Ingredients to a winning recipe

The voice telecommunications industry is one of the most competitive in the world. There is, however, a perception that it is the easy avenue to making ridiculous amounts of easy money. This is NOT the case.

The truth is that as technology is migrating to Next Generation IP based services, it has become a lot easier to enter the industry and therefore competition has intensified. If you run your business correctly, Voice Services can be a fantastic source of revenue. Even more importantly, it can enable you to compete more effectively for business and also retain
customers more effectively.

It is a well-known fact that customers want to simplify their communications infrastructure as much as possible - and that counts for suppliers as well. The more services a single vendor can supply, the simpler it is for the customer to manage and easier for them to make a change.

So before moving on to the building blocks, there is one more thing I need to highlight. People tend to go over the top one way or the other: they either spend too much money, build too much redundancy, take too long so finalise a project OR they want to do things too cheaply or too quick. You get the picture.

A lot of what we do in our day to day consulting work, is help customers find a balance: They need to invest sufficiently to make sure they can offer a quality service and spend enough time making sure all the bases are covered i.e. they can implement effectively, they can bill properly, they can support the customer effectively, etc.

So let's look at the basic ingredients required to build a winning voice
offering:

• Sales Offering - you need to build an offering that addresses your customers' requirements, while being competitive with what's out there in the market.

• Infrastructure - you need to invest in infrastructure you can rely on. Voice is a mission-critical service and customers are typically less forgiving with service interruptions than you might be used to on the data side of your product offering. Don’t try and do this on the cheap. Think of it as investing in tyres for your car; if you're doing serious mileage or high-speed travel you'll want to make sure you have spent a little extra on quality tyres.

• Process - you need to map out and implement processes to address the relevant aspects of delivering a service. Remember who you are competing with in the voice industry !!! To stand out, you have to demonstrate that you know what you're doing. Make sure you know exactly what steps to follow when you need to implement a new customer or what you need to do when you need to support an existing solution.

• Billing and Invoicing - this is a critical area. If a customer is not convinced that you are invoicing them correctly, all your other efforts are in vain. We see all too often how this critical area is sadly neglected.

• Support - voice telephony is a business-critical service. Make sure you can effectively support your customer. The customer needs to understand exactly what to do when something goes wrong and they need to understand what their redundancy options are.

Going forward we will delve into these ingredients and unpack each element
in an effort to simplify entry into this potentially lucrative industry.

The Interconnect playing field

1 March 2010 is a significant date in the history of South African telecommunications. On this date, the interconnect to mobile operators will come down. For consumers the end result should be lower call charges one day down the line.

For current and potential voice service providers the impact is immediate. The mobile operators have already jumped into high alert mode - as they need to protect existing [eroding] revenues. The end result for the customer will be a good one here, as mobile operators will be forced to innovate more aggressively in order to keep or win customer votes.

For alternative voice service providers this is excellent news!!!

The playing field as it is known in South Africa is in the process of being re-drawn and so too are the rules.

Historically the voice market consisted of a small group of operators, which then appointed a small number of "Service Providers", which then in turn appointed resellers, which then in turn appointed dealers, and so it went on...

As it normally works in such a hierarchical system, the people doing the most work are not the people higher up in the system. The lower down you are, the less you qualify for OR the more you have to work in order to make something meaningful out of the opportunity.

That has now all CHANGED !!!

Anybody is now free to apply to ICASA for a license, or to partner with an entity with an existing license.

Here is the first difference already; Instead of a small handful of Service Providers, there are over 300 ICASA license holders.

If you have the correct license, you are then entitled to interconnect with other licensed operators in South Africa, the "big" ones included.

This is fantastic news for everybody wanting to enter the Telco playing field.

The traditional GSM LCR segment in South Africa was a R6 Billion industry - and that was purely providing an existing service at a lower cost; no innovation or new services that really addressed business needs.

You will now be able to build your own infrastructure by interconnecting with other operators, coming up with innovative customer offerings and offer the market something unique and competitive.

On this note I'd like to add, that in order to be unique and competitive does not mean you have to compete on price purely !!! It is a common misconception that because it's IP voice it has to be cheap or free. After 5 years of playing the commodity game, customers understand that SERVICE can play as big a part of a decision as price does.

The aim of this blog is to provide information to current and potential voice service providers on how to go about staking your claim on the Telco playing field. We will try and highlight common mistakes to avoid and also equip you with knowledge and insight so that you can build a successful business.

I hope you enjoy the journey with us....we look forward to interacting with you on a regular basis.