Show Me The Money (Faster)!

I recently attended a telecom conference, and many of the conversations revolved around how to launch MVNOs faster. Whether it was the MVNO, MNO, MVNE or other MVNx partner talking, everyone was asking the same question: How do we get the MVNO to launch faster so we can all start benefiting from the subscriber growth?

I’m going to tackle this question now from the MVNO perspective. It is often mentioned that an MVNO can launch in four months following the execution of the MNO/Aggregator contract. This is an aggressive timeline, but possible if an MVNO follows the advice provided here and has resources fully dedicated to launching the MVNO. If your team has other business projects that affect focus on the MVNO launch, you cannot expect to meet a four month launch timeline.

Here are my Top Six tips for launching your MVNO as fast as possible:

Tip #1: The Power of the White Label Platform

I’m going to start with the biggest impact to an MVNO’s launch timeline – the build of the eCommerce site and mobile app. I will provide simple but powerful advice here: use your MVNE’s white label platforms.

I’m going to let that sink in for a minute.

I understand you want a custom experience. I understand you have cool things you want to do with your website and app. You have big dreams!

Save that for Phase 2. You will be so overwhelmed launching your MVNO that you do not need to add the monumental task and cost of building a custom website and a custom mobile app. You do not want to worry about sourcing the development expertise, marketing expertise, and digital user journey expertise to make this happen. The dreams for your fully custom site and app can materialize in Phase 2. You may even find you are successful without the custom site and custom app, and you can build a great brand long-term using the MVNE’s white label platform. Plenty of other MVNOs have been successful using white label platforms in perpetuity.

To be abundantly clear, for the sake of speed and also reduced cost, you are going to launch using your MVNE’s white label eCommerce site and mobile app. If the MVNE does not have these white label platforms, or you do not like the look and feel of them, then I recommend finding another MVNE.

Using the white label platforms will gain you anywhere from three to six months on your launch timeline. Trust me on this. Turn away from your desire to create that custom site, and just hurry up and get launched – your investors and finance guy will thank me later for this advice.

Tip #2: MVNE Preferred Partners are Preferred

The MVNEs you reach out to during your vendor selection process will have a list of pre-integrated “preferred partners”. Here again, I employ really simple advice to gain speed in your launch: use the pre-integrated partners.

This is another reason the choice of MVNE is the second most critical vendor decision you will make after your Carrier/MVNA choice.

I certainly recommend vetting the pre-integrated partners, and in most cases, you will have to sign a separate contract with them anyways. You can compare and contrast to other vendors if needed (but this will cost you time), but at the end of the day, if you select a partner that is not pre-integrated – for example, you choose a new tax software or a new fulfillment vendor – then your MVNE will have to scope the additional timeline and cost for that integration work and that will negatively impact your timeline (and cost).

In using preferred partners, you will gain months’ worth of speed in your launch. This speed is realized through lessening the time spent selecting vendors as well as the MVNE not adding development timelines for new partner integrations.

Tip #3: Partner with an Experienced Customer Care Team

Again, the advice here is simple: choose a Customer Care vendor which currently services MVNOs or others in the wireless space. With a new vendor that has never supported wireless before, it will take several months to get Care set up, and you will need to have someone on staff who is an expert in standing up call centers. Instead, if you choose a vendor that already has experience with supporting wireless, you will find that setting up Care can take as little as six to eight weeks with the right partner.

Tip #4: Meet Partner Deadlines

Accept that deadlines matter. Your MVNx partners are not providing you with arbitrary deadlines to turn in forms and make decisions. They are experts in their piece of the MVNx ecosystem, and they know their internal timelines and critical paths. Make every effort to meet partner deadlines given to you if you want to launch as quickly as possible. Delays in providing critical information to partners result in delays on your launch. Your partners will quantify that potential delay for you, so take heed of their advice.

Tip #5: Be Decisive and Fail Fast

This one seems obvious, but more than half of my clients struggle with this. You do not need to launch the perfect products. You just need to launch something ‘good enough’.

Make timely decisions – often imperfect – and move on. Learn to fail fast. There are countless smarter business people than myself on LinkedIn who can articulate this product launch philosophy better than I can, but I fully believe in this concept for MVNOs.

You will bog down your launch if you obsess over the finer details. Determine your critical “must haves” at launch and plan for those. Decide what you can place in a Phase 2 launch, particularly if that feature causes a time delay in your initial launch. You are better off launching something ‘good enough’, realizing revenue, and then gauging what is working (or not working) with subscribers and adjusting as needed after launch.

Tip #6: Ask For Help

New MVNOs are not expected to be experts in the business. Your lack of knowledge in the MVNx space is normal and not a cause for shame. Your MNO partner, MVNE, and other ecosystem partners exist to help you in your launch. When you get stuck, call the experts and ask for help. Do not waste time trying to figure things out on your own. Someone will have the answer for you so that you can move on to the next task. All partners are here for mutual benefit – just remember my mantra, if the MVNO grows, the partners grow. Your partners know this and are ready to help you to the next step, so use them as an extension of your team.

In my next article, I will discuss how the MVNE can improve the launch timeframe for MVNOs.

#mvno #mvnx #mvne #mvna #telecom

Kate Vanderpool is the owner of MVNxpert Advisors LLC (www.mvnxpert.com), a consulting business focused on the US MVNO space, and author of MVNxpert Insights. She has been in the industry for over 18 years and has been part of over 25 MVNO launches both from the MNO (Sprint) perspective as well as the MVNO perspective. She is passionate about improving the efficiency of MVNO launches and connecting resources across the ecosystem to ensure successful launches. She can be reached at [email protected].