by applying traditional infrastructure, operational and pricing solutions. The aftermath of that is that they do not have enough access to the data they need to drive data-driven customer experiences. 

”There is a sense of paralysis to even start to aggregate that data, that they are faced with this overwhemling wave of customer insights that could be aggregated. Then they try to aggregate that data and end up with soiled data.
“The problem is to turn that key data into insights that can be actioned. Operators are looking for new revenue streams and to go beyond the new pricing matrix. Beyond these legacy conversations and deliver personalized, hi touch and more profitable customer experiences.
Miller said that the only way that can happen is by marketing and IT working together to bring mutual expertise to the table and develop a strategy to deliver the highly personalised experience. Yet a closed round table event at Management World, hosted by the CMO Council, convinced Miller that there is still a way to go. At that event, IT participants said they didn’t trust marketing teams not to abuse data (“They said they feared sharing data as they would see it on a billboard campaign the following week”) and one marketing executive said that he had got tired of waiting for the IT department to provide a solution he needed, to he provided the budget and resource to self-provision.
“Where is marketing at Management World?” Miller asked, “Marketing needs to be involved here, to deliver those new customer experiences. Yet right now it’s still a governance conversation. On the flip side, the CIO is not just there to keep the lights on. They need to be tapped for the sense of strategy they can bring to the table. The CIO and CMO together have this ridiculous wealth of knowledge, and so together could think more effectively.”
Miller did see “individual points of light” however. “Through the grousing at the Management World round table, there was a willingness to step out of the comfort zone and develop new strategies.”
Miller also pointed to the fact that a majority of respondents also said that they were considering changes to their CRM platforms – implementing new programmes and strategies.
The full report, which includes in-depth pieces from some operator respondents, as well as report sponsor Openet, is available at http://www.subscribercomplexity.org.
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