Discusses Omdia’s recently published Partner Management System Vendor Survey and its exploration of customer trends, solution functionality, non-functional aspects, and adjacent systems to help CSPs with their upgrades.
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Summary
Communications service providers (CSPs) worry about ROIs in their new networks; to increase revenue, they need to offer more than just connectivity. This will not happen without the delivery of new services and applications—things that both consumers and enterprises are willing to pay extra for. CSPs cannot generate a broad set of compelling applications themselves. Instead, they must turn to partner service providers, the specialist firms that provide those applications.
In the past, developing a platform to manage a rich ecosystem of upstream and downstream partners was a task beyond the capability of many CSPs. The largest operators managed to assemble in-house DIY solutions that were expensive to develop and awkward to maintain. The solution for service providers of every size is a state-of-the-art partner management platform from any of several vendors.
Omdia’s recently published survey report, Partner Management System Vendor Survey: Improving the Partner Experience Is Key to CSPs’ Platform Ambitions, identifies the emerging trends in partner management systems. It also explores who uses these systems, the various issues, and key considerations for operators upgrading their offerings for more than connectivity.
Partner Management Systems Survey
In January and February 2024, Omdia performed primary and secondary research on partner management systems. Amdocs, Beyond Now, CSG, Netcracker, Salesforce, and ZIRA participated in this research.
CSPs face difficulty growing revenue based on connectivity alone, and offering applications and services is one way to emerge from this malaise. They do not have the domain knowledge or expertise for these applications, so delivering partner services and managing the ecosystem is the way forward. CSPs must also minimize frictions and maximize values delivered, and partner management systems deliver on both counts. The research Omdia conducted for our survey report focused on identifying the trends and topics CSPs and vendors should consider to meet their needs. Omdia’s survey questions covered the following topics:
- Customer characteristics, analysis, and trends
- Partner onboarding, processes, and time involved
- Security, including access, partner data, and insider fraud
- Activation, shipping, commissions, dispute resolution, and revenue-sharing visibility
- Built-in integrations and APIs
- Key features and differentiators
- Partner management systems market outlook
Partner management systems for CSPs large and small
CSPs focus on mobile connectivity as their primary revenue stream, while future revenue will be boosted with value-adding partner services. Partner management systems make these opportunities available to all operators, including the smaller firms previously left behind.
In Omdia’s survey, we asked the vendors to identify the customers of their partner management systems (all names kept in strict confidence). We cross-referenced this highly sensitive CSP list with the Omdia World Information Series (WIS) database, looking for subtle trends or possible market segmentation based on geography, revenue, and subscribers. One finding was that CSP clients across the economic spectrum are tapping into partner services and management systems, as shown in Figure 1. Note that the graphic uses a log-log scale because of the wide range of operator revenue ($100m to over $100bn) and subscriptions (500,000 to over 200 million).
Figure 1: Partner management system clients – revenue and subscriptions
Source: Omdia
Thus, CSPs—no matter where or what size—should pursue these value-adding opportunities and grow their business with these partner management systems. Here is this analyst’s advice for all CSPs:
- If you are not offering revenue-enhancing value-added partner services, get started now.
- If you have an in-house developed service that is cumbersome or expensive to evolve, look at the vendors’ compelling solutions.
- If you are facing threats from larger operators with immense resources, kick up your services with a partner management system and level the field.
Omdia’s conclusion is that CSPs should take the future into their own hands and grow their revenue with state-of-the-art partner management systems that deliver value-adding services.
Read the full report (see Further reading) for more insights into partner management systems.
Appendix
Further reading
Partner Management System Vendor Survey: Improving the Partner Experience Is Key to CSPs’ Platform Ambitions (March 2024)
Preparing for B2B2X with Automated, Open, and Highly Scalable Partner Management Systems (November 2022)
Partner Ecosystems for 5G and IoT: 10 BSS Essentials (August 2022)
Operators’ BSS Priorities to Unlock Partner Management Recruitment (November 2021)
Author
Joe Hoffman, Principal Analyst, Service Provider