The Impact of Managed Services on the QoS and Operations of the Mobile Telecommunications Industry in Ghana

Abstract

The mobile telecommunication industry is one of the most competitive in the world today. As telecommunication companies battle to gain competitive advantage and to improve revenue, it has become standard practice in Ghana for telecom companies to use Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to handle the management of technological business risk and uncertainty, as well as to the enhance the agility and to control cost while at the same time maintaining their core business objectives. This paper explores the relationship between manage services and the operations of mobile telecommunications in Ghana. The study focused on one of the prominent telecommunications companies in Ghana and its managed service providers. Using primary and secondary data obtained from interviews and incident dashboard from service Management tool of MSPs respectively, studies were conducted on the cooperation of MSPs, their adherence to SLAs and cost savings as a means to measure the impact of managed services on the business operations of Mobile Telecommunication Companies in Ghana. The results revealed that the level of cooperation between MSPs towards service delivery is generally good. However, the MSPs level of adherence to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is low according to the Case company respondents although the MSPs claimed their adherence to SLA was high. Service dashboard data on the other hand confirmed that the MSPs are in fact meeting the SLAs. Lastly, both company respondents and dashboard data confirmed that there are cost savings in the operations from the use of Managed Services. The results also showed some benefits in the area of sound technical support and expertise, better human resource management and opportunity to focus on core business.