Vodafone hosted ucc award

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

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Contents

Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3

Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 3

Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact of Vodafone ..................... 5

Conclusion......................................................................................................... 13

Significance of Company of the Year ........................................................................... 14

Understanding Company of the Year ........................................................................... 14

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................. 15

Best Practice Award Analysis for Vodafone ................................................................... 15

Decision Support Scorecard ................................................................................. 15

Visionary Innovation & Performance ..................................................................... 16

Customer Impact ............................................................................................... 16

Decision Support Matrix ...................................................................................... 17

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards ..................... 18

Research Methodology ........................................................................................ 18

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices ................................................................................................................. 19

About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 20



Background and Company Performance

Industry Challenges

European businesses are gradually moving their communications and customer care

solutions to the cloud as they look to reduce upfront technology investment costs and gain

greater flexibility. Hosted/cloud services also help reduce service fees for initial

configuration and installation and eliminate the expense and hassle of integrating multiple,

disparate premises-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and contact

center solutions. They replace variable premises-based infrastructure and software

maintenance and management costs with predictable monthly service fees and enable

flexible and economical capacity adjustments. Hosted/cloud solutions also provide cost-

effective business continuity/ disaster recovery (BC/DR) through redundant connections

and mobile device integration.

Even more important, hosted/cloud solutions help improve business agility and provide a

competitive edge. They free up internal resources for more strategic tasks and provide

access to the superior technology expertise of hosted providers. They reduce technology

obsolescence risks and enable the delivery of telephony, UCC and contact center features

based on user needs independent of their physical location or underlying infrastructure.

Moreover hosting makes critical applications affordable and justifiable for a wider market,

including small/midsized businesses (SMBs) and public-sector agencies, which play a

much larger role in the European economy than they do in the U.S. These private and

public organizations can take advantage of the pay-as-you-go feature of hosting, allowing

them to add capabilities as budgets permit, and if need be, to scale them back.

With strained economic conditions in Europe, organizations of all sizes are looking at new

ways to implement technology to lower operating costs while maintaining or improving the

operation levels of their contact centers and general workforce. At the same time they are

mindful of having to comply with strict regulations such as the European Union’s Data

Protection Directive as adopted by the Member States.

As organizations increasingly acknowledge the potential benefits of cloud technologies

they are rapidly adopting hosted communications and contact center solutions. With

projected user and revenue growth rates between 25 and 30 percent for the next five

years, the European hosted Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and UCC services market

presents significant growth opportunities to both European service providers and market

participants from other regions.

The hosted contact center market is also gaining traction—it is expected to grow at a 17

percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. The hosted solution share

of EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) contact center seats is forecasted to rise from 8.2

percent in 2013 to 20.2 percent by 2019. The UK, Germany, France, and the Nordic



countries are the four largest hosted contact center markets share-wise in EMEA. Of these

the UK market is by far the largest, with a 26 percent share, while the second largest,

Germany, has a 15 percent share.

These rapidly evolving markets also present challenges to market participants.

Competition is intensifying and new providers are constantly entering the market. Most

providers are looking to offer a convenient one-stop shop for their customers by providing

a broad array of hosted features and capabilities at compelling bundle prices. Yet many

providers are still lacking key capabilities demanded by businesses and public sector

organizations today, including mobile device integration, instant messaging (IM) and

presence, advanced conferencing and collaboration tools, and contact center. Service

provider flexibility and ability to innovate and rapidly respond to evolving customer needs

has been hampered by the use of third-party platforms and dependence upon technology

vendors’ product evolution vision and roadmaps.

Many providers are also unable to address diverse customer needs and typically focus on

a single customer segment. In fact, the majority of European hosted telephony/UCC

providers have targeted primarily the small-business market, where demand for

outsourced communications is the highest. Lack of contact center capabilities has been

one of the key impediments to provider penetration among medium-size and large

organizations.

