|
Cramer is an acknowledged market leader within the OSS market and recently won the 2003 OSS Excellence Award for 'Best Overall OSS Company' at Telestrategies World 2003.
Cramer's product solves a problem that is fundamental to telco carriers - efficiency: cost of delivery is reduced by scaling highly technical and complex processes; ROI is increased by automatically applying rules and policies that will make the best use of complex, highly interconnected networks and the rollout of new network technologies is accelerated by actively maintaining a unified intelligent model of both old and new technology network resources.
Jerry Crook is CEO at Cramer. Jerry joined the company in summer 2002 from Peregrine Systems where as VP EMEA he grew the regional business from $48 million to $148 million in revenues, and in headcount terms from 90 to 750. Previously, Jerry had been VP Pan European Operations at Data General.
In the last year, Jerry has led the expansion of Cramer in North America and Asia and presided over a business that has won more OSS contracts than any of its rivals.
We caught up with Jerry to talk about the telecommunications industry as a whole, and Cramer's role within it.
Q. Jerry, recently we have heard a small number of recently appointed CEOs, such as John Pluthero at Energis, heavily critique some aspects of the telecoms industry and those within it. As someone from outside the sector previously, what is your view of the industry?
Undoubtedly, the telco industry must fundamentally change the way it does business. Many are unacceptably inefficient: it is essential for them that operational costs are lowered significantly and quickly. Business must drive the network, and not vice-versa.
Q. What role does inventory management have to play in this paradigm shift?
Inventory management is the master application sitting at the centre of the business: it is an application you run your business by. It is therefore a business rather than a technology solution. In reality it's about the management of the supply chain within the telco, not unlike the Sabre or Galileo systems that the airline industry uses to manage hugely complex global capacity and resources.
Q. So other industries manage inventory better than telecoms?
Undoubtedly so. Take the airline industry for example. If you call and book a ticket for a flight to Frankfurt this evening, you can virtually guarantee your ticket will be awaiting your collection at the departure airport. Apply a telco-equivalent scenario, and the outcome would be 50/50. It is nowhere near as efficient.
Q. How can Cramer address this need for change?
Cramer will be an instigator of industry change. One of the reasons I joined the company was because the Founders are passionate visionaries. Cramer actually started life as an idea rather than a product. Winning the industry awards we have is indicative that Cramer provides thought leadership. We can truly capitalise on this by operating as a commercial software organisation rather than as a traditional OSS vendor.
Q. What is the critical success factor for Cramer?
Credibility amongst tier one telcos - the likes of BT, Vodafone and Telecom Italia. The most important factor: they must deploy Cramer with absolute confidence, and must become reference sites.
Q. How important are Partners in the overall equation?
Very. The likes of Accenture, CGEY and HP have absolute power to negotiate. The good news is that they firmly believe in Cramer technology - the challenge for us is to help them understand in greater detail how a telco really works.
Q. And Cramer's industry accolades?
They are also important, and we are proud and honoured to have received the awards and recognition that has been bestowed upon us. The value for us is that people will certainly listen because of these awards.
Q. You have made a number of key hires since joining Cramer?
Yes, but it's very difficult to get into Cramer! We interview extensively and also conduct occupational personality questionnaires, which I firmly believe to be a valuable element in the executive selection process. At Cramer we put employees first: recruiting the right people creates the energy we need to become the global market leader.
To find out more about Cramer visit www.cramer.com Jerry can be contacted at jeremy.crook@cramer.com.
To read the other articles in this edition, please click on the links below:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Giuseppe Curatolo, is a General Partner at TLcom, a London-based venture-capital firm with €184 million under management, and which has been investing in communications technology companies across Europe and Israel since 1999.
We caught up with Giuseppe to talk about what makes successful entrepreneurs, venture capital and the European communications technology market.
Read Article>>
To read the other articles in this edition, please click on the links below:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liron Langer is President & CEO of Israeli software firm Cellglide, which provides traffic shaping solutions for mobile data networks. Previously he was CTO and Director of NextGen Product Group of VocalTec (NASDAQ: VOCL).
We caught up with Liron to talk about traffic shaping, mobile data and the dynamics of the wireless marketplace.
Read Article>>
|
