Netadmin Content Creator
In this article, we will explain how to achieve a successful transition from a vertically integrated business to a wholesale/open-access business based on our customers’ experiences.
Many fiber operators are either already doing wholesale, in the process of building a wholesale business, or aiming to reach wholesale sometime in the future. We’ve seen that this change becomes harder the longer your business stays vertically integrated. Thus, preparing for the shift to wholesale as early as possible is important.
For many operators, the first question they ask themselves is why they need to prepare for wholesale in the first place. Isn’t it just another offering for another set of products in the existing portfolio? We have found that viewing wholesale as simply another offering can cause many problems. It is important to see it as a completely new and different business since it is so distinct from standard retailing. Not only does it differ in the type of investments and the type of customers you normally work with, but more importantly, from the software side, there are many different processes and ways to implement these processes.
Traditional business processes, like marketing, sales, delivery, order journeys, assurance, and billing, involve retailing and wholesale parts, making interoperability between these parties crucial.
Splitting is often mentioned to achieve interoperability between the retail service provider (RSP) and the operator, and it can have various meanings. On the one hand, it can mean doing a completely functional separation and spinning out the retail business as a separate company. On the other hand, it can also become a business unit within the same company. We have found that splitting retail and wholesale to some extent is a good idea. However, splitting a vertically integrated business without proper preparations can be complex and costly.
Three areas of preparation
While interviewing some of our customers who have gone through the journey to wholesale from being vertically integrated, we found three areas that contain essential elements to consider when preparing for the shift.
-
Customer journey
-
Interoperability
-
Data migration
Customer journey
Often, operators claim that if you are planning to move towards wholesale, you do not have to engage with or care about the end customer. While this is true to a certain extent, the customer experience heavily relies on the retail service provider and the wholesale service provided to the retailer.
Netadmin believes it is even more important to think about end-customers if you are wholesaling. The involved parties' experience and whole business case rely on good collaboration. The term customer journey is a great tool to make sure the end customer's experience runs smoothly regardless of whether you are retailing or wholesaling. Therefore, we recommend wholesalers and retailers think about and map out the end-customer experience and thus collaborate smartly.
Interoperability
One way of achieving a good collaboration is having good interoperability between the different parties. On the top is the retail service provider having either an operational support system (OSS) or a business support system (BSS). At the bottom, we have the network operators who have their systems and procedures. In between these two actors are six key interoperability areas relevant to building up automation around.
Six key areas: Availability, Appointing & Ordering, Switching, Service Diagnostics, Incidents & Problems, and Billing.
-
Availability entails informing the retailing provider that you are rolling out in a new area, thus updating the availability.
-
Appointing and Ordering refers to automating the scheduling of engineers and appointing and ordering an installation.
-
Switching is crucial and is intertwined with wholesale, meaning the process of switching from one provider to another would require automation between the retailer and the wholesaler.
-
Service diagnostics allows retail service products to troubleshoot customers and identify incidents and problems. Furthermore, it will enable the retail service to ensure revenue, which makes billing a vital area.
-
In conclusion, to collaborate well and create an excellent customer experience, you need a high level of interoperability around these six areas. While many solutions exist for success, Netadmin has found a solution in different countries: creating a platform that connects everything and manages interoperability.
Interoperability between network operators and service providers - How to make your business grow in an Open Access network
Data migration
Data migration might not be the most exciting preparation step, but it is highly important. We have seen several operators who have tried to split the data from a vertically integrated system landscape for several years. To assist in this process, Netadmin has concluded three steps to take towards separation regarding managing data in your system.
Most operators have four different entities in their support system: the services they provide, resources that make up these services, customers, and locations where they deliver services or addresses, including your PRN.
Netadmin recommends, based on experience from our customers who have undergone this journey, to create a split of the data layer before you split the business layer. This entails dividing the service catalog into a wholesale part and a retail part to prepare once you separate the retail and the wholesale business.
Similarly, split the resources and distinguish which resources are owned and should be owned by which side of the company. That is where the split is recommended to be.
By doing the splitting of service and resources, it becomes easier to conduct the final step. In this step, the retail services, retail resources, and customer data are wholly owned by the retail business, whereas the wholesale business owns the wholesale services, wholesale resources, and addresses.
To conclude, this is a high level of data migration journey that Netadmin has found to be successful if you have any data from vertically integrated business and want to handle it when you are splitting into retail and a wholesale component.
Start building your fiber network with Netadmin Nine.
