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Telecom managed services in India have been pegged at $8-9 billion with an annual growth of 19 per cent, according to KPMG.
Globally, managed services have grown to about $190 billion in revenues with expected growth rate of almost 14 per cent year-on-year for the next couple of years.
“In India, the growth is higher - pegged at 19 per cent a year with revenues at $8-9 billion,” said Ms Arpita Pal Agrawal, Executive Director – Telecom KPMG while speaking at a conference on managed services. This is good news for equipment vendors such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens and Huawei as they are facing a tough global market.
Experts at the conference said that it is important to move towards a model where everybody has a managed services partner. Ms Agrawal said that one reason why companies prefer managed services in current scenario is that it helps train and retain capabilities.
Mr H.L.Gupta, Head – Operations and Deployment (Network Services Group), Bharti Airtel, said, managed services allow operators to focus on the customer base, core competencies and transfer risk to third party. “There is also increased subscriber revenue through high performing network and enhanced customer experience. Functional expertise is the key criteria for selecting vendors and partners,” he said.
Mr Pranay Misra, CTO, MTS South India Hub, said, “Managed services in India are yet to go a long way as compared to European and other markets.” The major challenges in India, experts said, are in terms of high fund requirement.
Mr Vikram Tiwathia, Senior Director, Cellular Operators Association of India, said, “Many operators have common managed services vendor. Now, the challenge for these vendors is to gain the trust of the client companies regarding the fact that they are not offering the same solution to any other client.”
Better services needed
The session concluded with the message that there is a constant hunger for newer services. With MNP rolled out, customer churn and loyalty is going to keep the operators on their toes. Hence, the need for better services and value-added services comes in. Keeping this in mind, it is imperative that operators opt for a set up where most of their services are taken care of by their strategic partners. Also, they should think of outsourcing HR management, advertising management, fraud management and customer satisfaction management.
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