At the same time hosted contact center providers must demonstrate that their solutions

deliver a high degree of reliability, security, and regulatory compliance in order to attract

and retain clients who are accustomed to those vital attributes in premises-based

installations. Service disruption can significantly hinder further cloud/hosted contact

center adoption, if not addressed efficiently.

The EMEA hosted contact center market is new and highly de-centralized. It is, therefore,

difficult for customers to differentiate among the different services to determine which

best suits their requirements. The market has witnessed the entry of niche participants,

many of which have been unable to sustain their presence or positively impact the

market. The subsequent market exit by unsuccessful providers has soured those

enterprises that had signed up on the viability of cloud contact center solutions. As a

result they understandably often hold back from migrating to the cloud until dominant

market participants arise with go-to cloud-hosted solutions.

Finally, many providers have limited presence outside their home country. This prevents

them from effectively supporting multi-national, distributed enterprises or expanding their

operations in new markets for greater scale and further growth.

Hosted IP telephony/UCC and contact center providers that overcome these challenges are

best positioned to accelerate growth and expand market share. Providers with a more

diversified portfolio comprised of a broad applications set including telephony, messaging,



mobility, and contact center will be more successful in addressing diverse customer needs.

For example, contact center providers which offer value-add services such as self-service

and customization, and which provide application scalability and BC/DR differentiate from

providers just hosting the applications and position themselves as full-fledged cloud

solution providers. Effectively designed service bundles targeting different customer

segments can help such providers capitalize on existing opportunities in the highly

competitive and still growing small-business market, as well as enjoy an early-mover

advantage in the relatively untapped mid-size and large-enterprise market. Finally,

providers with a broad geographic footprint can provide a greater value proposition to

local small and medium-size businesses as well as large multi-national corporations

(MNCs). A provider possessing all these competitive attributes—a diversified product

portfolio, competitive pricing, international presence and a strong brand—can most

effectively serve customers and sustain a leadership position.

Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact of Vodafone

Through a visionary strategy and execution excellence Vodafone has gained a leadership

position in the European hosted/cloud IP telephony/UCC and hosted contact center

markets. Multiple factors are contributing to its success, including: the identification of key

mega trends; effective implementation of growth strategies; strong financial performance;

superior price/performance value; excellent customer purchasing experience; and

considerable brand equity.

Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends

Visionary market leaders most effectively identify unmet customer needs and incorporate

key market trends in their growth strategies. More specifically, their long-term success is

determined by the ability to identify and properly address mega trends. Mega trends are

global, sustained, and macro-economic forces of development that are transformational to

business, economy, society, cultures, and personal lives, thereby defining our future world

and its increasing pace of change. Understanding mega trends can help market

participants develop sustainable growth strategies and prepare to more effectively address

new market challenges and opportunities.

With the launch of its One Net services in 2008, Vodafone bet on two mega trends that

have been shaping customer demand since then—cloud and mobility. Vodafone was a

pioneer of cloud/hosted business voice services in Europe and continues to demonstrate

thought leadership through continued services portfolio diversification, product

feature/functionality enhancements and prompt identification of new market opportunities.

Many providers now acknowledge the opportunities arising from growing demand for

cloud/hosted communications, collaboration and customer care solutions. However,

Vodafone enjoys a considerable advantage as one of the earliest entrants in the cloud



telephony market. The company is able to leverage its long track record and experience in

the industry to adjust its hosted services portfolio and product feature/functionality to

more effectively accommodate evolving customer needs. Vodafone’s hosted/cloud UCC

and contact center solutions have evolved and matured to satisfy the most stringent

customer and prospect requirements for service reliability and security.

Vodafone ranks among the few providers that can offer tight integration of wireline and

mobile communications. As business users become increasingly mobile, companies are

looking to more effectively enable worker productivity on the go. Vodafone’s One Net

services provide some of the most compelling mobile capabilities available in the European

hosted communications market today. Through native, network-based integration One Net

Express and One Net Business Services provide mobile users with convenient access to

business communications applications without the need for a client download or the cost

and complexity of on-site mobile-wireline integration.

