Huawei’s carrier business shifts its focus from “product driven + service as support” to “product driven + service driven”
[China, Shenzhen, April 22, 2015] At the Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2015, Huawei’s Rotating and Acting CEO, Eric Xu, announced the revised focus of Huawei’s service strategy. In recent times, services have become critical for Huawei as they continue to support customers and partners to address their future transformation challenges. It is also critical for Huawei to maintain sustainable growth. Huawei has redefined its Carrier business strategy, shifting its focus from “product driven + service as support” to “product driven + service driven.” Huawei’s Enterprise business follows the “being integrated” strategy, focusing on enabling partners. Huawei’s Consumer business is shifting its service focus from after-sales service, to a full, lifecycle user experience.
“A new user experience model has emerged for all industries,” said Eric Xu. “The Internet is gradually changing user behaviors. Huawei has summarized this new user experience model as Real-time, On-demand, All-online, DIY, and Social (ROADS).”
This change has affected all industries, and the ROADS experience requires enterprises to possess agile operational capabilities. This means that enterprises’ IT systems must change from being support systems to being production systems, and from supporting internal usage to serving external customers and partners. Networks and IT infrastructure must become software-defined and cloud-based.
While significantly improving the user experience, enterprises will face conflicts between increasingly complex and dynamic ICT infrastructures, and more agile and customized enterprise operational needs. This challenge requires Huawei and its partners to strengthen their strategic collaboration. Eric Xu commented, “Services become key in helping customers and partners address challenges and transformation, and in achieving Huawei’s sustainable growth.”
In the carrier market, ROADS has produced a clear impact. Eric Xu said, “Network experience has become the primary driver of traffic and revenue.” To enable the ROADS experience, carriers need to deploy Internetized operations systems and possess Internetized operations capabilities.
To make agile operations possible, carriers will have to change the existing network to data center-oriented architecture, while leveraging software-defined networks and cloud-based network functions to improve infrastructure agility. Only when infrastructure becomes agile can operations become agile.
To deliver this outcome, systematic transformation is required. Carriers need business solutions that are able to resolve their problems and create value. However, it is hard for a single supplier to deliver these types of solutions alone. Additionally, significant efforts are required to achieve and maintain a good user experience. Existing operation systems are historic and difficult to change; moreover networks need to be evolved and services need to be migrated smoothly.
To help carriers address these challenges, Huawei has redefined its Carrier business strategy. “We are striving to become carriers’ strategic partner for Internetized operations transformation, to enable ROADS experience and agile operations. We are striving to become carriers’ prime systems integrator for ICT infrastructure transformation, to ensure smooth network evolution and seamless service migration. We are striving to become the leader in (Customer Experience Management (CEM), network planning and optimization, to continuously improve the user experience. We are striving to evolve managed services from network-oriented to service- and experience-oriented, and from OPEX saving to value creation.”
Huawei plans to further enhance its customer service organization and expert teams across all 170 countries in which it operates. Huawei will work with its customers and industry partners for joint innovation and explore best practices in several areas: consulting and system integration on network and data center transformation; operations transformation; CEM and network planning and optimization; and managed services.
Eric Xu remarked, “Every year, Huawei invests more than 350 million US dollars in service research and development. Huawei has kept building its solution capabilities in the areas of industry standards, ecosystems, business models, processes, tools, and platforms.”
Eric Xu highlighted Huawei’s efforts in this regard, including:
-Building a dedicated labaratory to research future operations for service providers.
-Further enhancing their Customer Experience Transformation Center (CETC) to jointly innovate with carriers on Internetized operations.
-Developing an Open ROADS Community for best practice sharing, exploring future trends, and promoting operations transformation to reach an industry-wide consensus.
-Building Network Functions Virtualization and Software-defined Network Open Labs and IT Open Labs to collaborate with partners on open and optimal pre-integration solutions, and help carriers transform their infrastructures.
Eric Xu believes that the enterprise market will increasingly adopt an “+Internet” orientation in the future, noting that the physical world is still the basis for the information era. “Internet+” focuses on the integration of the Internet in various industries, while “+Internet” concentrates on how various industries modernize and transform in the Internet era. The Internet model can be applied to enterprises’ daily business activities, for example, marketing, research and development, operations, transactions, and services. Enterprises can then interact with customers, partners, and employees in an all-online and real-time manner. In turn, their IT systems need to shift from support systems to production systems.
Over the long term, all products manufactured, across all industries will be connected to the Internet. Enabling Internetized operations for all is the reasoning behind Huawei’s mission to build a Better Connected World.
Technology trends are similar in the enterprise and carrier markets; however, Huawei adopts different strategies for each. Eric Xu emphasized that Huawei follows a “being integrated” strategy in the enterprise market, pointing out that its Enterprise Service is designed to enable partners. With this in mind, Huawei plans to build a strong service ecosystem through open collaboration. It will also continue to invest in developing tools for partners and establishing Open Labs to help partners improve their service capabilities. A Huawei Authorized Information and Network Academy (HAINA) has been set up to develop professionals for IP, IT and ICT convergence. This effort aims to reach 200 academies by the end of 2015.
Eric Xu summarized the specific requirements of the ROADS experience specifically for Huawei’s Consumer Services: online, social, and mobile service platforms, with emotional and personalized service demands, service scope extended to cover full lifecycle, and a shift in the service mode to self-service.
To adapt to the shift in the market, Eric Xu commented, “Huawei’s Consumer business will shift its service focus from after-sales services to full-lifecycle user experience caring.” To facilitate this shift, Huawei will build service centers and deploy full-service online platforms within five kilometers of major cities in over 100 countries, establishing a uniformed Operational Excellence Center (OEC) for full-lifecycle services including product enquiry, experience, order handling, usage guidance, performance optimization, and repair. This move is aimed at streamlining online and offline channels to improve user satisfaction and loyalty.
PR Archives: Latest, By Company, By Date