Decision Process for operators is totally broken.
Mauro Carobene
Head of Customer Interactions Suite Tata Communications - CEO at Kaleyra Group - Connecting enterprises with their own customers - Board Member & Advisory Board member
Every single sales person knows that the last month of the fiscal year (whenever the fiscal year end) is always when you realize how good was your year. You can plan properly the whole activities but for one reason or another you always end up in waiting Purchase Order the last 24 hours of your year. Every year I question myself: "Am I doing something wrong?" and every year I reach the same conclusion. The decision process in telecom industry is totally broken and will kill this industry.
I will not name any operators, but this reflection is valid for almost all of them. Whenever an operator takes a decision to make significant investment they start a process that takes months or even years before taking the final decision.
three issues are related to this behavior
- The industry is not waiting them. while they spent a fortune in terms of resources and time, the industry is moving forward. Competitors coming from other angles are launching new services as soon as they are ready and are not waiting them to take their decision and even more to implement them. Think about WhatsApp and IMS. While the telco industry was planning and selecting the best IMS solution to be implemented, WhatsApp come from the blue and killed the whole messaging and Voip industry.
- Decision is not always right. Long decision process is not a guarantee for success. I would say almost the opposite. I saw big transformation decided in weeks being successful and on the opposite transformation decided after two or three years of decision process that ended up in total failure very quickly.
- Huge costs for suppliers. Supporting long decision process (RFI/RFP/RFQ/Demo/POC repeated multiple time) it's a huge cost for suppliers. Despite on a specific deal operators could get some discounts; the whole community of operators will pay these costs.
OTT players and the app industry is looking at us and enjoy the moment. Whenever I speak with CxOs they always agree on the principle but then they are always the first to start huge selection process.
Few concepts should be implemented based on these principles:
Decide quickly and fail fast. Decide failure criteria should be the most important decision. When and how do you recognize that your project failed? Set clearly a time for taking a decision as part of the project. Don't be afraid of failure.
Set clear and reasonable timeline for decisions and if not respected stop the project. Anything above 1 months means that either you are not ready to take the decision or you don't have the needed information or too many people are involved are involved in the decision.
Win together. Suppliers should be treated as partners and not as one entity to squeeze. Either we win together or we fail together
Until when transformations will require years to start, this industry will be subject to be attacked by all the other industries that are interested in getting share of our business, and this will be even more valid once NFV will be a reality. The physical infrastructure investments will not act anymore as barrier to protect our industry from others and the destiny will be to become simply a very expensive bit-pipe at the services of other reach players
Business Development: Driving Growth + Business Value with Digital Business Transformation (DBT) & AIoT Services | Strategic Partnerships | Consultative Sales | Pragmatic Sustainability
8 年Ciao Mauro, having also been on both sides of the fence, believe we need to separate between business decisions, say related to the launch of a new service (to your point on OTTs), and the decision to buy something from a supplier (which may or may not be really needed)... I know I'm playing devil's advocate ;-) On the other side I also like Maarten Ectors' definitions of RfI (Requests for IHaveNoClue) and RfP (Requests for ProcurementIsBoredAndNeedsSomoneToTorture) from his https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/when-traditional-telcos-start-dying-afterwardstelcos-20-ectors?trk=hp-feed-article-title-share post.
Head of Customer Support Service
8 年I totally agree especially with.... "Set clear and reasonable timeline for decisions and if not respected stop the project. Anything above 1 months means that either you are not ready to take the decision or you don't have the needed information or too many people are involved are involved in the decision.".
Learner
8 年Account planning is about latest technology trends. And execution is all about - minimum POs to be released. Very well summarized.
Technical Product Manager | Technical Project Manager | Technology Evangelist
8 年Very true. And the worst case is, when fiscal year ends on separate day in supplier and in telco.
Driving Digital Transformation | Expert in AI for Impact | Strategic Growth Leader and Pioneer | CxO
8 年Hi Mauro, thanks for sharing this update. Am not sure though what this has to do with a year's end - any sales person knows that the budgeting seasonality within any industry/customer has an impact on the procurement process. Timing is everything. The other issue you are addressing is valid, but already going on for years if not more than a decade - nothing new I guess. Having being on both sides, I believe that vendors are equally part of the eco system, and should also re-invent themselves (or should have already). And if your customers are not 'buying your stuff' - time to re-focus, plenty of alternative players / 'new entrants' to go after as you stated yourself ;-)