Vodafone also supports the growing number of remote workers, including contact center

agents. Organizations are turning to the home/remote working model to lower facilities

costs, provide more flexibility and scalability, expand talent pools, attract and retain top

talent with work/life balance benefits, reduce tardiness caused by transport delays, and to

support green initiatives and BC/DR strategies. This has given rise to the virtual

organization—another key mega trend shaping the way we work today. Vodafone’s hosted

IP telephony, UCC and hosted contact center services provide considerable benefits to

such distributed organizations. Indeed it is fair to say that Vodafone has moved beyond

hosting in the strictest sense of the word to becoming a true cloud services provider in the

contact center, IP telephony, and UCC markets.

Recently, Vodafone once again demonstrated its ability to successfully identify unmet

customer needs. Even as competition in the hosted IP telephony and UCC services market

intensifies and compels providers to continually expand their product and feature set, few

have launched advanced contact center services that integrate with their hosted UCC

solutions. Businesses and public-sector-organizations are looking to integrate their contact

center solutions with the rest of the enterprise communications capabilities in order to be

able to more quickly and effectively resolve customer issues, improve customer

satisfaction and retention rates, and accelerate growth. As customer organizations

increasingly outsource their communications solutions, they will expect their providers to

integrate hosted UCC solutions with hosted contact center capabilities. Vodafone has

responded to that need with the integration of a contact center services portfolio through

the Cable & Wireless provider acquisition and the launch of a new hosted contact center

offering based on Cisco infrastructure.

Implementation Best Practices

Vodafone’s pioneering market entry has partly driven the decision to use an internally

developed hosted communications platform. Many providers leverage hosted IP telephony



platforms developed by third-party vendors, which increases their costs and limits their

ability to innovate and promptly respond to evolving customer needs. By using its own

technology, Vodafone has the flexibility to develop new products or features as soon as it

perceives rising demand among its existing or prospective customers.

Vodafone accurately assessed the opportunities for hosted/cloud services adoption among

different customer segments and first targeted its One Net services at underserved small

and medium-size businesses (SMBs). Due to their more limited financial resources and IT

staff, SMBs are the early adopters of outsourced communications solutions. To date, SMBs

account for more than three quarters of the total hosted IP telephony installed base

globally, proving the substantial demand for such solutions in this customer segment.

Furthermore, Vodafone demonstrated great vision and thought leadership by making the

solution simple to deploy, use and manage, and by focusing on mobility from the very

beginning. Vodafone has leveraged its strength in the areas of global voice, managed

mobility and IP networks and its considerable expertise in carrier and hosting services to

differentiate its converged One Net service with strong mobile capabilities and integrated

billing and management.

Vodafone has excellent cloud hosting capability, flexibility, scalability, and BC/DR

functionality. The Vodafone Cloud and Hosting Services unit has 14 data centers located in

Ireland, South Africa, and the U.K., as well as access to other data centers through

partners. The geographic spread or “geo-redundancy” of its data centers assures service

continuity as it is highly unlikely that one or two single events will knock all of its centers

off-line.

As the hosted IP telephony and cloud UCC market matures, Vodafone is preparing to

compete in the next phase of market evolution. Larger businesses with multiple

geographically dispersed sites are now beginning to adopt hosted communication solutions

for the flexibility and cost efficiencies in supporting mobile and remote workers. However,

these businesses have different requirements from those of SMBs. Vodafone has

partnered with Cisco and Microsoft to leverage their respective advanced UCC technologies

to tap into this new segment of larger customer organizations. With the comprehensive

capabilities of Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) and Microsoft Exchange,

SharePoint and Lync, Vodafone can address the needs of large enterprise customers that

are looking for more advanced features and a greater degree of customization and

integration with other communications and business applications. One of the key

additional capabilities required by larger businesses is contact center, which Vodafone has

now integrated with its UCC offerings in order to offer a one-stop shop to customers

demanding more comprehensive solutions.



