Chapter 2: Taking Offerings & Solutions To Market

This Chapter consists of the following sections:

• Industry Context
• Offering Lifecycle Management (OLM)
• The Role Of Partnerships

The Story of ISG series

• Overview
• Chapter 1: Crafting an Industry Identity & Offerings
• >> Chapter 2: Taking Offerings & Solutions To Market
• Chapter 3: Collaboration - The Keystone of Innovation
• Chapter 4: Beyond Dollars: ISG's Influence and Brand Impact

• Chapter 5: The ISG Operating Model

Industry Context

Before we discuss HOW we took our solutions and offerings to market, let me share some industry context:

The Renaissance in Media

The media landscape was undergoing a seismic shift. The erosion of traditional advertising revenues necessitated a pivot, a reimagination of legacy structures. With this understanding, we devised three pivotal offerings:

• Ad-tech Innovation: Recognizing that advertising is the lifeblood of the media industry, our ad-tech innovation focused on the resurgence of revenues for the traditional media giants. At the same time, it addressed the need for the digital newcomers, like streaming services, to elevate their ad sophistication, ensuring marketers garnered true value.
• Rights & Royalties: In a world hungrily consuming original content, managing rights and royalties became paramount. The gap between rights acquisition and actual utilization presented both a challenge and an opportunity. The failure to harness unexploited rights could drastically diminish revenue streams and degrade user experience. Our approach ensured that the industry's content potential was fully realized.
• Media Supply Chain: Serving content to diverse channels - from streaming platforms to linear television - required a complete overhaul of existing supply chains. Moreover, the importance of descriptive metadata couldn't be understated. Our strategy wasn't just about streamlining; it was about re-architecting for the digital age. And central to all these offerings was a deep commitment to harnessing the potential of native cloud operations.

Telecom's Future Blueprint

The telecommunications sector stands at the cusp of monumental change. Long identified as Communication Service Providers (CSPs), these entities are undergoing a transformative shift, evolving into Digital Service Providers (DSPs). This metamorphosis isn't just a nominal one. It represents a broader philosophical and operational change that positions Telcos at the forefront of digital service delivery.

Central to this shift is the ability to harness the potential of groundbreaking technologies. The emergence of 5G and the oncoming wave of 6G is redefining how Telcos perceive their infrastructure. These aren't merely faster versions of their predecessors; they signify a paradigm shift, providing hyper-connectivity, near-zero latency, and the capability to handle a multitude of devices, fueling the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution.

Complementing this is the rise of MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing). With MEC, Telcos can process data closer to the data source or "at the edge." This isn't just about speed; it's about creating responsive, dynamic, and adaptive networks that redefine user experience, especially in real-time applications like augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and telemedicine.

Given this backdrop, our blueprint for the future, the 'Network Cloud', takes on heightened significance. It isn't just a framework; it's a dynamic playbook tailored for the modern DSP. This blueprint encapsulates every facet of the new-age Telco - from ensuring unparalleled customer experiences to pioneering cloud-native network operations, all underpinned by the agile and innovative autonomous infrastructure.

In this era, the Telco isn't just a conduit for communication; it's a digital juggernaut, propelling industries, societies, and individuals into an interconnected future.

Tech Industry - Partnering to Elevate

The tech industry's landscape demanded a slightly different approach since this segment relies heavily on modern engineering practices to launch products, we focused on Cognizant's engineering practice and handpicked accelerators. A myriad of strategic partner-based offerings emerged, encompassing realms like product engineering and the service provider network, especially in collaboration with titans like ServiceNow.

While these offerings laid the foundation, ISG further bolstered its reputation by launching solutions such as the Intelligent QoE+ for media and the Digital Services Marketplace for Telco, along with the groundbreaking NaaS for Telco.

Crafting an Offering Through Offering Lifecycle Management (OLM)

The Science Behind OLM

Our unique approach to Offering Lifecycle Management (OLM) wasn't simply a linear process. It was a harmonious blend of strategy, design, and execution, ensuring that our offerings and solutions met both market demands and internal readiness criteria. The six pillars of our OLM were:

1. Marketing Materials and Sales Training: At its core, this phase was about building narratives. Our offerings weren't just services; they told a story about solving industry-specific challenges. Equipping our sales team with this narrative was crucial to establish a genuine connection with potential clients.
2. Sales Planning, Targets, and Tracking: Once armed with the narrative, the strategy transitioned to logistics. Here, we identified potential targets, set objectives, and established tracking mechanisms to gauge our market traction.
3. Delivery Readiness: It wasn't just about selling a vision, but ensuring we could bring that vision to life. This phase was about aligning our delivery mechanisms with the promises encapsulated in our offerings.
4. System Readiness: This ensured that our internal systems, from IT infrastructure to support mechanisms, were aligned and ready to support the new offering's lifecycle.
5. EC Reporting: Keeping our Executive Committee in the loop was pivotal. Their feedback, coupled with their strategic insights, helped refine and realign our offerings as we progressed.
6. Recalibrating Portfolio/'End of Life': An essential facet of adaptability. As market dynamics evolved, some offerings matured to a point where they either needed recalibration or retirement, ensuring our portfolio remained fresh and relevant.

