The Indian telecom industry has experienced consistent growth in the last decade, emerging as a high-growth-potential market in the world. A report

by KPMG reveals that the industry accounts for around 3% of the nation’s GDP, and the industry revenues are expected to grow with a CAGR of 18% during the 2008–12 period. The industry currently consists of both big players as well as SMEs who provide support services on a contractual basis.

However, despite the industry’s exponential growth rate in recent years, the profit margins of telecom players have diminished, says the report. This is due to the diminishing Average Revenue Per Use (ARPU) and falling tariff rates in India. To minimise this drop, telecom companies are adopting strategies like IT outsourcing, infrastructure sharing and diversification of telecom services.

However, alongside the adoption of these steps, the industry needs to upgrade its IT infrastructure. According to Akhilesh Tuteja, Executive Director, IT Advisory, KPMG, “Telecom companies need to upgrade their IT infrastructure, which will help them transform from service-enablers to full-fledged IT-based telecom service providers.” But such an upgrade will need telecom players and SMEs to deploy frameworks that will focus on aspects such as strategy, design, transition, operations and improvement of their IT capabilities. The effectiveness of these initiatives will largely depend on the efficiency of IT-support infrastructure.

In this situation, Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) has been assessed for its applicability in scaling up the IT support architecture of the Indian telecom industry. ITSM has been found to play an effective role in achieving IT governance and aligning it with the company’s corporate governance structure.

What is ITSM?
ITSM is a set of standardised service modules which optimise the performance of IT services. It can help telecom companies manage their overall IT services, thus transforming IT into a strategic business collaborator to boost revenues and capabilities. ITSM is based on the principles of Service Lifecycle Management (SLM), and includes the following modules:

Service Strategy: It focuses on the identification of market opportunities for particular services or products, for which specialised services are developed to fulfill customer demands.
Service Design: It involves operations performed to build the service strategy into a design document which focuses on all the aspects of the proposed service, along with the necessary support services.

Service Transition: The module focuses on the deployment of the service design phase output, and also creates or modifies new and existing services.

Service Operations: This emphasises the activities that are essential for operating these IT-based services and maintaining their functionalities as specified in the service level agreement.

Continuous Service Improvement: The module focuses on continual improvement in the quality of the services that the telecom firm delivers.

Application Scope: In the contemporary telecom industry, ITSM has emerged with a wide range of applications. A few of the major application areas of ITSM are discussed below.

Data Security and Privacy: Recent advancements in telecom and IT have resulted in bulk data generation, a considerable percentage of which is sensitive Personally Identifiable Information. Moreover, with Indian telecom companies going international and data transfer taking place across global territories, global regulations have also come into force. “Due to global data transfer, EU directives concerning data theft and misuse have also come as a challenge for Indian telecom players,” adds Tuteja.

With ITSM, both big players and SMEs can establish and maintain a secure environment to protect sensitive data throughout its lifecycle. According to Sudhish Kataria, Director, Advanced Solutions, a midsized telecom service provider in Indore, “ITSM can be an effective solution to the growing data security issues in the telecom sector. We are also planning to adopt such measures to prevent data theft and misuse.”

Mergers and Acquisition (M&A): M&A have become phenomena in Indian telecom industry, with a considerable role to play in technology transfer and integration. However, M&As have also spawned issues associated with infrastructure assets, support, maintenance and upgrades, integration of billing systems, customer care modules and grievance systems. With its modules for operations like service change and configuration management, service continuity and capacity management, knowledge management, incident and problem management, operations management, ITSM can help telecom firms sort out such issues.

Outsourcing: Outsourcing has become a trend in the telecom industry, with big and medium-sized players signing deals with SMEs to perform certain tasks on a contractual basis. However, such third-party services sometimes develop into issues pertaining to operations, data security and demand management.

In such cases, ITSM can help out with dedicated modules for strategy and demand management, supplier/partner relationship management, service continuity and capacity management, information security management, and service level monitoring and improvement.

The road ahead
With eroding profit margins, the adoption of effective technologies has become a prime concern for Indian telecom players. In this regard, the deployment of effective IT support services will play a key role in optimising service quality and operational efficiency and hence the bottomlines.

Source:http://infotech.indiatimes.com/Telecom/Technologies/Telecom_calling_IT_support_/articleshow/msid-5632774,curpg-1.cms