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Amdocs Setting the Standard for Integrated Customer ManagementTMCnet Communications and Broadband Columnist
There is a competitive dynamic that is gaining momentum throughout the telecommunication industry: the customer’s power of choice is going to outweigh the power of any internal asset. What is the implication for companies competing over these customers? They must become agile, aligned and customer-centric to succeed.
Integrated customer management, also known as the intentional customer experience™ is an approach that recognizes that a company must retain and expand their share-of-wallet with their most valued customers while also becoming more cost-efficient in order to grow corporate profitability. Amdocs is considered an industry expert and trusted advisor that facilitates the integrated customer management and the delivery of an intentional customer experience. To do this a company must be able to understand a customer’s needs intimately and efficiently deliver and support solutions that capture the most value.
According to Amdocs, in order for a company to drive profitability from its customer base, an alignment of strategies is required among divisions and lines of business. Agile business practices must be embraced and the operating process and a re-centering of the business on meeting customer desires must be implemented. This is Amdocs’ integrated customer management.
In the case of British Telecom (BT), the organization’s main communication with customers was in the form of a bill sent four times a year. The ability to maintain a brand image through that bill was essential to BT. The company relied on Amdocs to assist in becoming flexible and delivering bills that the customers were asking for, strengthening BT’s image for the customer.
Amdocs assisted in giving full control of the customer base to mobilkom austria. By keeping billing and CRM together, mobilkom is able to know more about their customers, thus making it easier to keep them happy. Through Amdocs, mobilkom has a 360 degree view of the customer in order to track all contacts with the customer. This enables mobilkom to improve its position in the market.
With more than $580 million in reported revenue for the first quarter of 2006, Amdocs is already embarking on a productive year. The first quarter has also seen an expansion of Amdocs activities at a major North American wireless carrier and in Europe, an existing customer will be supported as it expands its MVNO-related activities.
Sprint Nextel announced on Tuesday that it has reached a preliminary agreement with Amdocs to provide a single platform to support Sprint Nextel’s more than 46 million wireless subscribers.
Amdocs is a global company employing about 12,000 IT professionals and serving customers in more than 50 countries. The company uses a combination of innovative software and service with deep business knowledge to accelerate implementation of integrated customer management by the world’s leading service providers. Amdocs is positioned to provide customers with the benefit of a rapid return on investment, lower total cost of ownership and improved operational efficiencies.
Amdocs is cornering the market on a concept that every company can stand to benefit from: maintain customer loyalty. With the information that is available to customers today, the opportunity to switch service providers is as simple as a few clicks and this is enough to make even the best providers nervous. That is why customer relationships are more important today than they ever have been before.
It is no longer a world where growth is equated with increasing the customer base. Any provider not embracing this concept will not be around to compete in the next generation of technology. For those that do, they must live and breath by the concept to be the strongest and therefore the best as customer expectation will only increase as the bar for service standards will continue to be raised.
Service Provider Summit
Be sure to catch the debut of the Service Provider Summit at the upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, EAST, which runs January 24-27, 2006, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., focusing on key issues number portability, ENUM, e911, IMS, SIP and much more.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
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