Factors Influencing Strategic Options Of Managed Service Adoption By Telecommunication Operators: The Case Of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The market pressure on the mobile operators to improve bottom line, network performance, competence needs and rapid changing business environment led the operators to adopt managed services at different levels in their operation. Transferring value chain activities to an expert service provider is called a “managed service”.
Managed services are a spectrum of solutions offering incremental levels. Existing practices indicate five levels of managed services in the spectrum viz transaction, task, project, service management, service and capacity management based.
The purpose of this research is to identify the factors influencing managed services at different levels in the context of a developing country. For this intent, this research adopted a case study approach of the Sri Lankan telecom industry covering all mobile operators of the country.
The findings of this study show a clear pattern between levels from Level-1 to Level-5. Level 1 is almost as subset of level 2, and level 4 is a subset of level 5. Five levels of managed services can be divided into three distinct groups, levels 1&2, level 3 and levels 4 & 5. Organizational and industry dynamics factors influence all levels. However, national regulatory environment factors are very important in adopting managed services at levels 4&5. The existing studies look the factors influencing managed services in general. This study is unique as it identifies the factors influencing managed services at each level and prioritized them. This will help operators to select a level of adoption instead of adopting managed services on a trial and error basis.