"Customers were saying that they were finding it difficult to do business with Nortel. Hence, the emphasis on 'business made simple'," said Michael Pangia, president and chief operating officer, Asia Pacific, Nortel, while speaking at a recent channel partners' meet in Malaysia.
And how does the around $10-billion company go about implementing this theme? It has identified three focus areas around the theme, Pangia said. One, simplifying the company's internal decision-making process. Two, simplifying the process of doing business with its customers.
Three, simplifying its portfolio and solutions. Towards this end, the company also plans to reduce its 700 discrete services to 70 services under five broad areas - managed, integrated, maintenance, optimisation and security.
In India, besides strengthening its ongoing relationship with Bharti, Nortel is focusing on its solutions for contact (or call) centres.
"While our competitors are strong in either data or voice, we are established in both areas. This is our unique selling point," Ravi Chauhan, VP, Nortel India, said. The company claims to have 90 per cent market share in this space.
"Once a call comes in (at the contact centre), our work starts. In fact, even before anyone calls, our compression techniques ensure that more calls can be squeezed through the pipe, and the bandwidth is optimised," he added.
Nortel India plans to be "a mainstream player (in the high-end, mid-range and small business segments) by the end of this year.
The company is in the process of building a network operation centre (NOC), which can be likened to an 'early warning system' for contact centres. The NOC can remotely manage services on behalf of the contact centres.
Incidentally, Nortel is among the very few companies that spend around 20 per cent of their revenues on research and development.
The company spent $1.9 billion in 2005. The Asia-Pacific region, which is a $24 billion market, is in a growth phase and is slated to grow at 4 per cent in 2006.
The market has room for enterprise, carrier and wireless solutions with the biggest GSM networks in India and Pakistan, 3G networks in countries like Korea and Wi-Fi, WiMax and wireless mesh opportunities in cities such as Taipei.
"We plan to leverage our relationship with LG Electronics in these areas," Pangia said. It may be recalled that LG-Nortel formed a 49:51 joint venture in November 2005.
The venture is developing and marketing telecom equipment and network solutions for the Korean and worldwide markets.
"Our vision is to be No. 1 in the Korean telecom market by end-2006 and sustain it," JD An, head - international enterprise sales division, LG-Nortel. Pangia insisted that "our channel partners are very important to our growth. When they grow, we grow".
In fact, the event also gave the company's channel partners an opportunity to interact with the top brass of Nortel Asia Pacific and work out strategies to grow their businesses in their respective areas.
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