The way enterprises consume mobility services has changed dramatically and has convinced enterprises to embrace the benefits of multisourcing, the practice of working with multiple suppliers while outsourcing the overall management to a company capable of handling the complexity for them.
A key driver in this shift is the basic business need for connectivity married to the growth of mobility as a commercial fundamental – mobile is now the number one device for workers, and according to Gartner, by 2022, 70 percent of enterprise interactions will take place on mobile devices.
Addressing global mobility challenges in the enterprise world
"One of the things we have encountered with global enterprise customers and their mobile connectivity is that they have presence everywhere but not always the local resources or local expertise to manage their mobility contracts and providers," says Sophie Azemard, Marketing Director for Enterprise Mobility Solutions at Orange Business. "They have to deal with local operators by default, but they prefer to work with an industry expert who can coordinate the local operators for them."
Among the main reasons cited by global enterprises for outsourcing telecom expense management to specialist partners are: to avoid fraudulent or inaccurate billing, estimated to cost as much as $143 billion a year; to also avoid customized carrier contracts that cost enterprises money through improper rates being applied; and inadequate oversight, whereby enterprises do not have the tools and processes in place to keep on top of how much they spend on telecom services or with whom.
The Orange Multisourcing Service Integration approach for outsourcing mobility
In addition to managing contracts and services, enterprises need a partner that understands further complex factors like local-level regulation and incoming data laws, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which have specific regional requirements. The modern business mobile user has an average of 33 personal apps on his work phone, so enterprises need to ensure that apps on phones are better controlled and kept in line with laws and regulations.
Azemard believes that the best approach to global mobility services management is to engage with one primary service provider that operates as a service integrator and manager of secondary service organizations – thereby giving the enterprise integrated and unified management of their mobility.
"There isn’t a traditional blueprint for getting all your mobile providers around the world to work in harmony, but at Orange we have the presence, skills and experience to do just that. Our MSI for mobility lets enterprises run their businesses the way they want with our support, allowing them to focus on the things that are most important to them," continues Sophie Azemard.
Orange customers have expressed a number of key reasons and benefits for wanting to work with a single MSI supplier, including:
1. Centralized management of global mobility: a trusted partner who ultimately reduces complexity for enterprises and helps them save money, underpinned by local-level SLAs and backed up by clear KPIs to measure performance and benefits. This must also cover incident and request management.
2. Managed and optimized mobile connectivity: covering visibility of costs, real-time reporting and process automation. Orange can deliver this via vendor-agnostic telecom expense reporting and managed mobile data control, including content filtering to stay on top of employee usage.
3. Outsourcing management of local mobile connectivity contracts: giving control, cost-effectiveness and peace of mind. "Dispute management is a big concern for Orange customers with global presence," says Sophie Azemard. "Therefore we have put in place a central repository of all contracts, and we can notify enterprises of any forthcoming issues, concerns and so on. We also offer local invoicing management and checking against local contracts to make sure the provider is doing what it is supposed to."
4. Harmonized processes for incidents, requests and devices: Orange customers have expressed a demand for a central way to manage mobile incidents and requests with existing processes used for other company assets, for instance when they have ITSM in place. Orange has addressed this by offering an ITSM solution that is connected to local mobile providers, SLA tracking, reporting and recommendations on any incidents and device lifecycle management on a global basis.
5. Security to underpin the digital workspace: Enterprises want to leverage the digital workspace to a competitive advantage for themselves, which means optimized mobile IT backed by on-demand support for mobile workers, devices and contracts. Orange delivers this via a managed Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solution backed by professional services and technical support, plus dedicated account managers and bundled or on-demand offers or services.
"Ultimately we want to make mobility as simple as possible for our enterprise customers," concludes Sophie Azemard. "We do so by hiding the complexity of local processes and enabling the global journey of the employee. We factor in the device, apps, unified communications, cloud access and more – and all in a secure manner. Multisourcing is a reality now and a progressive service that can help enterprises operate in more agile ways."
Find out about Multisourcing Service Integration for Mobility and how Orange manages your mobile service providers on your behalf.