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| TTI Telecom: Customers Come First |
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| Written by Eric Slack |
| Sunday, 31 May 2009 23:00 |
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At first glance, the name TTI Telecom makes this nearly 20-year-old company look like a telecommunications firm. To be sure, the company serves the telecom industry, but its business is software and services. “The best way to describe us is a leading provider of next generation customer-centric service assurance solutions to communication service providers (CSP) globally, and we help them improve their customers’ service quality and experience,” said Kobi Alaluf, president of North America. TTI Telecom provides next-generation operations support systems (OSSs) to CSPs around the world. By using TTI’s OSS platform, CSPs can manage their networks and services more efficiently. Among TTI’s customers you will find some of the world’s premier and global CSPs.  The company is headquartered in Israel and began operations in 1992. In 1996, the company began trading publicly on the Nasdaq after its IPO. TTI Telecom’s global presence includes offices in North America, Central and Latin America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. In line with its customer-centric focus, TTI’s offices are placed in areas where its customers are located. First-rate customer service TTI Telecom’s line of Netrac products support fixed and mobile technologies and allow its customers to take a customer-centric approach to service management. The company offers a comprehensive suite of service assurance solutions that includes fault management, performance management, service management, and service assurance mediation solutions, allowing real-time and centralized network management, service quality monitoring, and customer impact analysis. The Netrac line of solutions offers flexibility that allows its users to customize and tailor the system to fit their business needs. TTI believes its experience and innovative history brings value to clients and allows them to streamline operations, attract and retain customers, improve efficiency, and lower costs. The company is structured into five regional business units (RBUs), including the Americas; Europe; a dedicated business unit around France Telecom, which is one of the major worldwide service providers; Israel; and the Pan-Pacific region. Each RBU operates as a separate profit and loss unit and operates independently from a sales, marketing, and service delivery point of view. In areas like R&D, all core products are developed by TTI Telecom’s corporate development shop; engineering support and services are also provided by corporate. “The ability to work independently within each RBU by focusing on the needs of our customers locally in the region allows us to be highly effective in being customer-centric in our approach to helping our clients,” said Alaluf. Certainly, technology is a major part of TTI Telecom’s business, but one of the things the company views as a central aspect of its business is customer service. The needs and directions of the company’s customers are key drivers in TTI’s products, solutions, and technology. “We are sensitive to what is happening in the market, and we are always working close to our customers,” Alaluf said. “When we put together our technology and product road map, we gather information from our customers to find out what technological challenges they have and what direction they want to take so we can build our road map around that.” The road ahead Currently, although the company is closely monitoring the global economic situation, TTI Telecom is continuing to invest in its infrastructure. During the last year, the company increased the size of its sales force and is looking to expand in markets where the economic impact hasn’t been as severe, places like Central and Latin America. “That is a region where we are investing in creating more sale opportunities and creating local channels to expose our solutions to the market. We are also moving our products to next-generation technology, listening to the needs of the customers and taking advantage of this time to get to a wider and broader set of potential customers,” said Alaluf. “We enhanced and improved our product infrastructure and have introduced new tools and solutions to enable system consolidation, transformation, and service convergence in an attempt to reduce cost and improve efficiency.” Alaluf said after analyzing market trends and directions in the last few years, the company began placing an emphasis on the wireless market. He said wireless companies are already starting to make investments to move to new technologies, presenting a huge opportunity for growth for TTI Telecom. As a software company, the knowledge and expertise of its employees are critical to future success, and managing those resources across international lines takes a lot of work. The company is always on the lookout for new assets to add to its team and continuously invests in training, both internal and external, for people in the company. “In the wireless area, for example, we know companies are moving toward fourth-generation technology, so we are making sure our people are exposed to those technologies and understand the direction the market is heading,” said Alaluf. Alaluf knows the uncertainty surrounding the economy will present challenges to TTI Telecom, its customers, and the entire industry. But the company is trying to make the right investments now to be prepared for continued development when the economy improves. Keeping up with emerging technologies and remaining in line with customer expectations are as important to the company’s future as is navigating the current economy. “Because we are such a customer-centric company, we don’t view any relationship we have with our customers as a one-time transaction,” said Alaluf. “We see our customers as long-term partners, and we constantly get feedback from our customers that they see us as a partner and not just a supplier. We believe that investing in our customers’ success and growth is an investment in our success and growth.” |