Why platforms are shaping BSS procurement strategies

Telcos have traditionally found it difficult to become the primary service provider in B2B2X value chains or to fully leverage the business-critical value of their connectivity offerings in these collaborative business models. But CSPs’ operational capabilities can still play a significant role.

Consequently, operators are reviewing their BSS transformation strategies to include ecosystem enablement. A survey for the recent TM Forum report Future BSS: Building new customer-focused strategies shows that 42% of respondents think their OSS/BSS procurement strategy will be entirely influenced by systems’ ability to enable a platform business model and partner ecosystems in future. A further 46% said it is a consideration (see graphic below).

What industry leaders say

The value of success in new partner ecosystem models should not be underestimated. TM Forum’s TEN100 (The Executive Network 100) is a new year-round program designed to unite influential leaders from across the telco and tech sectors in order to drive change. Bringing together executives and experts, TEN100 creates a platform for private strategic discussions that drive the Forum’s industry agenda and shape the future of connectivity business.

In those TEN100 conversations, leading industry executives have made it clear that going it alone is no longer an option. Here we look at some of those opinions – which as part of the Ten100 agreement remain anonymous – on what is at stake and how platform models open up new possibilities. One CIO from a North American tier-one operator told us: “The benefits of a platform player approach is that it significantly improves your options to create value for stakeholders. It opens up new possibilities for the propositions you can offer, the partners you can work with, and how you service new and existing customers. It also multiplies the information you have, so that you can make better, performance-influencing decisions and identify new opportunities and risks. And it does all this at scale and at pace.”

Many of the executives we spoke to were convinced of the value of moving to a platform business model to better interact with a broader ecosystem of partners. Indeed, many are pinning their hopes for netnew revenues on that operating model. But current telco IT capabilities in general are not set up to enable that move, as one TEN100 participant explained.

“Network, IT and data needs to be treated as software. The network, IT and data teams need to think like a platform business and expose NaaS [network-as-aservice], ITaaS [IT-as-a-service] and DaaS [data-as-aservice] APIs and have a roadmap of capabilities,” said one Technology Group Executive from an Asia-Pacific operator.“

The network, IT and data teams need to evolve from traditional engineering delivery to product engineering, developing and exposing capabilities.”

Towards BSS simplicity

So what needs to happen in terms of BSS to drive change towards platform business models? One of the key aspects, according to many of the people we talked to, is increased streamlining.

BT’s ongoing platform transformation is leading to new developments such as EE ID, which enables consumers to order products and services such as TV, gaming, insurance, security and devices without needing a subscription. Harmeen Mehta, former Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at BT, told TM Forum at DTW Ignite 2024: “It’s really a story of platform thinking. We’re opening up our own platform to actually sell a lot more, creating common platforms and exposing them in a way that you could build through an amazing product catalog, any kind of product, and sell it in a consistent manner using the power of those platforms.”

The BSS requirement to operate in a business model like this is much lighter. It is a very simple way to deliver services, leading to maximum reuse and the lowest possible total cost of ownership. Consequently, the platform approach is allowing BT to shut down most of its legacy systems, using the same platform to serve consumer and enterprise customers. “It will take 10% of the systems that the team has today in order to run fully on a platform model,” explained Mehta, speaking to TM Forum Chief Analyst Mark Newman.

“We’re shutting down 90% of our legacy. It is dramatic simplification. We’ve built our entire platform much more like a commerce platform. It’s not 50-plus sales tools that we have – it’s one… Not 50-plus ways of fulfilling any of the products for our customers – there’s only one fulfillment.”