Investaura’s Network Operations Transformation model is now on the Web

Investaura has released a white paper re-visiting the financial benefits of managed services and infrastructure sharing for telcos. Building on an initial discussion and review of the relevant approaches and options available, a top-down financial simulation model has been developed to analyse and quantify the benefits of alternative options available to communications service providers (CSPs).

The model that Investaura and Implied Logic have developed looks into four transformation levers that can improve the economics of the mobile carrier and potentially create considerable value:

Re-visiting the financial benefits of Managed Services and Infrastructure Sharing

Read our latest White Paper and learn more about the following topics:

  • Managed Services / Outsourcing
  • Infrastructure Sharing (Passive, Active) / TowerCo business
  • Vendor financing, Leasing (Finance lease, Operating lease), Sale & Leaseback
  • Financial Simulation, Top-Down Modelling
  • Telecom Economics, OPEX reduction, CAPEX reduction, Value creation

Abstract:

Communications service providers (CSPs) in developed markets are facing considerable challenges. While voice markets are saturated in most countries, 3G/4G network rollouts require large investments, which are not always commensurately compensated by increases in revenues; data traffic is exploding but revenue per Mbyte is often decreasing faster than cost per Mbyte. The overall impact is that both EBIDTA and EBIT margins are decreasing.

The future of NSN: can NSN survive without its Managed Services business?

Our recent article on NSN (The future of NSN: a happy-end at last?) has been a blockbuster of sort. It has attracted more than 3,500 readers since publication at the end of April 2012, from Germany, Finland, Portugal, India as well as many other countries. We have been very surprised by the interest that the article has generated. There was nothing new in the article that was not in the public domain already, and the financial numbers were taken straight from the Nokia web site.

We have reasons to believe that many readers must have been NSN employees trying to decide what to do now, in the view of the various outplacement and redundancy programs set up by the company. Also a former NSN employee indicated that “the NSN management would never point out the series of multi-hundred-million annual loss so clearly”! If this means that the NSN management has lacked transparency towards its own employees in the past, then this is rather worrying.

Outsourcing: To outsource, or be outsourced? That is the question

For telecom service providers, outsourcing has always been a tough decision.  In the past, the most common processes that have been outsourced fall into three broad categories:

  • Call centre / contact centre / CRM
  • IT services, whether relating to the enterprise internal needs (e.g. desktop services, Data Centre Services, ERP) or to end-user applications (VAS, application hosting)
  • Network operations: plan, build, operate, maintain

Other areas of service providers business have long been outsourced, including fulfilment logistics and in most countries distribution and sales – retailers Points of Sales to complement the service provider’s own direct sales force and PoS.

But let us step back.  From a big-picture perspective, the key issue is: when does it make sense to outsource a particular activity?