Yes We Can, to borrow a battle cry

Whilst preaching to the choir can be quite reassuring, it is hardly world-changing.  So I have spent many years using whatever platform available to convert non-believers in the CSP industry to embrace the concepts, practices and solutions of Enterprise Product Management.  Along the way I have encountered my fair share of sceptics and, in some cases, complete disregard...

...but, those who know me know I am a hard person to ignore.

So welcome one and all to the inaugural issue of my TM Forum blog – my latest venue for encouraging what was once the unthinkable:  turning this industry into a “product-centric” one.

Throughout my postings, I promise to practice uncharacteristic restraint, by publishing only once every other week.  However, in each issue I will unreservedly call it as I see it.  Honesty is always the best policy.  And so is brevity; so my last promise is to keep it short.

I will get started by calling attention to the fact that the CSP industry is experiencing an identity crisis.  And that this crisis is rooted in the fact that CSPs struggle with the notion of what “products” they sell.  Indeed CSPs sell a lot of things.  But articulating it is another matter:  one is usually met with quizzical looks or inconclusive answers when asking “what do you sell” or “how many products do you have”.  The best answer usually amounts to pricing plans; hardly an appealing foundation upon which to devise and operate a business strategy.

And as content has exploded onto the market, access to which circumvents the traditional hold CSPs once had on customer contact, the traditional CSP needs to regroup and ask itself what business they are really in.  The answers can vary – full service, retail centric provider; intelligent conduit reseller; dumb pipe; a combination of the above.  But getting to that answer and devising the correct product portfolio accordingly is the key to CSPs focusing on the right end customer.

This is not just marketing fluff.  The existing lack of clarity bleeds over into a costly operational approach to managing the business.  If products are what we sell to the customer, why is it CSPs usually ignore efforts to manage products explicitly, thus hiding the cost of poor product management?  Money is poured into “caring for the customer”, billing the customer, managing the network.  Very little direct investment is made in managing the product set.  The result is quite frankly band-aid solutions that lead to rickety, one-dimensional excuses for product catalogs; hard coded processes for product and service fulfilment; preoccupation with shiny toys in the network. 

No single person is to blame - this is a result of how CSPs have developed and evolved over time.  And with so many brilliant people in this industry we have the wherewithal and intelligence to solve this problem.  And this is where my blog journey begins...