Vodafone hosted ucc award

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH
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Contents
Background and Company Performance ........................................................................3
Industry Challenges..............................................................................................3
Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact of Vodafone .....................5
Conclusion.........................................................................................................13
Significance of Company of the Year...........................................................................14
Understanding Company of the Year...........................................................................14
Key Benchmarking Criteria ..................................................................................15
Best Practice Award Analysis for Vodafone...................................................................15
Decision Support Scorecard .................................................................................15
Visionary Innovation & Performance .....................................................................16
Customer Impact ...............................................................................................16
Decision Support Matrix ......................................................................................17
The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards.....................18
Research Methodology ........................................................................................18
Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best
Practices .................................................................................................................19
About Frost & Sullivan ..............................................................................................20

Background and Company Performance
Industry Challenges
European businesses are gradually moving their communications and customer care
solutions to the cloud as they look to reduce upfront technology investment costs and gain
greater flexibility. Hosted/cloud services also help reduce service fees for initial
configuration and installation and eliminate the expense and hassle of integrating multiple,
disparate premises-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and contact
center solutions. They replace variable premises-based infrastructure and software
maintenance and management costs with predictable monthly service fees and enable
flexible and economical capacity adjustments. Hosted/cloud solutions also provide cost-
effective business continuity/ disaster recovery (BC/DR) through redundant connections
and mobile device integration.
Even more important, hosted/cloud solutions help improve business agility and provide a
competitive edge. They free up internal resources for more strategic tasks and provide
access to the superior technology expertise of hosted providers. They reduce technology
obsolescence risks and enable the delivery of telephony, UCC and contact center features
based on user needs independent of their physical location or underlying infrastructure.
Moreover hosting makes critical applications affordable and justifiable for a wider market,
including small/midsized businesses (SMBs) and public-sector agencies, which play a
much larger role in the European economy than they do in the U.S. These private and
public organizations can take advantage of the pay-as-you-go feature of hosting, allowing
them to add capabilities as budgets permit, and if need be, to scale them back.
With strained economic conditions in Europe, organizations of all sizes are looking at new
ways to implement technology to lower operating costs while maintaining or improving the
operation levels of their contact centers and general workforce. At the same time they are
mindful of having to comply with strict regulations such as the European Union’s Data
Protection Directive as adopted by the Member States.
As organizations increasingly acknowledge the potential benefits of cloud technologies
they are rapidly adopting hosted communications and contact center solutions. With
projected user and revenue growth rates between 25 and 30 percent for the next five
years, the European hosted Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and UCC services market
presents significant growth opportunities to both European service providers and market
participants from other regions.
The hosted contact center market is also gaining traction—it is expected to grow at a 17
percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. The hosted solution share
of EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) contact center seats is forecasted to rise from 8.2
percent in 2013 to 20.2 percent by 2019. The UK, Germany, France, and the Nordic

countries are the four largest hosted contact center markets share-wise in EMEA. Of these
the UK market is by far the largest, with a 26 percent share, while the second largest,
Germany, has a 15 percent share.
These rapidly evolving markets also present challenges to market participants.
Competition is intensifying and new providers are constantly entering the market. Most
providers are looking to offer a convenient one-stop shop for their customers by providing
a broad array of hosted features and capabilities at compelling bundle prices. Yet many
providers are still lacking key capabilities demanded by businesses and public sector
organizations today, including mobile device integration, instant messaging (IM) and
presence, advanced conferencing and collaboration tools, and contact center. Service
provider flexibility and ability to innovate and rapidly respond to evolving customer needs
has been hampered by the use of third-party platforms and dependence upon technology
vendors’ product evolution vision and roadmaps.
Many providers are also unable to address diverse customer needs and typically focus on
a single customer segment. In fact, the majority of European hosted telephony/UCC
providers have targeted primarily the small-business market, where demand for
outsourced communications is the highest. Lack of contact center capabilities has been
one of the key impediments to provider penetration among medium-size and large
organizations.
At the same time hosted contact center providers must demonstrate that their solutions
deliver a high degree of reliability, security, and regulatory compliance in order to attract
and retain clients who are accustomed to those vital attributes in premises-based
installations. Service disruption can significantly hinder further cloud/hosted contact
center adoption, if not addressed efficiently.
The EMEA hosted contact center market is new and highly de-centralized. It is, therefore,
difficult for customers to differentiate among the different services to determine which
best suits their requirements. The market has witnessed the entry of niche participants,
many of which have been unable to sustain their presence or positively impact the
market. The subsequent market exit by unsuccessful providers has soured those
enterprises that had signed up on the viability of cloud contact center solutions. As a
result they understandably often hold back from migrating to the cloud until dominant
market participants arise with go-to cloud-hosted solutions.
Finally, many providers have limited presence outside their home country. This prevents
them from effectively supporting multi-national, distributed enterprises or expanding their
operations in new markets for greater scale and further growth.
Hosted IP telephony/UCC and contact center providers that overcome these challenges are
best positioned to accelerate growth and expand market share. Providers with a more
diversified portfolio comprised of a broad applications set including telephony, messaging,

