Engineering Cost Optimization

Engineering cost optimization (ECO) is a service line, where HCL telecom has rich skills and vast experience. HCL has the largest outsourced engineering center in the telecom space, developed outside the USA. This engineering partnership, with a global leader in the manufacture of networking equipment, is more than 11 years old and has been going from strength to strength. This and other such partnerships and projects have given the ECO practice of HCL telecom more than 25 years of telecom research and development experience and more than 15,000 person years of proven delivery expertise.

The competencies of the ECO practice include:

• Specialization in telecom-specific technologies and solutions
• Certifications in telecom-specific domains
• Expertise in telecom-specific quality management systems
• Development of a portfolio of reusable IP components
• Experience in the execution of seven new product projects, 20 sustaining projects, and three end-of-life projects

The benefits to HCL telecom ECO customers would be:

• Having continued product ownership with operational dependencies reduced by 75%
• Up to 30% reduction in product engineering cost
• The advantages of offshore delivery centers without the associated overheads
• Having an extended engineering team
• Access to specialized resources
• Scalable and flexible staffing options
• Reduced time-to-market

The unique differentiators of the HCL telecom ECO practice are:

• Flexible business models
  In an industry driven by effort-based pricing, HCL has taken giant leaps with its commercial models and deal structuring approach. HCL has come up with output- based models, and risk/reward share-based approach where HCL collaborates with customers and commits to outcomes through a gain share or joint venture model. At HCL, we believe that if we share the vision, we must share the risk.

• ECO system participation
  HCL telecom has membership in a number of telecom-specific forums and participates regularly in international events and conferences.

• Innovation and patents
  At HCL, we believe in delivering that extra value (beyond base delivery) to the customer through service innovation. This innovation is being institutionalized as a process in HCL through the value add framework. This framework has been rolled out to select telecom customers. The success of this framework, quantified as cost savings, has been signed off by the customers themselves.

• Maturity of a large organization with the responsiveness of a startup

With end-customers becoming more demanding in terms of new features and quality of products and with technologies becoming obsolete at the drop of a hat, CxOs of our OEM customers are constantly faced with the challenge of allocating engineering resources for new product development, for products in the sustaining phase, and for products in the EOL phase. The value-added services offered by the Engineering Cost Optimization (ECO) practice touch upon all these phases and include:

• Concept-to-manufacturing services
• Sustaining services
• End-of-life ownership

In the concept to manufacturing segment HCL telecom offers the following:

• Product definition, engineering, and manufacturing
• Verification and validation, and compliance engineering
• Knowledge management and technical documentation

In the sustaining services segment HCL telecom offerings include:

• Ticket life-cycle management, customer support
• Globalization services
• Product and release engineering
• Porting and migration
• Optimization
• Product repositioning
• Technical marketing support
• Critical customer care
• Professional services

In the EOL ownership segment HCL telecom takes care of:

• Ticket life-cycle management
• Maintenance release
• Migration