The power of real-time access quoting by HOT TELECOM

HOT TELECOM CASE STUDY

The power of real-time access quoting

CASE STUDY

THE POWER OF REAL-TIME ACCESS QUOTING Type of operator: Global Tier-1 telecom operator Objective: Quoting process automation

Setting the scene

There is no doubt about it, the 2020s will be the decade of the self-serve, real-time, endto-end delivery of telecoms services. To achieve this globally, the ecosystem necessary to deliver such capabilities must therefore be built through, not only strong partnerships, but also through the use of innovative solutions and software which underpin them. Then and only then will carriers be able to facilitate fluid connectivity from quoting to implementation in a matter of hours, if not minutes. A paradigm shift around how connectivity is ordered and provisioned is paramount. But it cannot stop there, as carriers must also reinvent how they price and quote these complex solutions. Without near real-time pricing and quoting, the end to end fluid connectivity ecosystem will never become a reality. This is why Configure-Price-Quote solutions, also known as CPQs, are fast becoming one of the most important pieces of the fluid connectivity fabric puzzle. These software give the sales teams the necessary tools to build complex solutions and quotations, involving multiple countries and carriers, in close to real-time. As a result, they provide customers multiple ‘ready to order’ technological and pricing options to meet their specific needs.

www.hottelecom.com

Without this, carriers will never fulfil their ambitions of building global complex networks at the drop of a hat, while maintaining the best pricing options possible. Without an innovative local access quoting solution, carriers’ complex quotation time will remain at what they have always been, which is days, if not weeks. Historically, the local access quotation process was hugely inefficient and challenging. Carriers would send their requirements to their suppliers via e-mail with very low conversion rates, typically around the 1% to 5% mark. This resulted in a bottleneck on the suppliers’ side, with quotations being slow to be responded to and frequently with suppliers threatening to cease providing quotes until the order levels were raised. Something that is completely unacceptable in this day and age of everything digital. But luckily, things are very different nowadays, as there are off-the-shelf solutions such as LMX Buyer Solution, to help carriers automate their quoting process. The case study you will find in the next few pages gives you a real-life example of a Tier-1 operator’s results after implementing such a solution to deliver real-time quotes. As I often say, there is nothing like the realdeal to convince you that innovation is at the heart of your success going forward.

Challenges LENGTHY, LABOUR-INTENSIVE QUOTING PROCESS

A global Tier-1 telecommunications provider only had the capabilities to provide access quotes to their global sales force manually. The quoting process was complex and lengthy. Once the quoting desk receive requests from the sales team they would build the quotes themselves by: 1. Logging in to multiple supplier portals to get the costs 2. Looking up costs in rate cards and excel spreadsheets manually 3. Sending e-mails to suppliers and waiting for replies Additionally, whilst the quote team were processing standard metro requests, they were not supporting major strategic high value deals that required person to person negotiation to provide the best solutions to their key customers. The outcome was a low bid win rate and an expensive manually intensive process.

DIFFICULT TO SCALE

Quotes were processed manually by the quoting team, which meant that they were limited as to how many quotes each person could produce. As a result, the team had grown to 15 people, spread across the globe and were only able to process around 3,000 requests per month. If additional RFPs came in, or volumes increased, then the operator would either have to hire additional resources or take a hit on the response times. Yet again the outcome was a low bid win rate and an expensive manually intensive process.

PRODUCTION OF NON-OPTIMAL QUOTES

Even simple 10 Mbps requests in New York, London or Hong Kong were taking 2-3 days to respond to, as they would sit in a queue in the system, waiting to be picked up. Subsequently, the quoting team would often just use the suppliers that were quickest to quote with and would generally return uncompetitive costs, slowly.

Un-efficient

Un-scalable

Un-competitive www.lastmilexchange.com

Solution

LMX Buyer - Automated local access quoting platform The LMX Buyer Solution was brought in to streamline the quoting process and provide a highly scalable global automated solution, with the capability of quoting in real-time. The platform can store and interpret supplier rate cards and engage APIs to provide the end user with the list of all the appropriate options to a submitted requirement within 2 to 90 seconds. The advantage to an API aggregation service is that the internal IT team only needs to build a single interface to the LMX platform’s API and then they can consume all the APIs that the platform is already connected to and have them maintained under a single commercial model.