mobility, and contact center will be more successful in addressing diverse customer needs.
For example, contact center providers which offer value-add services such as self-service
and customization, and which provide application scalability and BC/DR differentiate from
providers just hosting the applications and position themselves as full-fledged cloud
solution providers. Effectively designed service bundles targeting different customer
segments can help such providers capitalize on existing opportunities in the highly
competitive and still growing small-business market, as well as enjoy an early-mover
advantage in the relatively untapped mid-size and large-enterprise market. Finally,
providers with a broad geographic footprint can provide a greater value proposition to
local small and medium-size businesses as well as large multi-national corporations
(MNCs). A provider possessing all these competitive attributes—a diversified product
portfolio, competitive pricing, international presence and a strong brand—can most
effectively serve customers and sustain a leadership position.
Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact of
Vodafone
Through a visionary strategy and execution excellence Vodafone has gained a leadership
position in the European hosted/cloud IP telephony/UCC and hosted contact center
markets. Multiple factors are contributing to its success, including: the identification of key
mega trends; effective implementation of growth strategies; strong financial performance;
superior price/performance value; excellent customer purchasing experience; and
considerable brand equity.
Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends
Visionary market leaders most effectively identify unmet customer needs and incorporate
key market trends in their growth strategies. More specifically, their long-term success is
determined by the ability to identify and properly address mega trends. Mega trends are
global, sustained, and macro-economic forces of development that are transformational to
business, economy, society, cultures, and personal lives, thereby defining our future world
and its increasing pace of change. Understanding mega trends can help market
participants develop sustainable growth strategies and prepare to more effectively address
new market challenges and opportunities.
With the launch of its One Net services in 2008, Vodafone bet on two mega trends that
have been shaping customer demand since then—cloud and mobility. Vodafone was a
pioneer of cloud/hosted business voice services in Europe and continues to demonstrate
thought leadership through continued services portfolio diversification, product
feature/functionality enhancements and prompt identification of new market opportunities.
Many providers now acknowledge the opportunities arising from growing demand for
cloud/hosted communications, collaboration and customer care solutions. However,
Vodafone enjoys a considerable advantage as one of the earliest entrants in the cloud

