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DTWS: Choosing your friends wisely

Senior executives from Cap Gemini , Deutsche Telekom, Google, Red Hat and TELUS discussed how cross-industry partnerships are evolving and what more needs to be done in the third CxO summit of this year’s Digital Transformation World Series.

11 Oct 2021
DTWS: Choosing your friends wisely

DTWS: Choosing your friends wisely

Telcos, suppliers, cloud hyperscalers and systems integrators all recognize the need to partner on new digital services. Building successful partnerships with lots of players, however, is far from easy. During the third CxO summit of this year’s Digital Transformation World Series, senior executives from Deutsche Telekom, TELUS, Red Hat, Google and Cap Gemini discussed how cross-industry partnerships are evolving and what more needs to be done. What follows is an anonymized summary of their exchange. Speakers at the CxO summit Choosing your friends wisely: Partnering to drive growth and unlock value agreed that the main purpose of partnering is to draw on each other’s strengths to solve customers’ problems and help them become more innovative and efficient. “There’s no way [telcos] can do everything alone … B2B2C, that’s how to succeed,” one speaker said. Another pointed to the example of the automotive sector. “By 2030, 75% of the cars are going to have supported driving/autonomous characteristics, that would require communication on the edge … cloud-based applications … low latency capacity.

“And how does that work [and] how do we work together?… If we don’t come up with the answer … it’s going to delay transformation; it’s going to delay jobs; it’s going to delay many, many things.”

Re-evaluating procurement

Effective partnering will necessitate a change in how communication service providers (CSPs), software and hardware companies, hyperscalers and systems integrators work across the board, starting with procurement. The RFP is far from dead today, but within an ideal partnership it would be redundant. One speaker noted that CSPs need to get better at making bets on the partners that are best aligned with the operator’s goals. And indeed, there are signs that attitudes to procurement are shifting. “We’re seeing … pockets of change … in how we approach the whole process of procurement and collaborating early,” noted a participant. “We have seen … procurement departments, becoming more strategic,” according to another. But the changes required go much deeper than procurement. Telcos also need new skill sets and technology. One participant pointed to the need for operators to embrace marketplaces and platforms but noted that this is difficult. Most operators are far from the goal of having a real time partnering capabilities. However, they are beginning to make progress.

Building trust

Successful partnerships will also require a change in mindset and culture. Today one of the stumbling blocks is the establishment of trust, according to speakers. “I think that trust is going to be a critical success factor when it comes to partnering,” said one. There were, however, questions around whether today’s platforms and processes do enough to foster mutual trust.

“How do we come together to allow flexibility … and come to the right share of both costs and revenue? In the end, this is where the trust issue is held up at the moment. We don’t have the processes and we don’t have the platforms to do this successfully and this is why … we’re not grabbing the opportunity.”

Trust needs to be instilled across all employees, according to another participant in the debate. “It’s not a scalable model once you take it down one layer. More people need to trust each other that don’t know each other.” Partnering to address enterprise verticals also requires a good understanding of each other’s strengths when it comes to resolving the specific challenges of different sectors. It’s important for CSPs to be “be very focused in each industry … as to which partners you’re going to strategically join up with, because there’s many to play with,” said a speaker, adding that not all will fit every solution.

“We need to really distinguish what is the strong point of each of the members of the ecosystem, and really use that, and we have not done this yet.”

There is also the question of who owns the customer’s problems. “I think were evolving to where people buying … things from [telcos] don’t have a billing relationship with traditional telco assets." Nonetheless, there were calls to remain open and flexible as new partnerships take shape. “We’re on this journey to try it out. None of us got [it] right the first time.”