Some of the critical challenges operators face in serving their enterprise IT customers include their inability to address enterprise IT heads’ demand for data services control within and outside the organization, and, assuring a fixed monthly cost that won’t fluctuate due to the huge unpredictability in data usage among enterprise employees.
In fact, scratch under the surface and one can find remarkable perceptual differences between the two groups – operators and enterprises – on core issues such as data caps and quality of mobile services. A recent Heavy Reading & Information Week survey of 60 mobile operators and 230 business technology professionals for the 4G World Conference in Chicago between 28 Oct-30 Oct, 2012, have made these opposed feelings even starker and self-evident – while over 75% of operator respondents said their enterprise mobile services were “okay” or “better” (34% actually saying they were “great”), only 10% enterprise executives agreed with the operators, with over 88% saying improvement is desired! [1]
Whoa! That’s not just a slight difference of opinion – it’s a huge misunderstanding which necessitates the operators to bridge their perception gap with large enterprises. These typically contribute anywhere between 20-30% of total service provider revenues. In pure ARPU terms, it translates to around $2000 or above per month, a much higher revenue realization compared to family/retail customers.[2]
In order to truly serve enterprise customer demands, we believe it is necessary to transfer organizational data control from operators to enterprise IT heads. This is because enterprise subscribers are more likely to have latest smartphones, face huge data requirements and work more frequently with VOIP or other business applications. They’re also more likely to face roaming charges due to increased travel. This puts them at higher risk of bill shock – where the monthly bill is higher than expected leading to subscriber churn. Furthermore, enterprises often refuse to pay what they feel are irrational bills, leading to complex dispute resolution with operators who end up losing money due to bad debt waivers and other bill settlements.
[1] http://www.lightreading.com/blog.asp?blog_sectionid=1112&doc_id=226396& [2] Elitecore research based on annual data of key operators
NetVertex Enterprise Policy: In order to create personalized pricing plans for varying enterprise needs in order to avoid bill shock while easing corporate subscribers’ goals of managing data plans for all users through a centralized web portal, the importance of an Enterprise Policy solution like Elitecore NetVertex cannot be stated enough. Some of its advantages include:
Providing QoS and Quota Management: An Enterprise Policy solution can allow the service providers to offer individualized bandwidth policies for different categories of users. By simply logging into a service selection portal, the Admin can configure quota plans based on hierarchy/department of employees.
Providing time and access-based controls: An Enterprise Policy solution enables policy selection for bandwidth, and usage-based on the time of the day/hour etc. by offering differentiated plans based on application access and time duration (home/roaming) for individuals or groups of employees.
Tracking and controlling usage: This means creating in-built personalized monetary spending limits and usage restrictions for an employee based on his/her role in the organization.
The enterprise can also use the Service Selection Portal to monitor an individual employee’s usage by setting thresholds that would alert an IT administrator to unauthorized usage, such as when an employee roams onto an unauthorized network, or set general policies, such as blocking certain applications (e.g. Youtube) on the device.
[1] http://www.lightreading.com/blog.asp?blog_sectionid=1112&doc_id=226396& [2] Elitecore research based on annual data of key operators