telephony market. The company is able to leverage its long track record and experience in
the industry to adjust its hosted services portfolio and product feature/functionality to
more effectively accommodate evolving customer needs. Vodafone’s hosted/cloud UCC
and contact center solutions have evolved and matured to satisfy the most stringent
customer and prospect requirements for service reliability and security.
Vodafone ranks among the few providers that can offer tight integration of wireline and
mobile communications. As business users become increasingly mobile, companies are
looking to more effectively enable worker productivity on the go. Vodafone’s One Net
services provide some of the most compelling mobile capabilities available in the European
hosted communications market today. Through native, network-based integration One Net
Express and One Net Business Services provide mobile users with convenient access to
business communications applications without the need for a client download or the cost
and complexity of on-site mobile-wireline integration.
Vodafone also supports the growing number of remote workers, including contact center
agents. Organizations are turning to the home/remote working model to lower facilities
costs, provide more flexibility and scalability, expand talent pools, attract and retain top
talent with work/life balance benefits, reduce tardiness caused by transport delays, and to
support green initiatives and BC/DR strategies. This has given rise to the virtual
organization—another key mega trend shaping the way we work today. Vodafone’s hosted
IP telephony, UCC and hosted contact center services provide considerable benefits to
such distributed organizations. Indeed it is fair to say that Vodafone has moved beyond
hosting in the strictest sense of the word to becoming a true cloud services provider in the
contact center, IP telephony, and UCC markets.
Recently, Vodafone once again demonstrated its ability to successfully identify unmet
customer needs. Even as competition in the hosted IP telephony and UCC services market
intensifies and compels providers to continually expand their product and feature set, few
have launched advanced contact center services that integrate with their hosted UCC
solutions. Businesses and public-sector-organizations are looking to integrate their contact
center solutions with the rest of the enterprise communications capabilities in order to be
able to more quickly and effectively resolve customer issues, improve customer
satisfaction and retention rates, and accelerate growth. As customer organizations
increasingly outsource their communications solutions, they will expect their providers to
integrate hosted UCC solutions with hosted contact center capabilities. Vodafone has
responded to that need with the integration of a contact center services portfolio through
the Cable & Wireless provider acquisition and the launch of a new hosted contact center
offering based on Cisco infrastructure.
Implementation Best Practices
Vodafone’s pioneering market entry has partly driven the decision to use an internally
developed hosted communications platform. Many providers leverage hosted IP telephony

platforms developed by third-party vendors, which increases their costs and limits their
ability to innovate and promptly respond to evolving customer needs. By using its own
technology, Vodafone has the flexibility to develop new products or features as soon as it
perceives rising demand among its existing or prospective customers.
Vodafone accurately assessed the opportunities for hosted/cloud services adoption among
different customer segments and first targeted its One Net services at underserved small
and medium-size businesses (SMBs). Due to their more limited financial resources and IT
staff, SMBs are the early adopters of outsourced communications solutions. To date, SMBs
account for more than three quarters of the total hosted IP telephony installed base
globally, proving the substantial demand for such solutions in this customer segment.
Furthermore, Vodafone demonstrated great vision and thought leadership by making the
solution simple to deploy, use and manage, and by focusing on mobility from the very
beginning. Vodafone has leveraged its strength in the areas of global voice, managed
mobility and IP networks and its considerable expertise in carrier and hosting services to
differentiate its converged One Net service with strong mobile capabilities and integrated
billing and management.
Vodafone has excellent cloud hosting capability, flexibility, scalability, and BC/DR
functionality. The Vodafone Cloud and Hosting Services unit has 14 data centers located in
Ireland, South Africa, and the U.K., as well as access to other data centers through
partners. The geographic spread or “geo-redundancy” of its data centers assures service
continuity as it is highly unlikely that one or two single events will knock all of its centers
off-line.
As the hosted IP telephony and cloud UCC market matures, Vodafone is preparing to
compete in the next phase of market evolution. Larger businesses with multiple
geographically dispersed sites are now beginning to adopt hosted communication solutions
for the flexibility and cost efficiencies in supporting mobile and remote workers. However,
these businesses have different requirements from those of SMBs. Vodafone has
partnered with Cisco and Microsoft to leverage their respective advanced UCC technologies
to tap into this new segment of larger customer organizations. With the comprehensive
capabilities of Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) and Microsoft Exchange,
SharePoint and Lync, Vodafone can address the needs of large enterprise customers that
are looking for more advanced features and a greater degree of customization and
integration with other communications and business applications. One of the key
additional capabilities required by larger businesses is contact center, which Vodafone has
now integrated with its UCC offerings in order to offer a one-stop shop to customers
demanding more comprehensive solutions.

