Vodafone Global Enterprise Raises the Bar with Standard Mobility SLAs

| Mar 18, 2009 | Enterprise Mobility - Europe | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Sandra O'Boyle

Current Perspective: Slightly Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: Moderate

Event Summary

March 18, 2009 – Vodafone Global Enterprise has announced the launch of a standardised SLA on core managed mobility services offered to multi-national business customers. The standard SLA includes online central ordering and inventory management, proactive major incident notification and monthly performance reporting. Service metrics includes committed delivery times for devices and incident resolution.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Slightly positive on Vodafone Global Enterprise’s launch of standardized SLAs for its MNC customers to underpin its core managed services. This is a step in the right direction for VGE in terms of offering consistent services and SLAs across countries with centralized management capabilities and visibility for the customer via an online portal.

• Vendor Importance: High to Vodafone Global Enterprise (VGE) as the operator wants to position itself as a leading provider of managed mobility services and needed to respond to customers’ needs for standard SLAs to support its global service propositions. SLAs are commonplace in the fixed world and among managed service providers and VGE is stepping up to the plate here in its efforts to get its mobile propositions along the same lines. This is very much in response to MNC demands.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the European managed enterprise mobility market because VGE is a heavyweight in the market and is being taken more seriously by MNC customers in provisioning managed mobility services. VGE will roll out the standard SLAs to 15 countries to start with and will consider a tiered standard SLA model to cover all 71 countries where it delivers service. KPN Sympac offers MNC customers similar type of SLAs to VGE around orders and change requests for devices and SIMs and fault resolution, although its footprint is smaller. Orange, FreeMove and BT will offer custom SLAs on mobility services, and have reported few standard SLAs.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• AT&T needs to up its European mobility capabilities to be real a threat to the European-based rivals such as Vodafone Global Enterprise, BT Global Services and Telefonica Europe. While there are already a few competitive components in place, AT&T’s has to build on the Shell deal it won where managing mobility was a key component and communicate its capabilities to customers to create trust.

• While FreeMove has delivered SLAs for some of its customers and can provide some ‘talking points’ around service management, the group must work now to at least match Vodafone’s offer in terms of standardization, consistency and reach. While there are many factors behind a strong managed mobility contract, research shows that service management is top of mind of many MNCs. As a leading provider for managed mobility services, FreeMove should not be seen by its customers as following too far behind the mark.

• KPN Sympac should highlight that it can is already offering many of the SLAs that Vodafone Global Enterprise has introduced such as the dispatch of new SIM cards in two days. It can also highlight that it can deliver and replace new handsets and accessories within two days (as opposed to VGE’s standard of three days). It could also differentiate somewhat through its SLAs around Service Desk and Call Centre response times. Customers should also be aware that other services, such as Telecom Expense Management and Mobile Device Management are also in operation.

• Telefonica/O2 can highlight that their SLA offerings around the performance of the network such as call completion rate, voice availability, as well as other metrics such as mean time to replace/repair mobile devices. It could also point out its recent win with Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN) involves delivering a managed mobility contract for 80,000 devices based on very stringent SLAs. Potential customers should be aware that it is developing a single service delivery model based on ITIL for all managed services whether fixed or mobile.

• Defensively, competitors can take some comfort in the fact that there is no correlation between hitting all the SLA targets and guaranteeing renewal. Many contracts do not get renewed despite hitting all the targets. MNCs are asking for global contracts and are getting national and regional contracts in return. While mobile operators provide the ‘single point of contact,’ they are often not empowered to make decisions and respond quickly. SLAs offer transparency and competitors need to have them, but there are many other pertinent issues to address in delivering a managed mobility service and winning the deal.

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• It is easy for customers to claim that they too cannot get standard SLAs for their mobile fleet. On the one hand, mobile operators have been very slow to offer such a service in line with how fixed carriers have been doing this for many years. On the other hand, it is very difficult for the MNO to accommodate MNCs when they have a very decentralized and fragmented structure for mobile management. With this in mind, some MNCs will have to re-align their internal processes and work with their providers more as partners in resolving a managed mobility and SLAs. Less than 50% of MNCs have central procurement.

• While Vodafone has taken the lead in terms of offering standard SLAs across its global footprint, customers should also be aware that there is still no option for SLAs on mobile data. This is still an area many MNCs are raising, especially to support a mobile workforce. However there are no known operators willing to make such as commitment to a customer at present.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

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