Vodafone teams with Smart on managed services

Vodafone has struck up a partnership with Smart Communications in the Philippines to deliver managed services to MNCs operating in the country.
 
The team-up comes in the wake of the signing of an agreement last September between Vodafone and Conexus Mobile Alliance, which is meant to expand Vodafone’s network of partners in Asia.
 
“The value to Vodafone of collaborating with (Conexus) is significant given the growing importance of Asia to our enterprise customers,” said Steven Hoyle, president of Vodafone's enterprise operations in APAC.
 
Hoyle said the partnership with Smart will allow the Philippines operator to provide global enterprises operating in the Philippines with a range of services through a single contract.
 
“With MNC employees using a variety of handsets, devices and tablets more and more for greater mobility, these enterprises need to streamline their legal needs,” Hoyle said.
 
“(Enterprise) customers want to have fewer lawyers working on fewer contracts,” he explained. “We offer to wrap things up in one contract, one service level agreement.”
 
Managed services on offer include Spend Manager, which provides consolidated views of global spend information from multiple countries and operations, and procurement tracking service Central Ordering.
 
Vodafone Global Enterprise serves 140 customers with headquarters in Asia Pacific, aside from 435 others that operate within the region. Vodafone has entered into a strategic partnership with StarHub in Singapore, which is expected to enable the latter to expand its mobile data and roaming services to major European countries, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Earlier this month, Vodafone and Smart announced that they will enter a series of collaborations, which may include the sharing of rollout strategies for LTE (Long Term Evolution) and green networks. Alex Caeg, head of Smart’s international and carrier business division, said the company is looking forward to “more customer-friendly benefits over a larger roaming footprint.”