Financial Performance
With about 3.5 million One Net service users at the end of 2013, Vodafone is the
undisputed leader in the European hosted IP telephony and UCC services market and it
continues to grow rapidly. From mid-2013 to mid-2014, Vodafone added approximately
300,000 new users, significantly more than any other European or global provider.
Vodafone’s success with One Net and its adjacent services is also evident in its continued
global expansion. In 2013 and 2014, the company launched One Net for SMBs services in
new markets to achieve presence in 11 markets. One Net Enterprise is now available in 17
markets, with more market launches pending. One Net Enterprise-Cisco launched last year
is currently available in the UK. Expanding One Net availability is accompanied by the
extension of Office 365 in 23 markets. One Net Collaboration, which integrates One Net
services with Office 365, is launched in three European markets.
The acquisition of Cable & Wireless contact center assets provided Vodafone with a solid
start in the hosted contact center space. Today, Vodafone boasts over 150 cloud/hosted
contact center customers, more than 100,000 configured hosted agents, and contact
center systems running 7.44 billion call minutes of customer interaction traffic. Vodafone
has existing hosted contact center deployments in the UK, India, South Africa, and New
Zealand. The new, Cisco technology-based contact center service is currently available in
the UK with planned geographic expansion for the near future.
Overall, Vodafone is tremendously successful with its hosted telephony, UCC and contact
center solutions. With a strong focus on international expansion, service enhancements,
new product launches, technology integration, partner enablement and addressing specific
customer needs, it is well positioned to further improve its market positioning going
forward. An example of Vodafone’s promising pipeline is a recent contract with Aviva, the
global insurance company. Vodafone will be supporting 12,000 Aviva contact center
agents at multiple Irish and UK sites with Vodafone Contact Centre, Vodafone One Net
Enterprise, and Vodafone IP-VPN. As part of a seven-year agreement announced in July
2014 Aviva agents will have new collaboration tools for document sharing, instant
messaging and conferencing services sometime in early 2015.
Price/Performance Value Leadership
Vodafone offers three different flavors of One Net for SMBs and larger enterprises. One
Net Express, One Net Business and One Net Enterprise variously match features and
functionality to the intended customer audience. All three services offer compelling
capabilities and excellent performance and are priced based on the value delivered in each
package.
One Net Express delivers essential private branch exchange (PBX) functionality to users’
mobile devices. This solution offers the most compelling value to mobile professionals,

entrepreneurs and small office/home office (SOHO) workers. One Net Business allows
businesses to use both IP desktop phones and mobile devices with the hosted PBX
solution. This solution is most suitable for SMBs with both deskbound and mobile workers.
Both solutions were designed from the ground up with SMBs in mind. As cloud solutions,
One Net Express and Business provide a flexible and economical way for SMBs with small
IT budgets and limited IT staff to deploy communications technologies. They are simple
and easy to deploy and use, yet provide the key functionality and performance reliability
required by this customer segment. One Net services offer enterprise telephony features
such as hunt groups, music on hold, auto attendant and extension dialing without the high
CAPEX and management complexity associated with deploying a premises-based PBX
system.
Both services are competitively priced, starting as low as 25 Euros per user per month.
Most businesses sign two-year contracts, which typically entitle them to price discounts
and a waiver on installation and set-up charges.
A core Vodafone solution differentiators among European hosted telephony and UCC
offerings and a major value-add for customers is the One Net mobility element. Few
competing providers have launched compelling mobility solutions, which gives Vodafone a
considerable competitive advantage in the hosted communications marketplace and
enables it to provide superior value to its customers.
Many small businesses are using mobile phones as their primary communications
endpoints, which makes Vodafone One Net a perfect fit for their needs. One Net for SMBs
turns mobile devices into virtual landlines and extensions of the company’s
communications system. Users receive landline numbers on their mobile devices with as
many area codes as required as well as the ability to redirect calls from any landline
phone to a mobile phone free of charge.
Furthermore, calls from One Net users to fixed lines and mobile phones are routed
through the Vodafone mobile virtual private network (VPN), which makes it less expensive
to call users in other office locations and enables extension dialing from mobile devices for
greater user convenience.
Vodafone also offers a compelling solution to larger enterprises. One Net Enterprise
(based on Vodafone’s home-grown platform) adds conferencing and collaboration
capabilities to the PBX feature set to enable more effective collaboration among
distributed teams and remote workers. In addition to telephony, One Net Enterprise also
offers voice and/or unified messaging, web conferencing and file sharing, video calling and
other features.
In addition, Vodafone now offers One Net Enterprise based on Cisco’s HCS. Targeted at
large organizations with more diverse user needs, the solution extends a comprehensive