Financial Performance

With about 3.5 million One Net service users at the end of 2013, Vodafone is the

undisputed leader in the European hosted IP telephony and UCC services market and it

continues to grow rapidly. From mid-2013 to mid-2014, Vodafone added approximately

300,000 new users, significantly more than any other European or global provider.

Vodafone’s success with One Net and its adjacent services is also evident in its continued

global expansion. In 2013 and 2014, the company launched One Net for SMBs services in

new markets to achieve presence in 11 markets. One Net Enterprise is now available in 17

markets, with more market launches pending. One Net Enterprise-Cisco launched last year

is currently available in the UK. Expanding One Net availability is accompanied by the

extension of Office 365 in 23 markets. One Net Collaboration, which integrates One Net

services with Office 365, is launched in three European markets.

The acquisition of Cable & Wireless contact center assets provided Vodafone with a solid

start in the hosted contact center space. Today, Vodafone boasts over 150 cloud/hosted

contact center customers, more than 100,000 configured hosted agents, and contact

center systems running 7.44 billion call minutes of customer interaction traffic. Vodafone

has existing hosted contact center deployments in the UK, India, South Africa, and New

Zealand. The new, Cisco technology-based contact center service is currently available in

the UK with planned geographic expansion for the near future.

Overall, Vodafone is tremendously successful with its hosted telephony, UCC and contact

center solutions. With a strong focus on international expansion, service enhancements,

new product launches, technology integration, partner enablement and addressing specific

customer needs, it is well positioned to further improve its market positioning going

forward. An example of Vodafone’s promising pipeline is a recent contract with Aviva, the

global insurance company. Vodafone will be supporting 12,000 Aviva contact center

agents at multiple Irish and UK sites with Vodafone Contact Centre, Vodafone One Net

Enterprise, and Vodafone IP-VPN. As part of a seven-year agreement announced in July

2014 Aviva agents will have new collaboration tools for document sharing, instant

messaging and conferencing services sometime in early 2015.

Price/Performance Value Leadership

Vodafone offers three different flavors of One Net for SMBs and larger enterprises. One

Net Express, One Net Business and One Net Enterprise variously match features and

functionality to the intended customer audience. All three services offer compelling

capabilities and excellent performance and are priced based on the value delivered in each

package.

One Net Express delivers essential private branch exchange (PBX) functionality to users’

mobile devices. This solution offers the most compelling value to mobile professionals,



entrepreneurs and small office/home office (SOHO) workers. One Net Business allows

businesses to use both IP desktop phones and mobile devices with the hosted PBX

solution. This solution is most suitable for SMBs with both deskbound and mobile workers.

Both solutions were designed from the ground up with SMBs in mind. As cloud solutions,

One Net Express and Business provide a flexible and economical way for SMBs with small

IT budgets and limited IT staff to deploy communications technologies. They are simple

and easy to deploy and use, yet provide the key functionality and performance reliability

required by this customer segment. One Net services offer enterprise telephony features

such as hunt groups, music on hold, auto attendant and extension dialing without the high

CAPEX and management complexity associated with deploying a premises-based PBX

system.

Both services are competitively priced, starting as low as 25 Euros per user per month.

Most businesses sign two-year contracts, which typically entitle them to price discounts

and a waiver on installation and set-up charges.

A core Vodafone solution differentiators among European hosted telephony and UCC

offerings and a major value-add for customers is the One Net mobility element. Few

competing providers have launched compelling mobility solutions, which gives Vodafone a

considerable competitive advantage in the hosted communications marketplace and

enables it to provide superior value to its customers.

Many small businesses are using mobile phones as their primary communications

endpoints, which makes Vodafone One Net a perfect fit for their needs. One Net for SMBs

turns mobile devices into virtual landlines and extensions of the company’s

communications system. Users receive landline numbers on their mobile devices with as

many area codes as required as well as the ability to redirect calls from any landline

phone to a mobile phone free of charge.

