The study on new service development process in telecom industry: the Telefonica Case Study

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to help Telefonica, a Spanish integrated operator, reduce time-to-market of its new offer or product/service innovation by closely observing and evaluating the current development process of its new offer. The research includes the review of current literature on product and service characteristics and new product and service development model, and participant observation conducted in relevant units actively involved in development process. The contributions of this thesis are threefold: First, characteristics of Telefonica’s offer to its multinational customers were examined and the finding indicated that the offer is categorized as product/service with service dominance. That added value to the next exercise of the improvement of new offer or product/service development speed. Second, investigation of the firm’s current new product/service development process with an attempt to perform evaluation and consequently recommendations were made based on the literature review stated above by closely looking at the interaction of the involved participants in development process and how the firm carried out its development process was conducted. The findings indicated that Telefonica selected the right development model for its new product/service innovation, yet there exist some weaknesses in its current development process. Therefore, implications were made so that Telefonica is able to get the best from its adopted model, Stage-gate. Third, from the investigation a generic view of new product/service development process in telecommunication industry was formed. The beneficiaries of this last finding are the practitioners in the product/service development in telecommunication market because from that pattern they could clearly view core elements to be carefully considered during the development period. The research recommends practitioners to encourage informal internal communication between project members of new product/service development process as it helps them to build up knowledge for problem solving as well as for finishing deliverables fast. Moreover, management involvement is strongly advised in order to ensure quality of the tasks done by the teams, accurately assess resources that will be needed throughout the project, and prevent procrastinations of the project members.