suite of applications including telephony, voice/unified messaging, presence and instant
messaging (IM), conferencing and collaboration, mobility and contact center. Similar to
One Net for SMBs, One Net Enterprise is offered on a utility-based pricing model, however
with its feature set and architecture it is most economical for distributed multi-site
businesses.
Vodafone One Net Enterprise is available in three different packages, offering the best
price/performance value to customers with different needs:
 Basic: includes telephony with a full PBX feature set, support for one standard IP
phone, and optional voicemail.
 Standard: includes telephony with a full PBX feature set, support for one client or
device which can be a mobile phone with basic FMC features, video-calling, optional
voicemail/unified messaging, and instant messaging via a Jabber client.
 Enhanced: includes telephony with a full PBX feature set, support for up to ten
clients/devices which may include a mobile phone with a rich set of mobility/FMC
features, video-calling, voicemail (with optional unified messaging), and instant
messaging via a Jabber client.
Vodafone also targets the large enterprise customer segment with its hosted UCC product
line based on Microsoft technology, which includes private dedicated Lync, SharePoint and
Exchange services.
Vodafone recently enhanced the value of its hosted/cloud IP communications offerings
with the acquisition of Cable & Wireless’ contact center solutions and the launch of new
Cisco-based contact center services. The new offering enables multi-channel customer
support through voice, web, and email, as well as through social and mobile apps. It also
provides optional media recording, workforce optimization and analytics capabilities.
Vodafone also has powerful call handling capabilities with Vodafone Voice Interaction
services which offers IVR self-service and call direction to contact center agents in either
dual-tone multi-frequency or speech recognition modes. The speech system has a 90
percent (or better) recognition rate. Organizations can select from pre-existing templates
or have Vodafone customize their IVR applications.
Vodafone hosted/cloud contact center offerings help businesses realize greater benefits
from their hosted communications services deployments while reducing implementation
and integration costs associated with disparate, multi-vendor UCC and contact center
technologies deployed on the premises.

With a range of cloud IP telephony, UCC and contact center solutions that offer compelling
functionality at competitive pricing, Vodafone provides greater price/performance value to
its customers than most other European providers.
Customer Purchase Experience
Vodafone’s extensive footprint allows it to address a broad customer audience, including
local small businesses as well as large MNCs with multiple distributed locations. With local
presence in most countries combined with centralized global products and services
capabilities Vodafone is better positioned than most of its competitors to provide a
superior purchasing experience to customers. The majority of competitors in this market
are either local incumbents or small next-generation providers that cannot compete on the
same level as Vodafone. Furthermore, its extensive geographic reach allows Vodafone to
more economically scale its operations which translates into economies for its business
customers.
Vodafone’s broad geographic reach enables the provider to effectively serve the needs of
MNCs looking to consolidate their communications infrastructure and technology
management across multiple locations. This capability is an advantage in the rapidly
growing but still very fragmented European hosted IP telephony, UCC and contact center
services market. With most providers focused on the small business space, Vodafone is
one of few providers able to deliver greater value to large distributed organizations.
Vodafone offers a variety of purchasing options to address different customer needs and
preferences for technology acquisition and deployment. SMBs can quickly and easily
purchase One Net on Vodafone’s web site and deploy the solution in just a few days.
Alternatively, businesses can work with Vodafone project managers who can provide a
comprehensive evaluation of customers’ communications needs and assets and assist
them with the service implementation. Vodafone account managers assist clients with the
ongoing management of their communications solutions, including conducting regular
service performance reviews. Vodafone staff also utilize proactive network monitoring
tools to remotely diagnose and resolve technical issues.
Vodafone further enhances the user experience by providing various additional capabilities
that can boost the value of its hosted telephony and UCC services. One Net can be
conveniently bundled with other Vodafone offerings such as its Red Plan or Sharer Plan,
which add buckets of minutes and text/SMS messages to the feature packages. Users can
share minutes and text allowances with their colleagues. Also, Vodafone-to-Vodafone
mobile calls as well as all internal calls are free (i.e., included in the package). Since
Vodafone is both a fixed and mobile network operator, it provides a true one-stop shop for
business customers’ mobile and fixed communications requirements. Customers receive a
unified bill for their converged landline and mobile communications, making purchasing
and managing the solution both more convenient and economical.