Furthermore, calls from One Net users to fixed lines and mobile phones are routed

through the Vodafone mobile virtual private network (VPN), which makes it less expensive

to call users in other office locations and enables extension dialing from mobile devices for

greater user convenience.

Vodafone also offers a compelling solution to larger enterprises. One Net Enterprise

(based on Vodafone’s home-grown platform) adds conferencing and collaboration

capabilities to the PBX feature set to enable more effective collaboration among

distributed teams and remote workers. In addition to telephony, One Net Enterprise also

offers voice and/or unified messaging, web conferencing and file sharing, video calling and

other features.

In addition, Vodafone now offers One Net Enterprise based on Cisco’s HCS. Targeted at

large organizations with more diverse user needs, the solution extends a comprehensive



suite of applications including telephony, voice/unified messaging, presence and instant

messaging (IM), conferencing and collaboration, mobility and contact center. Similar to

One Net for SMBs, One Net Enterprise is offered on a utility-based pricing model, however

with its feature set and architecture it is most economical for distributed multi-site

businesses.

Vodafone One Net Enterprise is available in three different packages, offering the best

price/performance value to customers with different needs:

Basic: includes telephony with a full PBX feature set, support for one standard IP

phone, and optional voicemail.

Standard: includes telephony with a full PBX feature set, support for one client or

device which can be a mobile phone with basic FMC features, video-calling, optional

voicemail/unified messaging, and instant messaging via a Jabber client.

Enhanced: includes telephony with a full PBX feature set, support for up to ten

clients/devices which may include a mobile phone with a rich set of mobility/FMC

features, video-calling, voicemail (with optional unified messaging), and instant

messaging via a Jabber client.

Vodafone also targets the large enterprise customer segment with its hosted UCC product

line based on Microsoft technology, which includes private dedicated Lync, SharePoint and

Exchange services.

Vodafone recently enhanced the value of its hosted/cloud IP communications offerings

with the acquisition of Cable & Wireless’ contact center solutions and the launch of new

Cisco-based contact center services. The new offering enables multi-channel customer

support through voice, web, and email, as well as through social and mobile apps. It also

provides optional media recording, workforce optimization and analytics capabilities.

Vodafone also has powerful call handling capabilities with Vodafone Voice Interaction

services which offers IVR self-service and call direction to contact center agents in either

dual-tone multi-frequency or speech recognition modes. The speech system has a 90

percent (or better) recognition rate. Organizations can select from pre-existing templates

or have Vodafone customize their IVR applications.

Vodafone hosted/cloud contact center offerings help businesses realize greater benefits

from their hosted communications services deployments while reducing implementation

and integration costs associated with disparate, multi-vendor UCC and contact center

technologies deployed on the premises.



With a range of cloud IP telephony, UCC and contact center solutions that offer compelling

functionality at competitive pricing, Vodafone provides greater price/performance value to

its customers than most other European providers.

Customer Purchase Experience

Vodafone’s extensive footprint allows it to address a broad customer audience, including

local small businesses as well as large MNCs with multiple distributed locations. With local

presence in most countries combined with centralized global products and services

capabilities Vodafone is better positioned than most of its competitors to provide a

superior purchasing experience to customers. The majority of competitors in this market

are either local incumbents or small next-generation providers that cannot compete on the

same level as Vodafone. Furthermore, its extensive geographic reach allows Vodafone to

more economically scale its operations which translates into economies for its business

customers.

Vodafone’s broad geographic reach enables the provider to effectively serve the needs of

MNCs looking to consolidate their communications infrastructure and technology

management across multiple locations. This capability is an advantage in the rapidly

growing but still very fragmented European hosted IP telephony, UCC and contact center

services market. With most providers focused on the small business space, Vodafone is

one of few providers able to deliver greater value to large distributed organizations.

