Over the last few years, operators have been mostly concerned about their ranking on the offers market and have regularly launched new packages with ever-more attractive sales conditions in a bid to keep ahead of their competitors. 2001, however, saw a complete turnaround where knowledge of customer requirements and commitment to service quality became the linchpin of operators' strategies.

Standing out through service quality

A major challenge for operators is to keep winning new customers while maintaining the loyalty of existing customers by thorough knowledge of their requirements. Commitment to service quality is the factor which differentiates operators from their competitors. And it is often the point on which operators readjust or reorganize their offering. So in order to maintain performance levels, operators have had to rethink certain aspects of their business and re-engineer where necessary.

Increasing earnings by customer

As the direct link between the operator and the customer, the front office has a global vision of the customer from the different projects performed. The customer relationship management (CRM) tools and the web also enable operators to understand customers, anticipate their needs and respond to questions regardless of the project. The customer then feels acknowledged and will tend to be much more loyal thus enabling the operator to increase its earnings.

Guaranteeing widescale revenues

As for the back-office, it has had to adapt to the considerable growth in the volume of calls and the number of subscribers. As operators had to be sure to receive the revenues associated with their activity, powerful collection, enhancement and invoicing tools were needed. This meant that new technologies (GPRS, etc.) were implemented and data from calls was used for marketing and technical purposes.

Ensuring network availability

Operators' need for quality has hastened the arrival of network optimization services. The absolute need for availability and status reports has led operators to bring in quality indicators and web-based optimization applications to ensure constant network monitoring.

The growing need for managed services

With user satisfaction at the forefront, operators' strategy is pushing them to develop offers involving the use of critical applications where faultless functioning is vital. By managing the operations of these systems, Steria enables operators to optimize their IT costs.

Operator's business expertise

Through its renowned know-how and detailed knowledge of their business processes, Steria is a sought-after partner for telecom operators. Its unrivalled partnerships with specialized software editors make Steria the perfect ally to respond to operators' expectations and demands in delivering tried-and-tested solutions with a commitment to results. Steria's teams propose consulting, systems integration and managed services tailored to operators' business requirements. Furthermore, in a bid to involve its customers in its vision of market developments, Steria has formed skills centers in areas such as UMTS, specializing in the operation of different networks, solutions guaranteeing consistent and adaptable interfaces between second and third generation tools, and service continuity.