One Net for SMBs is available in 11 different countries wherein each is tailored to local
customer needs and channels. This allows Vodafone to scale its operations and leverage
more extensive and diverse customer feedback in ongoing product development, while at
the same time providing unique value to local customers. Adding minutes, devices or
desktop or mobile user licenses is simple and involves only incremental charges.
Vodafone One Net solutions support market leading Cisco desktop IP phones and Polycom
conferencing phones, as well as most mobile devices available on the market today. This
allows customers the flexibility to use mobile devices of their choice, including user-
purchased mobiles if the company has a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. If any of
the devices provided by Vodafone malfunctions, the provider replaces them free of charge
within 24 hours.
Vodafone’s new One Net Enterprise solution is tailored to the needs of larger businesses
that require a more consultative needs assessment and a higher degree of customization.
Vodafone has more than 1,000 sales staff dedicated to selling solutions for MNCs. The
provider has abundant in-house resources such as solution architects, mobility experts,
technical assistants, communication consultants and others who help with the deployment
and ongoing management of communications solutions for MNCs. Beyond MNCs, Vodafone
also has a considerable reach amongst large national and other business customers.
Overall, it has more than 5,000 business-to-business (B2B) sales staff around the world.
One Net Enterprise is available in 17 countries with more market launches pending. The
availability in multiple European countries enables Vodafone to provide uniform
capabilities and convenient service deployment and management to distributed
organizations with presence in more than one country.
Vodafone’s hosted contact center offerings are also supported through a broad set of
services capabilities providing customers with a superior purchasing experience. Vodafone
designs its hosted contact center solutions based on customers’ business objectives,
employing a consultative approach and migration planning strategies. It leverages
specialist teams comprising of pre-sales and solution consultants that help with the sales
process as well as the service implementation. Vodafone supports its hosted/cloud contact
center deployments with training services, which ensure implementation success and
greater customer satisfaction. Vodafone’s hosted contact center solutions are delivered
under a flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing structure with a combination of per-user, per-
customer and per-port fees. One-off charges apply to handsets and headsets, connectors,
customized integration and various optional services.
Overall, Vodafone provides a convenient and effective purchasing experience for a broad
spectrum of customer organizations with diverse technology needs.

Brand Equity
Vodafone ranks among the largest communications service providers in world. The
provider owns and operates networks in 21 countries and uses partner networks in over
40 additional countries. The Vodafone Global Enterprise division provides
telecommunications and IT services to corporate clients in over 65 countries.
Vodafone’s brand is well known among both consumers and business customers. It brand
equity inspires trust and boosts the adoption of new solutions launched by the company.
As the hosted IP telephony/UCC and contact center markets mature, market share and
brand will become increasingly important and are likely to provide Vodafone with a
competitive advantage.
Conclusion
Vodafone holds a strong leadership position in the European hosted IP telephony and UCC
services market. With a broad solutions portfolio and compelling functionality delivered at
competitive price points, Vodafone has achieved a remarkable market share of 56.7
percent of the total installed user base, in spite of regional macro-economic challenges
and competitive landscape fragmentation. Vodafone is also in the process of strengthening
its hosted contact center offerings to become value-added cloud services. This is opening
up new growth opportunities for the provider, both as standalone services and as adjuncts
to its hosted telephony and UCC solutions. Vodafone offers superior value to its customers
looking for a one-stop-shop experience for hosted communications and customer care
solutions.
With its strong overall performance, Vodafone has earned Frost & Sullivan’s 2014
Company of the Year Award.

