Benefits of Fixed Mobile Convergence

An organization can make three savings from a convergent solution: call costs, infrastructure, and productivity.

Savings delivered through convergence

Although call cost savings are the easiest to measure, they provide the least scale for savings. More benefits can be derived through infrastructure efficiencies and productivity. Infrastructure savings are delivered through fixed-line replacement strategies and greenfield site deployments. This impacts the CAPEX and ongoing OPEX requirements of owning a fixed and mobile fleet.

While providing the greatest opportunity for organizations to benefit from convergence, productivity and improved business processes are also the hardest to quantify. For example, while a converged voicemail solution may save an employee five minutes of effort a day, the real benefit may not be directly derived from having an extra five minutes for  ‘productive’ work. The benefits may.

Be delivered through customer satisfaction and repeat business due to improved response times. However, most companies now measure customer satisfaction as a key performance indicator. Therefore, the increase in productivity and potential process re-engineering that can be achieved will positively impact customer satisfaction levels.

Benefits include

  1. Extending fixed-line call features to mobile handsets
  2. Reducing call costs
  3. Improving the responsiveness of the business
  4. Delivering control – for instance, for compliance with FSA regulations
  5. Reducing duplication
  6. Ease of extending the capacity
  7. Improving productivity

Using converged solutions also enables the workforce to be more productive through mobile access to direct-dial extensions and conferencing. Employees can respond faster to voicemails and benefit from reduced telephone tags to answer more calls the first time. The following examples illustrate specific productivity gains: Productivity benefits can be relatively difficult to quantify and are best addressed

individually. However, financial savings can be found by calculating, for example, the number of minutes saved per day through enhanced communications and business processes (e.g., time wasted unnecessarily visiting the office to pick up desk-based voicemails or job schedules). In addition, the ability to rapidly and consistently answer inquiries and client calls can ensure that a client is gained and maintained owing to a better standard of service.

Although more difficult to measure, research has shown that softer benefits can lead to quantifiable revenue, customer satisfaction, customer retention, and work rate or cost-saving improvements for enterprises. One simple solution is a feature-rich Business SIM enabling Voice, SMS & Data 3G, and HSDPA while roaming. This mobile SIM provides the business full control over calls and texts, both nationally on the hosted network and while Roaming.

In addition, the SIM provides connectivity to defined private mobile networks and access to a common core for application activation. The mobile is enhanced by giving short code dialing to other extensions in the business and support for the same feature dialing provided on fixed-line handsets, enhancing application integration.

Number Portability

The MNO or MVNO provides for number portability, ensures that users can maintain their existing phone numbers, and avoids any disruption to the dialing experience for the end-user; no user training is required.

Data Support.

Ideally, the network fully supports data options, providing internet and mail connections. Access Point Names ( APNs) are supplied for network-supported applications such as Push-to-Talk (PTT.

Roaming

Subscribers naturally expect the same service capabilities when traveling abroad as they do when registered onto their home network. We aim to avoid complicated methods to make a call while ensuring subscribers can use their accounts when roaming internationally. Ideally, they want to dial straight from their mobile contacts list without having to edit numbers to specify the correct country code.

CAMEL Customised Applications for Mobile Network Enhanced Logic support means that the user dials normally as long as the international network supports CAMEL. When CAMEL is supported, we can guarantee a seamless prepaid roaming experience. Costs are typically less than normal call rates, and this solution ensures call recording, as required for FSA compliance, is still delivered while traveling in CAMEL countries.