Vodafone offers a variety of purchasing options to address different customer needs and

preferences for technology acquisition and deployment. SMBs can quickly and easily

purchase One Net on Vodafone’s web site and deploy the solution in just a few days.

Alternatively, businesses can work with Vodafone project managers who can provide a

comprehensive evaluation of customers’ communications needs and assets and assist

them with the service implementation. Vodafone account managers assist clients with the

ongoing management of their communications solutions, including conducting regular

service performance reviews. Vodafone staff also utilize proactive network monitoring

tools to remotely diagnose and resolve technical issues.

Vodafone further enhances the user experience by providing various additional capabilities

that can boost the value of its hosted telephony and UCC services. One Net can be

conveniently bundled with other Vodafone offerings such as its Red Plan or Sharer Plan,

which add buckets of minutes and text/SMS messages to the feature packages. Users can

share minutes and text allowances with their colleagues. Also, Vodafone-to-Vodafone

mobile calls as well as all internal calls are free (i.e., included in the package). Since

Vodafone is both a fixed and mobile network operator, it provides a true one-stop shop for

business customers’ mobile and fixed communications requirements. Customers receive a

unified bill for their converged landline and mobile communications, making purchasing

and managing the solution both more convenient and economical.



One Net for SMBs is available in 11 different countries wherein each is tailored to local

customer needs and channels. This allows Vodafone to scale its operations and leverage

more extensive and diverse customer feedback in ongoing product development, while at

the same time providing unique value to local customers. Adding minutes, devices or

desktop or mobile user licenses is simple and involves only incremental charges.

Vodafone One Net solutions support market leading Cisco desktop IP phones and Polycom

conferencing phones, as well as most mobile devices available on the market today. This

allows customers the flexibility to use mobile devices of their choice, including user-

purchased mobiles if the company has a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. If any of

the devices provided by Vodafone malfunctions, the provider replaces them free of charge

within 24 hours.

Vodafone’s new One Net Enterprise solution is tailored to the needs of larger businesses

that require a more consultative needs assessment and a higher degree of customization.

Vodafone has more than 1,000 sales staff dedicated to selling solutions for MNCs. The

provider has abundant in-house resources such as solution architects, mobility experts,

technical assistants, communication consultants and others who help with the deployment

and ongoing management of communications solutions for MNCs. Beyond MNCs, Vodafone

also has a considerable reach amongst large national and other business customers.

Overall, it has more than 5,000 business-to-business (B2B) sales staff around the world.

One Net Enterprise is available in 17 countries with more market launches pending. The

availability in multiple European countries enables Vodafone to provide uniform

capabilities and convenient service deployment and management to distributed

organizations with presence in more than one country.

Vodafone’s hosted contact center offerings are also supported through a broad set of

services capabilities providing customers with a superior purchasing experience. Vodafone

designs its hosted contact center solutions based on customers’ business objectives,

employing a consultative approach and migration planning strategies. It leverages

specialist teams comprising of pre-sales and solution consultants that help with the sales

process as well as the service implementation. Vodafone supports its hosted/cloud contact

center deployments with training services, which ensure implementation success and

greater customer satisfaction. Vodafone’s hosted contact center solutions are delivered

under a flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing structure with a combination of per-user, per-

customer and per-port fees. One-off charges apply to handsets and headsets, connectors,

customized integration and various optional services.

Overall, Vodafone provides a convenient and effective purchasing experience for a broad

spectrum of customer organizations with diverse technology needs.



Brand Equity

Vodafone ranks among the largest communications service providers in world. The

provider owns and operates networks in 21 countries and uses partner networks in over

40 additional countries. The Vodafone Global Enterprise division provides

telecommunications and IT services to corporate clients in over 65 countries.

Vodafone’s brand is well known among both consumers and business customers. It brand

equity inspires trust and boosts the adoption of new solutions launched by the company.

