For communications service providers to compete with digital natives, they must focus on delivering what the customer wants rather than what they want to sell to the customer. This is a huge shift and it requires adopting an agile DevOps-like approach, embracing automation and centralizing the product catalog.

That’s the message participants delivered to attendees of a TM Forum Webinar last week, Win the digital transformation: How to adopt agile B/OSS.

“The telecommunications business is a solid business – it’s a multi-trillion-dollar business – but it’s under enormous margin pressure,” said Barry Graham, Senior Director of the Forum’s Agile Business & IT Program. “We see new opportunities and services enabled by NFV – and even more so by 5G – as where the new money, the growth and potentially the new margin is, so having a solution to monetize and operationalize that is going to be key.”

Digitalization mandate

Sigma Systems’ Chief Strategy Officer Catherine Michel agreed, pointing to the “digitalization mandate” network operators are experiencing.

“CSPs have never been able to shed selling and operating in traditional ways…so they haven’t been able to embrace a new digital practice, which includes things like omnichannel selling, a DevOps model when introducing new products, zero-touch automation around fulfillment, and a broad partner ecosystem that is robust and repeatable.”

She added: “Adopting agile B/OSS (business and operations support systems) is about having the agility to execute different business models over the technology innovations you’re making or acquiring. That’s what the core driver behind agile B/OSS is: It’s not just about having technology that’s easily configurable and changeable; it’s about what that level of technology and operating infrastructure enables from the business aspect. That’s the marked difference between the traditional CSP and digital native.”

Network operators traditionally have been focused on infrastructure, both on the network and operations side. As Michel put it, they have focused on “what’s behind the curtain as opposed to what’s prominent to the customer.”

By contrast, digital natives are more product- and customer-centric. “Their systems are all about the best and quickest way to define and deliver their product,” she explained. “They’re laser focused on what it is they’re trying to sell the customer and the experience the customer goes through while buying those products, which clearly enables innovation in terms of pace.”

It also makes it much easier for digital natives to operate in agile social media and mobile environments, which is where customers want to connect with service providers.

So how does a traditional telco make the leap to digital service provider? Does it require ripping out all the old systems and starting from scratch? Michel said it does not.

“Rest assured, we are not talking about replacing the entirety of CSPs’ B/OSS – that isn’t pragmatic or realistic,” she said. “But a shift must occur to redress the balance with the digital natives.”

Becoming catalog-driven

There are areas of prioritization that will help operators act more like a digital native and it starts with becoming catalog-driven, Michel said.

“This is the core to our mantra, the core to our portfolio, the core to how we engage with our customers,” Michel said. “It’s about the ability to clearly standardize and rationalize from an operating point of view what you sell and then exposing that to the rest of your B/OSS. That enables you to incorporate a broader a digital ecosystem. That’s how you can engage other DSPs and make them partners, engage with them in a repeatable fashion and incorporate what they have to offer on top of what you do to create a more compelling proposition for the end customer.”

Here's a clip below and you check out the full webinar on demand here.

https://youtu.be/nFUIYv3-7_w