DTW (Digital Transformation World)
A bold new digital world
Covid-19 is accelerating what was already a seismic shift to embracing digital ways of communicating and digital services and there’s never been a more important time to enable societies to benefit from the essential services our industry provides.
11 Oct 2020
A bold new digital world
In this joint article from Nikos Angelopoulous, Group Chief Information Officer at MTN and Jason Rutherford, Senior Vice President & General Manager at Oracle, the pair explore three key tenets of focus for communications service providers to help shape, and succeed in tomorrow's digitalized society. Rutherford and Angelopoulos delivered a joint keynote for TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series at 1pm on Oct 14 exploring their insights in more detail. Register now to catch their presentation on demand alongside more insights with further industry leaders from around the globe.
This is no time for half measures in our industry. We need to work together to forge a bold new digital world. Covid-19 is accelerating what was already a seismic shift to embracing digital ways of communicating and digital services and there’s never been a more important time to enable societies to benefit from the essential services our industry provides.
MTN, which serves 261 million subscribers in 21 African and Middle Eastern markets, is innovating with many new digital services in high growth areas. For example, our Mobile Money (MoMo) service is effectively one of the biggest banks in Africa with more than 40 million active users. We are committed to driving greater levels of financial inclusion in Africa, making it easy for customers to make purchases and use charging wallets to send money back to their families wherever they may be, in cities or in villages. In fact we zero-rated tens of millions of peer-to-peer MoMo transactions during the pandemic to enable our customers to keep operating during lockdowns. In the spirit of innovation we continue to expand the range of products available in our ecosystem of mobile financial services and additionally we are developing an API marketplace called Chenosis that provides a market of APIs across industries including communications, financial services and entertainment.
Customers and business today have choices for everything they consume. Competition is everywhere. The winners in the bold new digital world will be those who engage with their customers in a way that makes those customers want to come back. This means using data and AI to understand a customer’s preferences so you can deliver very personalized interactions on the channels the customer wants and respond to their signals in real time.
MTN is named the most admired brand by Brand Africa 100, a pan-African survey and ranking of Africa’s best brands. We believe this is because Africans want to experience a modern, digital, connected life and MTN works hard to deliver the best customer experience. We take out every possible friction point and strive to make it easy and engaging to interact with us. And we digitalize everything we can. We have a super app called yoba that enables people to engage with digital services like music, media, messaging and entertainment and it now has more than 200 million customers using it.
Tweaking around the edges is the equivalent of standing still. Success in the bold new digital world requires the ability to quickly transform your experiences. This means launching a new digital skill in hours, not weeks. It means breaking down silos in your data so you can connect intelligence across the enterprise and relate to customers in a whole new way. It requires embracing frameworks like TM Forum's Open Digital Architecture so you can decouple your mission critical systems of record from the experience layer and take advantage of the agility required to transform.
MTN has embraced transformation using the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture. We believe it is one of the most important aspects of making major business and data transformation successful. Platforms must talk, and information must be exposed efficiently to save time and money and avoid reinventing the wheel each time. The Open Digital Architecture together with the Open APIs provide the essential tools to power business transformation.
This is no time for half measures in our industry. We need to work together to forge a bold new digital world. Covid-19 is accelerating what was already a seismic shift to embracing digital ways of communicating and digital services and there’s never been a more important time to enable societies to benefit from the essential services our industry provides.
What is important in this bold new digital world? It’s all about how we relate to our customers and create experiences that make them want to spend time with us and change how they live and work. The most successful service providers are focused on how to innovate, engage, and transform their digital experiences and services.
Innovate
What will be the next killer use case – the 5G equivalent of mobile apps? It could be related to healthcare in a pandemic. It could be virtual reality enabling people to experience things they can’t do in the real world. It could be partnerships we haven't yet imagined coming together to create amazing new services. Whatever the case, bold service providers know they need the tools to innovate and quickly bring their ideas to market, explore new business models, expand what works and retire what doesn’t.
MTN, which serves 261 million subscribers in 21 African and Middle Eastern markets, is innovating with many new digital services in high growth areas. For example, our Mobile Money (MoMo) service is effectively one of the biggest banks in Africa with more than 40 million active users. We are committed to driving greater levels of financial inclusion in Africa, making it easy for customers to make purchases and use charging wallets to send money back to their families wherever they may be, in cities or in villages. In fact we zero-rated tens of millions of peer-to-peer MoMo transactions during the pandemic to enable our customers to keep operating during lockdowns. In the spirit of innovation we continue to expand the range of products available in our ecosystem of mobile financial services and additionally we are developing an API marketplace called Chenosis that provides a market of APIs across industries including communications, financial services and entertainment.
Engage
Customers and business today have choices for everything they consume. Competition is everywhere. The winners in the bold new digital world will be those who engage with their customers in a way that makes those customers want to come back. This means using data and AI to understand a customer’s preferences so you can deliver very personalized interactions on the channels the customer wants and respond to their signals in real time.
MTN is named the most admired brand by Brand Africa 100, a pan-African survey and ranking of Africa’s best brands. We believe this is because Africans want to experience a modern, digital, connected life and MTN works hard to deliver the best customer experience. We take out every possible friction point and strive to make it easy and engaging to interact with us. And we digitalize everything we can. We have a super app called yoba that enables people to engage with digital services like music, media, messaging and entertainment and it now has more than 200 million customers using it.
Transform
Tweaking around the edges is the equivalent of standing still. Success in the bold new digital world requires the ability to quickly transform your experiences. This means launching a new digital skill in hours, not weeks. It means breaking down silos in your data so you can connect intelligence across the enterprise and relate to customers in a whole new way. It requires embracing frameworks like TM Forum's Open Digital Architecture so you can decouple your mission critical systems of record from the experience layer and take advantage of the agility required to transform.
MTN has embraced transformation using the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture. We believe it is one of the most important aspects of making major business and data transformation successful. Platforms must talk, and information must be exposed efficiently to save time and money and avoid reinventing the wheel each time. The Open Digital Architecture together with the Open APIs provide the essential tools to power business transformation.
Conclusion
Welcome to the bold new digital world. We look forward to exploring it with you.