Decoding the Build of Materials (BOM)

Bringing an offering or solution to market isn’t just about the product itself but the ecosystem of support and narrative around it. Our BOM was a meticulously curated list of materials designed to provide clarity, align teams, and most importantly, articulate the value proposition to our clients.

• Foundational Material: These were the bedrock of our offerings. The Offering Definition clarified our vision, the Sub-Industry Pain Point Deck identified and addressed specific challenges within niche market segments, and the Offering Roadmap provided a trajectory of how our offering would evolve.
• Sales Enablement: Here, we transitioned from a conceptual plane to a practical one. With tools like the Commercial Operating Model and Global Pricing, we provided our sales teams with tangible assets to drive conversions. Materials like the Sales Diagnostic Questions and Offering Overview Deck acted as a bridge, translating our internal narrative into a value proposition for prospective clients.
• Digital Presence: In an interconnected digital age, our online footprint was a vital touchpoint. From Social Media and Blog Posts that provided micro-insights, to targeted paid programs designed to capture niche market segments, our digital strategy was both expansive and targeted.
• Solution Design: This is where the rubber met the road. With the Offering Design Prototype & Asset Creation, we translated conceptual offerings into tangible solutions. Consultations with our Security and DX teams ensured that our solutions were robust, secure, and aligned with the latest digital transformations.

Offerings & Solutions: A Hierarchical Relationship

While often used interchangeably, it's crucial to differentiate between offerings and solutions in our context. Think of an offering as a parent entity - a comprehensive encapsulation of services designed to address a broad business challenge. Framed in the context of our client’s needs, it resonated with their pain points and aspirations. Under this umbrella, existed the solution. More technical, the solution was the manifestation of the offering, where abstract ideas transformed into actionable roadmaps, entwining platforms, software, infrastructure, and services.

Through OLM, we ensured that each solution, while technical and specific, remained aligned with the broader narrative and value proposition of its parent offering.

Partnership takes precedence

Although there are people at IT service firms like ours whose job is the manage the alliance with key partners, we identified a need to "double click" on that relationship. We were not replacing the alliance team, but engaging in specific joint GTM activities within the industry. Activating their account teams to collaborate with ours. And creating unique IP which differentiates us and our partner in ways which require high industry specificity.

One of strongest (and the first we focused on) was our partnership in telco with AWS (thank you Amy Gottesman, for your passionate leadership and partnering). There was a lot of heavy lifting on both sides, and a long period of trust that needs to be earned to create a well functioning relationship. After all, all partners have sales teams who are pursuing personal goals (to sell products or services for their respective companies). Creating a shared vision for both sales organizations takes a great deal of planning, winning hearts and minds, and tending to specific opportunities to make your partner successful. I can't thank enough all the people who contributed to the success of our AWS/Cognizant partnership, including leaders such as Adolfo Hernandez and Marc Aldrich, and an army of experts, engineers, market and partner development innovators such as: Stuart Lepkowsky, Sanjay Gopal , Ajay Ravindranathan, Dan Hawks, Michael Singer, Sameer Vuyyuru, Robin Harwani, Jason O'Malley, Ryan Sowell , David Wei , Gopal Ram, Elizabeth Berg, Keith Hodo, Travis Fulton, Marwan Tarek and many others.

Symbiotic Partnerships

But we did not stop at hyperscalers. We tallied nearly 30 specialized ISVs in the partner network we oversaw. Strategic collaborations included partners such as ServiceNow , Microsoft Azure , Databricks fortified our offerings. With Databricks, we ushered in the Intelligent QoE solution, at a time when every media streaming service was struggling to detect root cause in service and experience disruption. Our vision was clear – to not just offer services but to revolutionize industries, and this included partners such as Hansen, Verizon, Verizon , Hansen Technologies , Vitria Technology, Inc. , HTC , Dell Technologies and industry associations such as TM Forum (shout out to Cecilia Lang , Nik Willetts , Joann O'Brien BSc MBA , Javier P. )

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