[London, UK, November 14, 2016] The inaugural Industry Omni-channel Management Alliance met and formally announced its creation at the Open ROADS (Real-time, On-demand, All-online, Do-It-Yourself, and Social) Community London Meeting. The Open ROADS Community initiative powered by Huawei, was first launched at the Mobile World Congress in February at Barcelona and then held its Inaugural Meeting in June at Singapore. The Open ROADS Community addresses the challenges which telcos and related digital service providers face when attempting to transform to digital business operations.

Omni-channel Management Industry Alliance Launch Ceremony in Open ROADS Community London

Dr. Howard Liang, Chairman of Open ROADS Community said ,

”Omni-channel Management is the first business domain incubated by the Open ROADS Community, we think Omni-channel management can help operators deliver an actionable path for their digital transformation by starting from the customer journey through merging legacy and new digital capabilities. At the Singapore inaugural meeting, we shared how to develop Omni channel management from reference architecture to reference implementation. Now it is the time to form this Omni-channel management industry alliance with cross industry partners and Telecoms operators who are willing to contribute to realize Omni-channel transformation in telecom industry.

During the meeting, Omni-channel definitions, implementation challenges, cross industry practice, analytics and agile operations, alliance motivations and missions were thoroughly discussed during the Omni-channel Management Executive Panel with participants from industry leading players including Oglivy, Vodafone, NTS Retail, Celebrus Technologies, Teletech, TIBCO Software, Forrester and Huawei.

Jim Lu, President of Global Technical Service, Huawei, announced the Omni-channel management industry alliance manifesto. Mr Lu said

“Omni-channel is the most powerful enabler for a successful digital transformation. Vertical industries like retail, airline and finance have achieved remarkable results through an Omni-channel approach to their business strategy, enabling faster time to market, customer experience and customer lifetime value improvement. Now it’s the right time to build an industry alliance of Omni-channel management. Within this alliance, the alliance partners will work together to uncover better ways of providing and putting into practice cross-channel, consistent, personalized and contextually relevant customer experience processes.”

Afterwards a ceremony for the omni-channel management industry alliance was held with the partners from the cross-industry.

Principal Customer Management Enterprise Architect at Vodafone Group, Paul Blake said

“Omni-channel is the first pillar in realizing our distinctively digital strategy, and we are achieving this in a number of ways through our Catalyst project with Huawei and other ecosystem partners. We will also work with local markets to adapt our Omni-channel delivery depending on local market maturity and needs. Our customers should experience one Vodafone when interacting with us, and Omni-channel enables us to deliver a consistently great experience across all channels.”

Erich Gerber, TIBCO’s GM for APJ noted,

“Streaming Analytics enables actionable insight into how customers interact with Omni-channel capabilities. A rules-based events engine, coupled with API Management and an Integration Platform are key components in driving real-time engagement.”

Celebrus Technologies’ Chief Marketing Officer Katharine Hulls,

“Consumers demand to be understood and treated in a coherent, seamless and personalized way: with customer experience increasingly becoming a key differentiator getting those moments of truth right is critical. Celebrus is delighted to be part of this exciting new initiative which brings together an ecosystem to enable brands to meet those consumer expectations.”

NTS Retail, Günther Schrammel, Chief Executive Officer said,

“Omni-channel is about to meet your customers at eye level and accompany them in real-time on any channel and stage of interaction. At the same time it implies turning any customer touchpoint into a potential point of service and sales. We at NTS Retail are thrilled to join the Industry Omni-channel Management Alliance and to engage with top industry players with the goal to support operators on their successful digital transformation”.

Peter Dorrington, Head of Customer Insight, TeleTech Consulting said:

"Consumers drive the transformational agenda for Omni-channel organizations; they expect to be known, to be remembered, understood and they expect this to be true regardless of which channel they use. It is through the support of groups like the Open ROADS community that forward-thinking organizations will find solutions to a new generation of challenges and address the ‘new normal’ of constant disruption. I’m delighted to participate in this landmark initiative – one I think will be the model for other industries and sectors and I am excited to see the future contributions of Open ROADS Community.”

The Open ROADS Community will be an incubator for the ICT transformation best practices. Through the newly formed Omni-channel Management industry alliance, the alliance team of cross-industry peers will start to cooperate in building a mature ecosystem for Omni-channel Management and contribute to improving the maturity of Telco Omni-channel Management standards and architecture, practice and implementation references.