Amdocs Survey: Service Providers Predict Accelerated Demand for 'Bring Your Own Device' Support to Better Serve Business Customers

B/OSS convergence essential to support BYOD trend

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Amdocs

May 16, 2012, 06:00 ET

ST. LOUIS, May 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Amdocs, the leading provider of customer experience systems and services, today announced the results of a global survey that explores the growing demand for "bring your own device" (BYOD) support from business customers and the system implications this has for service providers.  The survey, conducted by leading analyst firm, Heavy Reading, highlights the need for converged business and operational support systems (B/OSS) to provide an end-to-end view of the customer, linking personal and business personas for a unified customer experience.

"BYOD has been gaining momentum as consumers want to bring their favorite smartphones and tablets to work, and with enterprises anticipating benefits such as increased productivity and employee satisfaction, we surely expect this trend to continue to grow," said Ari Banerjee, senior analyst at Heavy Reading. "But BYOD creates new complexities for both the enterprise and the service provider who must support features such as device care, bill split, security, shared loyalty and data plans and differentiated quality of service. If service providers can overcome the technological challenges of providing these features, the enhanced customer experience will lead to huge gains in customer satisfaction and loyalty."

Key findings include:

  • Accelerated demand for BYOD: The majority (73 percent) of service providers expect to see a 10-25 percent increase in BYOD device requests from business customers in the coming year due to the recognized benefits for businesses. Cost savings, employee satisfaction and increased productivity are cited as the primary benefits of BYOD for service providers' business customers, with almost half of service provider respondents believing that BYOD will decrease costs and increase productivity by 10-25 percent for these customers.
  • BYOD brings unique system requirements for service providers and support issues for businesses: Businesses are asking their service providers for unique BYOD features, such as the ability to split bills between personal and business use (52 percent) and the ability to disable business functions, such as email and IM, when users switch to personal mode (52 percent). Business customers perceive issues with excessive bandwidth use (75 percent) and increased IT support costs (70 percent) as the biggest challenges with BYOD initiatives.
  • System integration essential for BYOD support: Despite 77 percent of respondents stating that residential and business B/OSS integration is needed to support the BYOD market and specific business requests, only half are able to link personal and corporate personas.  The lack of B/OSS convergence (53 percent) is cited as the main inhibitor, because it prevents a single view of the customer (51 percent). The absence of a flexible product catalog (37 percent) and a real-time system for post-paid enterprise customers (31 percent) were also identified as significant concerns for service providers.

"The business segment represents huge revenue potential for service providers, and to capitalize on this market they will need to offer tailored and competitive offerings, including BYOD," said Rebecca Prudhomme, vice president of product and solutions marketing for Amdocs. "By converging BSS and OSS, service providers gain a unified customer view required to support BYOD requests, such as creating hybrid plans and offering device support, ultimately simplifying the customer experience."

The survey, conducted by Heavy Reading in April 2012, included 35 wireless, wireline and cable service providers across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Central and Latin America.  This survey follows previous Amdocs research which identified key gaps between business customers' expectations and the services they receive.

Supporting Resources

#The enterprise market accounts for 35-40 percent of global service provider revenues, according to Heavy Reading.

About Amdocs

For 30 years, Amdocs has ensured service providers' success and embraced their biggest challenges. To win in the connected world, service providers rely on Amdocs to simplify the customer experience, harness the data explosion, stay ahead with new services and improve operational efficiency. The global company uniquely combines a market-leading BSS, OSS and network control product portfolio with value-driven professional services and managed services operations. With revenue of approximately $3.2 billion in fiscal 2011, Amdocs and its over 19,000 employees serve customers in more than 60 countries.

Amdocs: Embrace Challenge, Experience Success.

For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.

Amdocs' Forward-Looking Statement

This press release includes information that constitutes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about Amdocs' growth and business results in future quarters. Although we believe the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be obtained or that any deviations will not be material. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to, the effects of general economic conditions, Amdocs' ability to grow in the business segments it serves, adverse effects of market competition, rapid technological shifts that may render the Company's products and services obsolete, potential loss of a major customer, our ability to develop long-term relationships with our customers, and risks associated with operating businesses in the international market. Amdocs may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, however the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These and other risks are discussed at greater length in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2011, filed on December 8, 2011 and our Form 6-K furnished for the second  quarter of fiscal 2012 on May 15, 2012.

SOURCE Amdocs