How to achieve quote automation using GenAI

Why is quote automation needed?

Reliance on manual quoting processes is costing CSPs business – but by adopting quote automation based on Generative AI (GenAI), they can act swiftly to secure opportunities which would otherwise be missed, and seamlessly convert quotes into orders. Complex calculations of costs and manual validation of network configurations cause not only delays – which leave potential customers open to competition – but also introduce sources of error and dispute, ultimately increasing the chance that efforts are wasted.

In some cases, CSPs even need to cancel or restart parts of orders to deal with changing requirements - while others are able to manage such changes, but nonetheless suffer from revenue leakage through lack of control or anticipation. CSPs often attempt to mitigate such scenarios by using non-telco focused ‘core commerce’ solutions, rolling them out across individual products over time. The problem here is that coding must be executed per product – so such solutions are only useful to the extent that the product catalog is available to them for quote assembly.

What’s needed is a unified, user-friendly solution to enable quote automation, while also addressing pain points in the contracting process which can risk long and fruitful relationships between CSPs and their enterprise customers.

How Generative AI can help streamline CSP contracting

The Big Deal Catalyst demonstrates how CSPs’ enterprise business units can achieve quote automation and validate configurations, by allowing them to model complex configurations and relationships visually in a TM Forum-compliant catalog, so that all their offers to enterprise customers can be productized and automated. The solution uses GenAI to guide the process of bespoke contracting, generate commercial considerations, provide insights, suggest contractual clauses, analyze the impacts of changes, and draft the resulting contract. GenAI is also used to help stakeholders consider the future impacts of the contract once prepared – predicting potential issues and estimating timelines per site, product, configuration, channel and partner.

Then, as the agreement progresses, its capabilities can be used to manage change and troubleshoot potentially problematic pathways. It can be used flexibly across various interfaces, supporting the channels of choice for sales teams, customers, operations staff, and partners. Moreover, it can be integrated with partners’ systems via TM Forum Open APIs to comprehensively manage responsibilities, agree life cycles, and provision SLAs (with breach discounting applied automatically applied).

The far-reaching benefits of AI-driven quote automation

By adopting quote automation through GenAI, CSPs can achieve transformative revenue growth by maximizing the efficiency of the entire process, from engagement to delivery, while sharply reducing their own labor and process costs through time savings.

Both enterprise customer and CSP can enjoy reduced friction and delay while contracting by lowering negotiation cycle time and minimizing order fallout, helping to increase customer satisfaction while securing the business opportunity for the CSP. Reducing time to quote naturally leads to reduced time to sale, allowing sales and account teams to focus much more quickly on fulfilment, or finding the next opportunity, rather than getting tied up in contract updates and follow-ups.

CSP revenues are therefore brought forward, improving cashflow, and made more predictable, enabling better financial planning. Meanwhile the risk of customers going elsewhere out of impatience, while they wait for a quote or proposal details, is minimized. Then through proactive SLA accountability the solution ensures customer loyalty with customer-specific breach remedies, fostering transparency between CSP and enterprise customers with reduced need for manual interventions.

The efficiency made possible here will benefit not only the commercial relationship between customer and provider, however. Using AI to streamline the contract update process reduces manual, repetitive tasks which would otherwise occupy thousands of hours of connected labor time – helping CSPs reduce needless power use and emissions, both direct and indirect, slimming their carbon footprints and helping them to meet their sustainability goals through optimal use of resources.

Currently for most CSPs, handing these big deals for enterprise customers is very manual, with lots of custom work for each deal and lots of rework because of the complexity of enterprise products. The Big Deal Catalyst will create a blueprint for CSPs using TM Forum Open APIs to minimize manual steps, using innovative AI capabilities to assist staff with less 'touch', and therefore support more of them – driving increased revenue for the CSP, and because these deals typically have higher margin than the consumer business, greater profits as well.