Five steps to build a telecom marketplace

This article was contributed by Mavenir, a member company of TM Forum. In a post-pandemic era that has seen a burst of digital transformation demand and a rapid adoption of cloud technologies, the hype around ‘digital-first’ and 5G is tremendous. Businesses have reprioritized their strategies, and the onus is on telecom service providers to enable this transition – a generational shift in telecommunications focused on digital experiences.

More than just an increase in bandwidth, the new telecom revolution signals a shift for communications service providers (CSPs) toward an open technological landscape: A telco marketplace to bring together a diverse set of digital service producers and consumers.

So then, how would a CSP create such a marketplace? Consider these five logical milestones to achieve this goal:

Step 1: Identify customers

Significant investments in 4G means that CSPs must focus on a gradual transition to 5G services with value creation as the primary goal. The initial use cases will likely be enterprise-oriented, or there will be new new use cases which are hosted, managed, and offered as anything as a service (XaaS). Depending on the go-to-market strategy, CSPs could also target enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services for retail customers to have the building blocks ready for future services, with the goal to be a one-stop shop.

Step 2: Identify producers

To drive adoption, CSPs need to popularize monetization possibilities with a marketplace platform. For example, a CSP’s B2B unit could offer bundled SIM and device connections via a marketplace to enterprises with flexible pricing and quote options. Similarly, the broadband division could offer high-speed connectivity and configurable add-on bundles to setup and manage enterprise networks. Eventually, after reaching sustainable growth, the aim would be to host all types of service providers on the marketplace, including software providers to offer security services and hardware manufacturers selling handsets, IoT devices, virtual reality hardware, etc.

Step 3: Platform assessment

To bring producers to the consumers, the marketplace platform must be agile to fulfil several requirements from both sides of the scale: Consumers: Customers are inclined to react to a visually appealing, noise-free experience which clearly presents all service details including reviews, support, pricing, discounts, quotes, and activation windows such as delivery ETAs. Other features include personalized recommendations based on usage history for registered users, discount options and loyalty schemes, and a frictionless buying experience with cross-platform self-service options. Producers: Producers require the tools to describe and design their offering down to the finer details such as tags, social sharing options and variant creation within a content management system. At the same time, producers must be able to handle cross-channel customer queries, respond to reviews, manage inventory in real time and easily define partner-driven discount policies. Also, the platform must allow service providers to onboard seamlessly via digital ‘know your customer’, contract management as well as settlement options. The platform should also feature dashboards and automated reports for monthly sales and settlements with the option to track invoices and raise claims digitally.

Step 4: Reuse the existing IT stack

Filtering down to key modules, examine if the existing product catalog is capable of supporting the ever-growing product innovations, APIs, data models, cardinality rules, and whether content management capabilities are on par to deliver the extensive requirements to create listings. Is the existing CRM equipped with configure-price-quote (CPQ) capabilities? Is the business support system (BSS) equipped with inventory and billing capabilities? More importantly, a good feasibility check would be compliance to partner management and settlement requirements.

Step 5: Make or buy decision

Unfortunately, most CSPs today aren’t prepared to handle these requirements, which begs the question: make or buy? CSPs must evaluate the maturity of existing IT components to feasibly build an in-house marketplace solution, otherwise working with vendors/solution providers will be necessary. Options vary – point vendors, or collaboration with platform providers who can customize the platform for CSPs. However, there isn’t an offering strong enough to meet all marketplace requirements, especially given the new technologies/frameworks involved. Therefore, it makes sense that CSPs buy from a platform provider that can deliver customized solutions.

What to look for in a marketplace solution

• Headless content management system, CPQ, billing, settlement, inventory and workflow engine capabilities to enable rich digital experiences.
• Alignment with future-proof MACH design principles (microservices, API-first, cloud native, and headless) is critical to providing modular services, statelessness for web-scale, storage and agile experience creation.
• Adherence to Open API 2.0, TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and other technologies like SPA and 12 Factor App principles to work towards an open platform, preferably built with open-source tools.
• Selecting an experienced telco vendor over a pure-play web solutions provider with limited or no experience of working with CSPs.
• Vendor’s expertise on building platforms requiring consistent inflow of Dev, QA and DevOps resources, and delivering on time with an agile-based sprint development methodology.
• Marketplace is a dynamic model that will constantly evolve over time. Thus, CSPs must select a platform that is built on an open architecture and is easy to customize in future with in-house DevOps practice.
• A great differentiator would be solution provider’s alignment with CSP’s vision for building and supporting such solutions over the long-term. There must be a belief in openness and knowledge sharing to eliminate vendor lock-in and provide self-reliance for the CSP.