Accenture Communications Solutions

Product Innovation
Small and Medium Business Services
Strategies, tools, methods and managed services that can help companies capitalize more rapidly on the growth of
the small- and medium-business market segment.
Challenges and opportunities
Today’s communications service providers
are increasingly targeting routes-to-market
for small and medium businesses (SMBs).
As traditional markets become increasingly
competitive and over saturated, companies
are struggling to grow revenues from their
enterprise customer base. In response, they
are looking down market to smaller and midsize
companies—those with anywhere from
five to 1,000 employees. Annual revenues for
such enterprises are generally in the range of
US$5 million to US$500 million.
There is good news and bad news when it
comes to developing a routes-to-market
strategy for the small-and medium-business
marketplace. The good news is that millions
of these companies exist. The bad news is
that few communications and high-tech
companies have the operational processes,
sales capabilities, controls and analytics
in place to cope with the more complex
demands of the SMB marketplace. And
without those capabilities, a foray into the
small and mid-sized market wilderness could
turn out to be only an expensive failure.
How Accenture can help
Accenture’s small and medium business
services offering is a comprehensive set of
strategies, leading-practice processes, tools,
methods and managed services that can
help companies achieve high performance
by capitalizing more rapidly on the
growth of the SMB customer segment.
Accenture has the ability to go beyond
simply analyzing the SMB market to help
providers figure out how to strategize and
operationalize their businesses to profit
faster from the SMB opportunity.
To help providers develop their capability
to serve the SMB marketplace, we
leverage our successfully demonstrated
assets, methodologies, deeply experienced
resources and our Global Delivery Network,
focusing on two main areas in particular:
unified communications and collaboration
(UCC) applications; and software-as-aservice
(SaaS) capabilities.
Unified Communications and
Collaboration Applications
Our small-business applications offering
leverages our award-winning Service
Delivery Platform (SDP) solution, which
helps service providers reduce the costs and
risks of new-product development while
supporting a more effective collaborative
development environment.
Beginning with our SDP assets and
leading practices as a foundation, we
have integrated UCC service platforms
from leading vendors to offer a distinctive
solution featuring:
• A hosted managed service delivery model.
• A complete set of communication
applications, including IP Centrex, VPN
and messaging.
• Comprehensive collaboration applications
for file and desktop sharing, mobility and
security.
Software-as-a-Service Model
Many companies have already started
utilizing a SaaS model for consuming
cloud computing, customer relationship
management, e-mail and other technology
applications. Accenture has tapped into
its global technical experience to create
a SaaS platform that can be rapidly
customized for providers to launch new
products and services for small and medium
businesses.
High performance delivered
Based on Accenture’s experience driving
high performance for a variety of clients
in all geographies, companies may realize
a host of important benefits from our
offering:
• Faster, less expensive launch of new
products and services: For example,
Accenture worked with a provider to
launch its SMB business in only five
months by leveraging a SaaS platform
and a UCC solution.
• Increased profitability of the SMB
unit: For one client, Accenture helped
increase the profitability of its SMB
unit by 10 percent over two years by
creating and executing an effective
routes-to-market plan.
Our SaaS platform has been utilized
by clients to rapidly, inexpensively and
efficiently bring managed services to
market. For instance, we provided a SaaS
solution to one of our large clients that
delivers a hosted and managed exchange
for their commercial customers. The
service has been operational for more than
two years. We also have developed SMB
strategies and an SMB portal for several
communications operators.
Why Accenture
Our small and medium business services
offering is grounded in several unique
Accenture capabilities:
• Breadth and depth of skills in designing
and operationalizing successful go-tomarket
strategies.
• Market-leading customer relationship
management capabilities that help
our clients win the battle for the SMB
customer.
• Market-tested consulting, systems
integration and business process
outsourcing experience—and the ability
to blend these competencies to create a
one-of-a-kind offering.
• Alliance relationships with many of the
world’s leading service providers, as well
as many of the emerging players poised
to revolutionize service delivery.
• Industry-leading program implementation
and management capabilities and highly
skilled, global professionals prepared to
help you achieve high performance.
Accenture Communications Solutions 19