The true meaning of carrier partnership
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
In my last blog “Thoughts on target marketing by carriers,” I referenced Deutsche Telekom’s recently launched services for Multi National Corporations (MNCs) to illustrate the importance of targeted marketing. Today I would like to reference the most recent iPass carrier announcement related to “iPass and Orange Business Services (OBS) Partner to Deliver Enterprise Mobility Services to Enterprises Worldwide” to discuss the true meaning of partnering with a carrier.
But before I cut to the chase, I would like to point out that this announcement is yet another example of targeted marketing by carriers. In this case, OBS is using the flexibility of the Open Mobile Platform to enhance their service portfolio by targeting “smaller-enterprises” with a new offer.
“But enough on targeted marketing already” I hear you say, so let’s move on to the “carrier partnership” discussion and ask ourselves what we actually think about when we hear the word “carrier.” In my mind, I envision a relatively large organization that had to evolve and adapt quickly from a heavily regulated environment in the early 1990s, to a highly deregulated and competitive environment that started emerging in the late 1990s, and is most evident today. It is an organization that is both contributing to “globalization” by developing a global telecommunications network, yet is impacted by globalization due to increased competition and more stringent customer requirements.
According to Thomas Friedman, “The simple definition of globalization is the interweaving of markets, technology, information systems, and telecommunications networks in a way that is shrinking the world from a size medium to a size small.” In this “size small” world, information flow is transparent, competition is global, cycles of innovation are quick, and customer expectations for an outstanding and competitively priced service are high. This is why carriers are constantly striving to strike a fine balance between a very thorough due diligence process of evaluating new vendors and their technologies and a quick pace of innovation dictated by the global market.
So what would it take then for a vendor to successfully partner with a carrier? In my mind, the two foundation pillars of successful “carrier partnership” are trust and agility. Trust is usually developed over an extended period of time, first and foremost between people of the carrier and vendor organizations. Since carriers require a long term visibility into vendors’ roadmaps and plans as well flawless execution, the vendor should exhibit a consistent “say what you do and do what you say” behavior over time. Agility is all about a vendors’ ability to introduce new products and services quickly to enable carrier partners to differentiate their offers and stay ahead of the industry innovation curve.
Establishing a high level of trust with a carrier is not easy. It requires more than “good intent” and “cool technologies” – it requires subject matter expertise, infrastructure, processes, culture of innovation, and the ability to execute. And this brings us back to the OBS announcement which provides a great testimony of a trustworthy relationship developed between iPass and OBS, which is embodied in the following quote – “This is why we had no hesitation in relying on iPass to extend our Business Everywhere solution to smaller-enterprises having worked with iPass for a number of years,” said Jeroen van Brussel, vice president International Mobility & Global Solutions MNC at Orange Business Services.
Yes indeed, a true carrier partnership is developed over years of collaboration, and with iPass expertise and proven success record in this area we plan to expand our relationships in the future with both existing and new carrier partners.
Tags: carriers
