Trials conducted by Ceon Corporation reveal that some European telecom operators are spending over 200 man-days defining each new telecom offering, before any effort is spent on updating systems and processes to launch these offerings. The labour and time spent in designing these new offerings can be reduced significantly simply by implementing Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software, the company says. The findings come from live trials conducted by Ceon and European operators looking to speed up and simplify their new product introduction process.
Further statistics show that an additional 100-plus man-days of effort are required for ongoing maintenance and updates of the product data on top of the initial 200 man-days. This makes alarming reading for Europes operators who are constantly striving to streamline operations and bring new differentiated products to the market more quickly, says Ceon.
Ceons Product Control Centre (PCC) offering was implemented at a number of European operators, and from the combined findings of these trials it was possible to identify improved approaches to product management. PCC directly supported the operators product and marketing personnel in various activities, such as product analysis and planning, product ideation, collaborative product definition, product validation and systematic review/approval/release of products. This level of detail, say Ceon, allows operators to improve efficiencies and streamline the product lifecycle process. 
Ultimately, Ceons PCC allows operators to speed-up and simplify their new product introduction processes by automating the traditional approach to product management, which involves a distributed team of marketing managers, product managers, business analysts and IT personnel utilising ad-hoc tools such as spreadsheets and word documents to model products. The often incomplete and inconsistent product data is then manually updated in various systems, including the order capture application.
One of the key issues affecting the definition of each new telecom product is the enormous amount of man days currently required to achieve this says Ceon VP, Yogen Patel. Through the engagements we have conducted across Europe, it has become clear how PCC serves as an essential work-support and productivity system for marketing and product management personnel, and demonstrated how PCC allows them to better execute their primary mission of driving revenue growth for their companies.