Opportunity
With profits dwindling in its core voice, mobile and fixed data businesses, TelecomCo* launched an aggressive three-year growth plan. But the strategy failed to link growth to a significant shift in demand from its major corporate and government clients. Enterprise customers wanted more networked services and products to keep pace with their evolving digital communication needs.
To identify and capture these new opportunities, TelecomCo's senior management required insights into its varied enterprise customer base and a growth strategy that addressed their changing needs.
Approach
Working collaboratively, we helped the CEO and the management team use customer segmentation to align its growth targets with the creation and delivery of networked services.
Segment customers: Our diagnostic allowed TelecomCo to tier its large business and government customers into segments, then design a tailored growth strategy for each tier.
Outsource network sales: Together, we developed a process for outsourcing the sale and delivery of these new communication services.
Grow major enterprise accounts: We innovated ways to improve account planning for major customers.
Restore profitability of smaller accounts: We worked with TelecomCo's CEO to reverse declining revenues and increase profitability for smaller enterprise clients.
Recommendations
To achieve sustained profitability, we suggested that the CEO implement several initiatives, including the launch of specific networking services for its major enterprise customers along with a clearly defined sales execution plan.
Our recommendations included:
- Creating a new organization focused on selling networked services.
- Establishing an account planning process to maximize sales opportunities for large enterprise clients.
- Implementing a repeatable approach to identify the right outsourcing partners to sell and provide network services.
- Aligning sales, delivery, pricing and products to increase sales of services for each customer segment.
- Putting shared metrics in place to track sales and delivery of services against growth targets.
Results
By using customer segmentation to align its expansion strategy with demand for networked services, we helped TelecomCo quickly achieve revenue goals for its enterprise business.
In the first year alone, the company exceeded its growth target by one percent.
TelecomCo also grew its networked services business by 15 percent.
And, improved account planning for its large customers boosted enterprise sales by an additional 20 percent.
The dramatic turnaround of its enterprise business is a critical piece of TelecomCo's sweeping transformation program that's repositioned the company as a nimble market leader.
* We take our clients' confidentiality seriously. While we've changed their names, the results are real.