Initially, the system was implemented as a standalone application, and during the “proof of concept” phase it returned budgetary access costs only. After only 5 months, the vast majority of users had migrated from the old process to the new. The operator continued to add more and more suppliers into the system, increasing the level of automation, the breadth and depth of supplier quoting (multiple competitive quotes in most markets) and enhanced the product set quoted with an increased focus on Dedicated Internet Access and Broadband access.

LMX Buyer platform topology Single API to LMX platform

Customer CRM

Sales team

www.hottelecom.com

Customer branded eXplore interface

LMX

LMX platform with multiple supplier costs books and APIs to supplier portals

Results After only one year, the benefit of implementing the automated quoting platform was manyfold. The automation rates were in excess of 70% and the level of requests being processed were 25% higher than the pre-LMX levels.

88% increase in quoting automation

The following year, many of the solutions returned were upgraded to “orderable” after the customer confirmed the high accuracy level of the quotes.

577% increase in number of quotes produced per month

As a result, the quoting system, has been embedded as part of the operator’s strategic system stack and is now integrated with their CPQ system, their supplier catalogues and ordering portals.

25% decrease in headcount

By mid-2020, 88% of the quotes were automated and the team was able to process close to 10 times more quotes per head, while the average quoting time had decreased to same day.

800% increase in quotes processed per head

Success metrics % of automation

2015

2020

88%

Requests processed per month

3,000

20,300

Size of quoting team

Quoting requested per head per month

200

1,800

Average time to quote

Time to quote

= > 1 month

2015

1 week

2020

4-5 days 2-3 days 1 day Same Day

4 days 30 sec.

20%

40%

60%

80%

www.lastmilexchange.com

100%

Success factors 1

ACCURACY OF THE DATA

One of the keys to successful automated access quoting is the accuracy of the data. We must make sure that this system is maintained in order to produce consistently accurate, up-to-date pricing. Creating an efficient automated quoting system is only half of the battle, keeping it running efficiently and accurately is vital. If users lose trust in the quotes generated the system is doomed.

GLOBAL SOLUTION

Another success factor is the capability for the solution to work for global quotes. Each carrier has its own pricing structure which works on a local or country basis, but when you extend this to international quotes, automated end-to-end pricing becomes a real puzzle. The number of parties involved in creating a global solution is significant, so connecting all the stakeholders in the chain in a standardized, real-time fashion is a mammoth task. Systems have often been built to work in one market and then look to be expanded in to other markets. These will never give you the solution you required to quote complex global solutions.

ABILITY TO SCALE RAPIDLY

The more operators that automate their quoting processes, the more requests the systems will be required to handle. This growth can rapidly become exponential and may trigger costly system failures and loss of valuable orders, if not addressed. Having systems able to scale rapidly is therefore crucial.

Automated access pricing is one of the often forgotten and complex pieces of the puzzle that will differentiate you from your competitors in a commoditized business such as global connectivity. . James Grant, Co-Founder of LMX

www.hottelecom.com

the author For the past 18 years, Isabelle has been working with many of the world’s top international telecom service providers to help them define their transformation strategy. She has written multiple articles and regularly speaks at conferences on this topic. She is also passionate about encouraging the involvement of women in technology and science and continuously conducts panels and interviews with leading and inspiring C-Level telecom executives around the world. Isabelle holds a Bachelor degree in Engineering, an MBA in Finance and has over 28 years experience working globally.

Isabelle Paradis President HOT TELECOM

about LastMileXchange Access quoting is a crucial step in the quoteto-cash process for telecom operators. Whether you are a global carrier, looking to get fast and reliable access quotes from your suppliers or a local carrier looking to sell connectivity in the global market-place, fast and accurate quoting is the key to success.

We are trusted by the biggest names in the industry to digitalise their access quoting processes.

The LMX team has combined its deep domain knowledge and technical expertise to create a user-friendly, flexible and scalable platform to support the access quoting processes of carriers worldwide.

Find out more about LastMileExchange’s realtime quote solutions at www.lastmilexchange.com