Significance of Company of the Year
To win the Company of the Year award (i.e., to be recognized as a leader not only in your
industry, but among your non-industry peers as well) requires a company to demonstrate
excellence in growth, innovation, and leadership. This kind of excellence typically
translates into superior performance in three key areas: demand generation, brand
development, and competitive positioning. These areas serve as the foundation of a
company’s future success and prepare it to deliver on the two criteria that define the
Company of the Year Award (Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact).
This concept is explored further below.
Understanding Company of the Year
As discussed above, driving demand, brand strength, and competitive differentiation all
play a critical role in delivering unique value to customers. This three-fold focus, however,
must ideally be complemented by an equally rigorous focus on visionary innovation to
enhance customer value and impact.

Key Benchmarking Criteria
For the Company of the Year Award, we evaluated two key factors—Visionary Innovation &
Performance and Customer Impact—according to the criteria identified below.
Visionary Innovation & Performance
Criterion 1: Addressing Unmet Needs
Criterion 2: Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends
Criterion 3: Implementation Best Practices
Criterion 4: Blue Ocean Strategy
Criterion 5: Financial Performance
Customer Impact
Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value
Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience
Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience
Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience
Criterion 5: Brand Equity
Best Practice Award Analysis for Vodafone
Decision Support Scorecard
To support its evaluation of best practices across multiple business performance
categories, Frost & Sullivan employs a customized Decision Support Scorecard. This tool
allows our research and consulting teams to objectively analyze performance, according to
the key benchmarking criteria listed in the previous section, and to assign ratings on that
basis. The tool follows a 10-point scale that allows for nuances in performance evaluation;
ratings guidelines are illustrated below.
RATINGS GUIDELINES
The Decision Support Scorecard is organized by Visionary Innovation & Performance and
Customer Impact (i.e., the overarching categories for all 10 benchmarking criteria; the
definitions for each criteria are provided beneath the scorecard). The research team
confirms the veracity of this weighted scorecard through sensitivity analysis, which
confirms that small changes to the ratings for a specific criterion do not lead to a
significant change in the overall relative rankings of the companies.

The results of this analysis are shown below. To remain unbiased and to protect the
interests of all organizations reviewed, we have chosen to refer to the other key players
as Competitor 2 and Competitor 3.
DECISION SUPPORT SCORECARD FOR COMPANY OF THE YEAR AWARD (ILLUSTRATIVE)
Measurement of 1–10 (1 = poor; 10 = excellent)
Company of the Year
Visionary
Innovation &
Performance
Customer
Impact Average Rating
Vodafone 9.8 9.6 9.7
Competitor 2 8.4 8.8 8.6
Competitor 3 7.8 8.8 8.3
Criterion 1: Addressing Unmet Needs
Requirement: Implementing a robust process to continuously unearth customers’ unmet
or under-served needs, and creating the products or solutions to address them effectively
Criterion 2: Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends
Requirement: Incorporating long-range, macro-level scenarios into the innovation
strategy, thereby enabling “first to market” growth opportunities solutions
Criterion 4: Implementation Best Practices
Requirement: Best-in-class strategy implementation characterized by processes, tools, or
activities that generate a consistent and repeatable level of success.
Criterion 3: Blue Ocean Strategy
Requirement: Strategic focus in creating a leadership position in a potentially
“uncontested” market space, manifested by stiff barriers to entry for competitors
Criterion 5: Financial Performance
Requirement: Strong overall business performance in terms of revenues, revenue growth,
operating margin and other key financial metrics
Customer Impact
Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value
Requirement: Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar
offerings in the market
Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience
Requirement: Customers feel like they are buying the most optimal solution that
addresses both their unique needs and their unique constraints

Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience
Requirement: Customers are proud to own the company’s product or service, and have a
positive experience throughout the life of the product or service
Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience
Requirement: Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality
Criterion 5: Brand Equity
Requirement: Customers have a positive view of the brand and exhibit high brand loyalty
Decision Support Matrix
Once all companies have been evaluated according to the Decision Support Scorecard,
analysts can then position the candidates on the matrix shown below, enabling them to
visualize which companies are truly breakthrough and which ones are not yet operating at
best-in-class levels.
DECISION SUPPORT MATRIX FOR COMPANY OF THE YEAR AWARD (ILLUSTRATIVE)
High
Low
Low High
CustomerImpact
Vodafone
Competitor 2
Competitor 3

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best
Practices Awards
Research Methodology
Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research
methodology represents the analytical
rigor of our research process. It offers a
360-degree-view of industry challenges,
trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of
Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies.
Too often, companies make important
growth decisions based on a narrow
understanding of their environment,
leading to errors of both omission and
commission. Successful growth strategies
are founded on a thorough understanding
of market, technical, economic, financial,
customer, best practices, and demographic
analyses. The integration of these research
disciplines into the 360-degree research
methodology provides an evaluation
platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-
in-class levels.
360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN
THE CHAOS

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching,
Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices
Our awards team follows a 10-step process (illustrated below) to evaluate award
candidates and assess their fit with our best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity
of our awards process are based on close adherence to this process.
STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT
1
Monitor,
target, and
screen
Identify award recipient
candidates from around the
globe
 Conduct in-depth industry
research
 Identify emerging sectors
 Scan multiple geographies
Pipeline of candidates who
potentially meet all best-
practice criteria
2
Perform
360-degree
research
Perform comprehensive,
360-degree research on all
candidates in the pipeline
 Interview thought leaders
and industry practitioners
 Assess candidates’ fit with
best-practice criteria
 Rank all candidates
Matrix positioning all
candidates’ performance
relative to one another
3
Invite
thought
leadership in
best
practices
Perform in-depth
examination of all candidates
 Confirm best-practice criteria
 Examine eligibility of all
candidates
 Identify any information gaps
Detailed profiles of all
ranked candidates
4
Initiate
research
director
review
Conduct an unbiased
evaluation of all candidate
profiles
 Brainstorm ranking options
 Invite multiple perspectives
on candidates’ performance
 Update candidate profiles
Final prioritization of all
eligible candidates and
companion best-practice
positioning paper
5
Assemble
panel of
industry
experts
Present findings to an expert
panel of industry thought
leaders
 Share findings
 Strengthen cases for
candidate eligibility
 Prioritize candidates
Refined list of prioritized
award candidates
6
Conduct
global
industry
review
Build consensus on award
candidates’ eligibility
 Hold global team meeting to
review all candidates
 Pressure-test fit with criteria
 Confirm inclusion of all
eligible candidates
Final list of eligible award
candidates, representing
success stories worldwide
7
Perform
quality check
Develop official award
consideration materials
 Perform final performance
benchmarking activities
 Write nominations
 Perform quality review
High-quality, accurate, and
creative presentation of
nominees’ successes
8
Reconnect
with panel of
industry
experts
Finalize the selection of the
best-practice award recipient
 Review analysis with panel
 Build consensus
 Select winner
Decision on which company
performs best against all
best-practice criteria
9
Communicate
recognition
Inform award recipient of
award recognition
 Present award to the CEO
 Inspire the organization for
continued success
 Celebrate the recipient’s
performance
Announcement of award
and plan for how recipient
can use the award to
enhance the brand
10
Take
strategic
action
Share award news with
stakeholders and customers
 Coordinate media outreach
 Design a marketing plan
 Assess award’s role in future
strategic planning
Widespread awareness of
recipient’s award status
among investors, media
personnel, and employees

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth
and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's
Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined
research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation
of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages almost 50 years of experience in
partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment
community from 31 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit
http://www.frost.com.

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