As the hosted IP telephony/UCC and contact center markets mature, market share and

brand will become increasingly important and are likely to provide Vodafone with a

competitive advantage.

Conclusion

Vodafone holds a strong leadership position in the European hosted IP telephony and UCC

services market. With a broad solutions portfolio and compelling functionality delivered at

competitive price points, Vodafone has achieved a remarkable market share of 56.7

percent of the total installed user base, in spite of regional macro-economic challenges

and competitive landscape fragmentation. Vodafone is also in the process of strengthening

its hosted contact center offerings to become value-added cloud services. This is opening

up new growth opportunities for the provider, both as standalone services and as adjuncts

to its hosted telephony and UCC solutions. Vodafone offers superior value to its customers

looking for a one-stop-shop experience for hosted communications and customer care

solutions.

With its strong overall performance, Vodafone has earned Frost & Sullivan’s 2014

Company of the Year Award.



Significance of Company of the Year

To win the Company of the Year award (i.e., to be recognized as a leader not only in your

industry, but among your non-industry peers as well) requires a company to demonstrate

excellence in growth, innovation, and leadership. This kind of excellence typically

translates into superior performance in three key areas: demand generation, brand

development, and competitive positioning. These areas serve as the foundation of a

company’s future success and prepare it to deliver on the two criteria that define the

Company of the Year Award (Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact).

This concept is explored further below.

Understanding Company of the Year

As discussed above, driving demand, brand strength, and competitive differentiation all

play a critical role in delivering unique value to customers. This three-fold focus, however,

must ideally be complemented by an equally rigorous focus on visionary innovation to

enhance customer value and impact.



Key Benchmarking Criteria

For the Company of the Year Award, we evaluated two key factors—Visionary Innovation &

Performance and Customer Impact—according to the criteria identified below.

Visionary Innovation & Performance

Criterion 1: Addressing Unmet Needs

Criterion 2: Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends

Criterion 3: Implementation Best Practices

Criterion 4: Blue Ocean Strategy

Criterion 5: Financial Performance

Customer Impact

Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value

Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience

Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience

Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience

Criterion 5: Brand Equity

Best Practice Award Analysis for Vodafone

Decision Support Scorecard

To support its evaluation of best practices across multiple business performance

categories, Frost & Sullivan employs a customized Decision Support Scorecard. This tool

allows our research and consulting teams to objectively analyze performance, according to

the key benchmarking criteria listed in the previous section, and to assign ratings on that

basis. The tool follows a 10-point scale that allows for nuances in performance evaluation;

ratings guidelines are illustrated below.

RATINGS GUIDELINES

The Decision Support Scorecard is organized by Visionary Innovation & Performance and

Customer Impact (i.e., the overarching categories for all 10 benchmarking criteria; the

definitions for each criteria are provided beneath the scorecard). The research team

confirms the veracity of this weighted scorecard through sensitivity analysis, which

confirms that small changes to the ratings for a specific criterion do not lead to a

significant change in the overall relative rankings of the companies.



The results of this analysis are shown below. To remain unbiased and to protect the

interests of all organizations reviewed, we have chosen to refer to the other key players

as Competitor 2 and Competitor 3.

DECISION SUPPORT SCORECARD FOR COMPANY OF THE YEAR AWARD (ILLUSTRATIVE)

Measurement of 1–10 (1 = poor; 10 = excellent)

Company of the Year

Visionary

Innovation &

Performance

Customer

Impact Average Rating

Vodafone 9.8 9.6 9.7

Competitor 2 8.4 8.8 8.6

Competitor 3 7.8 8.8 8.3


Criterion 1: Addressing Unmet Needs

Requirement: Implementing a robust process to continuously unearth customers’ unmet

or under-served needs, and creating the products or solutions to address them effectively

Criterion 2: Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends

Requirement: Incorporating long-range, macro-level scenarios into the innovation

strategy, thereby enabling “first to market” growth opportunities solutions

Criterion 4: Implementation Best Practices

Requirement: Best-in-class strategy implementation characterized by processes, tools, or

activities that generate a consistent and repeatable level of success.

