Why do service providers need solutions?
Hintikka: In broad terms, if you’re a network operator today, you’re either looking at a new growth market scenario of enormous growth with huge network coverage and cost challenges, or a mature market scenario of falling voice revenues, staggering technical complexity and rapidly fragmenting industry and business models.
Either way, the kind of issues you’re now facing can’t be addressed by traditional products and services. You need total solutions based on a deep understanding of your business and the markets in which you operate.
How is Nokia Siemens Networks changing to support this solution focus?
Hintikka: Mainly it’s about changing attitudes and building related capabilities, and that’s happening at every level. For example, our sales and marketing organization has been operating for years in a market-oriented fashion. Likewise, thousands of our people are fully qualified solution sellers, and more are joining them every month through ongoing training programs. Back in 2006, this customer-focused transformation had already been recognized with a Diamond Award from the IT Services Marketing Association.
On the technical side, a part of our solution architecture development has moved from the R&D labs into the customer interface with the consulting and systems integration projects we do. Of course, we’re still providing the underlying platform or capability, but at an early stage we combine that with an understanding of the customer’s infrastructure and business problems – and through that dialog, deliver a solution that meets their individual business objectives. It’s this process that we call Solutioneering.
How have customers reacted to these changes?
Hintikka: One innovation that has had particularly positive feedback is our strategic online tool, Fit for Business. This harnesses the expertise of our consultants in a new software application, supported by financial algorithms, research data, business models and marketing arguments. As an interactive tool used for customer workshops, it enables us to capture, structure and share the information and expertise required from both sides to identify the issues we need to solve.
How do you build solutions for customers?
Hintikka: The fact that we have the industry’s broadest technology portfolio makes us almost by definition ‘solution-capable’, since we are no longer focused on selling one technology over another. Instead, we can ask our customers what would best suit their needs, based on their business objectives, market conditions, installed base and other real-world considerations, and then help them evolve to the best value and lowest cost long term solution.
To do that in a way that brings unique value-add, we rely on our global knowledge repository and capabilities. In fact, we can’t become a solutions company without being a knowledge company. That means documenting what we have done before and then using it in discussions with customers facing similar business issues in similar kinds of market.
Can you give examples of these solutions and the challenges they address?
Hintikka: There are many. In mobile backhaul, for example, we are no longer limited to just one or two transport options. Today, we can take whatever infrastructure a service provider has, and use a combination of wireline and wireless or circuit-switched and packet-switched technology best suited to the job.
Another example is our operations and business support systems. Already we have over 150 Managed Services contracts – where our OSS tools are right at the heart of our customers’ operations, providing us with valuable data that we can use directly to drive optimization and bring down operating costs.
What makes you different from your competition?
Hintikka: There are several reasons, but allow me to mention three big strengths that enable us to stand out from other players, whether they be vendors, integrators or management consultancies. The first is our installed base of customer relationships and proven technology. Not only can we help identify key business issues and development strategies but also back up our insights with real-world services and solutions. We serve the majority of the world’s leading operators so that provides a solid basis for further dialog and insight.
The second strength is our customer-facing organizational structure. Our Customer Account Teams are now the primary dimension of this company, and that close customer contact can steer the rest of the organization in such a way that we can deliver on our solution promise.
Thirdly, our values. We aspire to have a culture that combines the innovation and entrepreneurial drive of a young company with the knowledge and best-of-breed technology of an established and successful global enterprise. I know from talking to customers that this is something they find new and exciting in the marketplace, and that runs parallel with their own perceptions of the opportunities and changes that they face in the foreseeable future.
Acquisition will strengthen subscriber management portfolio
Nokia Siemens Networks is to acquire Apertio Ltd., to boost its subscriber data management solutions.
The leading provider of open, real-time subscriber data platforms and applications built specifically for mobile, fixed, and converged communications service providers, UK-based Apertio will improve Nokia Siemens Networks’ ability to help service providers simplify their networks and manage subscriber data, a critical challenge in today’s competitive markets.
Apertio’s customers number among the world’s largest and fastest growing communications service providers, including Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2.
The deal will build on the strong relationship between the two companies. Apertio is expected to form a new business line to be headed by Apertio CEO, Paul Magelli, within Nokia Siemens Networks’ Converged Core business unit.
Jürgen Walter, head of the unit, says: “Enabling access to subscriber data in real-time means you can profile subscribers and deliver new services and advertising appropriately. The announcement gives us the opportunity to provide unique value to our customers in this growing area.”
Acquisition will strengthen subscriber management portfolio
Nokia Siemens Networks is to acquire Apertio Ltd., to boost its subscriber data management solutions.
The leading provider of open, real-time subscriber data platforms and applications built specifically for mobile, fixed, and converged communications service providers, UK-based Apertio will improve Nokia Siemens Networks' ability to help service providers simplify their networks and manage subscriber data, a critical challenge in today's competitive markets.
Apertio's customers number among the world's largest and fastest growing communications service providers, including Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2.
The deal will build on the strong relationship between the two companies. Apertio is expected to form a new business line to be headed by Apertio CEO, Paul Magelli, within Nokia Siemens Networks' Converged Core business unit.
Jürgen Walter, head of the unit, says: "Enabling access to subscriber data in real-time means you can profile subscribers and deliver new services and advertising appropriately. The announcement gives us the opportunity to provide unique value to our customers in this growing area."
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