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Author: Dan Bieler
Swiss financial newspaper Cash reports that Swisscom is to restructure its business divisions along customer segments. The new divisions will apparently focus on private customers, small and medium-sized businesses, and large business clients. However, we have not been able to verify this story with Swisscom.
Comment: Should these rumours be confirmed, then Swisscom would join the group of companies that have put in place a structure that aims to reflect their customer type rather than the underlying technology.
We support the idea of any business becoming more customer-focused. But we also point out that such restructuring requires significant organizational and cultural change within the firm. Management and other employees will also have to readjust their perspective for a customer-focused strategy to bear fruit. Successful execution is therefore key.
We would expect many more telcos to restructure along customer segments over the coming years ahead, not least because growth is likely to come from trends such as fixed-mobile-convergence and managed services, which benefit from such restructuring.
A customer-focused positioning makes sense for most companies, regardless of technological developments. However, technology-dependent sectors such as telecommunications cannot ignore operational changes that are triggered by technological changes. The emergence of next-generation networks (NGN) is the most prominent example. Thus, telcos putting a more customer-focused strategy in place should do so keeping in mind what radical organisational and financial changes NGNs will impose.
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