Criterion 3: Blue Ocean Strategy

Requirement: Strategic focus in creating a leadership position in a potentially

“uncontested” market space, manifested by stiff barriers to entry for competitors

Criterion 5: Financial Performance

Requirement: Strong overall business performance in terms of revenues, revenue growth,

operating margin and other key financial metrics

Customer Impact

Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value

Requirement: Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar

offerings in the market

Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience

Requirement: Customers feel like they are buying the most optimal solution that

addresses both their unique needs and their unique constraints



Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience

Requirement: Customers are proud to own the company’s product or service, and have a

positive experience throughout the life of the product or service

Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience

Requirement: Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality

Criterion 5: Brand Equity

Requirement: Customers have a positive view of the brand and exhibit high brand loyalty

Decision Support Matrix

Once all companies have been evaluated according to the Decision Support Scorecard,

analysts can then position the candidates on the matrix shown below, enabling them to

visualize which companies are truly breakthrough and which ones are not yet operating at

best-in-class levels.

DECISION SUPPORT MATRIX FOR COMPANY OF THE YEAR AWARD (ILLUSTRATIVE)

High

Low

Low High

Cu

sto

mer I

mp

act


Vodafone

Competitor 2

Competitor 3



The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best

Practices Awards

Research Methodology

Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research

methodology represents the analytical

rigor of our research process. It offers a

360-degree-view of industry challenges,

trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of

Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies.

Too often, companies make important

growth decisions based on a narrow

understanding of their environment,

leading to errors of both omission and

commission. Successful growth strategies

are founded on a thorough understanding

of market, technical, economic, financial,

customer, best practices, and demographic

analyses. The integration of these research

disciplines into the 360-degree research

methodology provides an evaluation

platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-

in-class levels.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN

THE CHAOS



Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices

Our awards team follows a 10-step process (illustrated below) to evaluate award

candidates and assess their fit with our best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity

of our awards process are based on close adherence to this process.

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT

1 Monitor, target, and screen

Identify award recipient candidates from around the globe

Conduct in-depth industry research

Identify emerging sectors Scan multiple geographies

Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria

2 Perform 360-degree research

Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline

Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners

Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria

Rank all candidates

Matrix positioning all candidates’ performance relative to one another

3

Invite thought leadership in best practices

Perform in-depth examination of all candidates

Confirm best-practice criteria Examine eligibility of all

candidates Identify any information gaps

Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates

4

Initiate research director review

Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles

Brainstorm ranking options Invite multiple perspectives

on candidates’ performance Update candidate profiles

Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper

5

Assemble panel of industry experts

Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders

Share findings Strengthen cases for

candidate eligibility Prioritize candidates

Refined list of prioritized award candidates

6

Conduct global industry review

Build consensus on award candidates’ eligibility

Hold global team meeting to review all candidates

Pressure-test fit with criteria Confirm inclusion of all

eligible candidates

Final list of eligible award candidates, representing success stories worldwide

7 Perform quality check

Develop official award consideration materials

Perform final performance benchmarking activities

Write nominations Perform quality review

High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes

8

Reconnect with panel of industry experts

Finalize the selection of the best-practice award recipient

Review analysis with panel Build consensus Select winner

Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria

9 Communicate recognition

Inform award recipient of award recognition

Present award to the CEO Inspire the organization for

continued success Celebrate the recipient’s

performance

Announcement of award and plan for how recipient can use the award to enhance the brand

10 Take strategic action

Share award news with stakeholders and customers

Coordinate media outreach Design a marketing plan Assess award’s role in future

strategic planning

Widespread awareness of recipient’s award status among investors, media personnel, and employees



About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth

and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's

Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined

research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation

of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages almost 50 years of experience in

partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment

community from 31 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit

http://www.frost.com.

http://www.frost.com/

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