LEADING TELCO SOFTWARE VENDOR REFACTORS ITS E-COMMERCE ARCHITECTURE BASED ON IEMR's RESEARCH
THE PROBLEM
Our client – a leading telco software vendor – takes a customized approach to its e-commerce modules for its carrier customers. Our client was increasingly finding that CSPs are picking platforms that have a modular and open architecture that provides them with flexibility to access the underlying capabilities of the platform via web services across all key LoBs.
Facing a redundant business model for e-commerce platform implementation, our Client wanted us to understand the nuances of how the market has shifted underneath them and what they can do about it. They wanted us to understand how important the following business and technology factors were in decision making at telcos:
TELCO-SPECIFIC CAPABILITIES: Most e-commerce platforms in the market place are “all things to all people”. In this context, our Client wanted us to understand how important it is for CSPs to have telco-specific implementations with specific vendor experiences integrating with both north-bound CRM and south-bound provisioning and product catalog and order management systems.
WCMS LIMITATIONS: Almost all our Client's CSP customers say that most e-commerce platforms have limitations in how they can be integrated with their existing web-based contact management systems. Internal telco implementation teams are spending a lot of time debating whether the e-commerce engines offered by leading vendors should be integrated with platforms such as Adobe CQ5 or other enterprise-grade WCMS systems, when in fact, this should be a pre-configured feature of any e-commerce engine.
IEMR'S SOLUTION
IEMR undertook in-depth primary interviews with specific executives that handle e-commerce solutions at 20 of the largest telcos in the world using our Global Enterprise Panel. Our research showed that:
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Architectures that are Java-based allow internal development teams at carriers to customize the e-commerce platform to meet their own specific needs.
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E-commerce platforms that do not replace the underlying provisioning and activation systems at CSPs and that continue to operate external to the E-commerce platform are also essential to CSP requirements.
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CSPs are generally satisfied with the Order Fallout ratios they are experiencing with their e-commerce platforms. 80% of the executives we interviewed, who had specific knowledge about order fallout rates, said that the order fall-out ratio was less than 1% on their e-commerce platforms, and that they were generally satisfied with this rate.
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Our research shows that CSPs value e-commerce platforms that can extend beyond consumer wireless (prepaid and postpaid) to corporate accounts. However, even some of the leading vendors' solutions are finding a hard time extending their capabilities into the B2B large enterprise domain.
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Our research also shows that CSPs are demanding
e-commerce platforms be implemented across Customer-facing Websites, Call Center, Retail Stores, Online Stores and Smart Device Apps as key channels. -
Our research shows that Total Time to Market (TTM) is in the 9 – 12 month range, on average, for the 20 CSPs we interviewed.
IEMR'S IMPACT
Based on our research, our client decided to invest heavily in key aspects of our findings: investing more in its systems integration capability to reduce TTM, expanding its capability in omni-channel webstores, particularly contact centers and retail, establishing an internal development group to re-factor its code base, and to focus on extending its e-commerce platform to B2B use cases.
