At first glance, the theme of MWC 2024 seems to be Artificial Intelligence, but a theme that’s just as big to us at Circles was seeing the urgent need for telco players to digitally transform to go beyond connectivity.

At the conference, we took note of these underlying pressures urging telco players to adapt or die: 

• Technological progress and adoption by competitors led by AI technological progress
• The need to diversify to non-telco revenue streams to bolster connectivity revenues, led by B2B2X partnership ecosystems
• Changing demographics and consumer expectations, led by more digital natives entering the global workforce and their growing list of non-telco smartphone jobs to be done

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So How Have Telcos Been Responding To These Pressures?

At MWC 2024, different telco players demonstrated their different ways of adapting to these changes.

In addition to adopting AI and Gen AI into their operations, they’ve been introducing various non-telco digital services like gaming, health and fitness, utilities management, insurance, smart home features) alongside their traditional connectivity bundles while allowing greater customisation and choice. 

To cater to these non-telco offerings, telcos have been focusing on app gamification and app engagement remains a top priority among telcos globally. They also need the agility to launch, monitor and charge for new partner offers. 

Ideally, their app ecosystems and telco software suites need to be able to innovate and test different offers and bundles. Last but not least, the digital transformation that it takes to get to this level needs to be quick and effective.

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“But Digital Transformation is Just About the Tech, Right?”

We’ve seen many case studies which show that this mindset is part of the reason many inside-out digital transformations fail.

In response to this misconception, our CEO, Rameez Ansar says “Essentially, failure ensues when organisational leaders try to put lipstick on pigs…”

Historically, a high percentage of internal-led digital transformations fail. Digital transformations aren’t just plug-and-play initiatives. They are ongoing processes that change the way that you do business and requires changes in skills, systems and people.

From what we’ve seen, inside-out transformations tend to face these issues:

• Long duration: 2 - 4 years
• Expensive: Costs hundreds of millions $
• Complex: Telco infrastructure is made of many siloed systems

Our CEO Rameez Ansar mentioned that digital transformation efforts can fail when organisations are distracted by the word ‘digital’ and forget that it’s actually an organisational transformation. Others fall into the trap of thinking of digital transformation as only a CIO project - hence putting “(digital) lipstick on a pig.”

Addressing this, Rameez says digital transformation is about redefining the organisation to survive this industrial paradigm shift. It’s not using technology to make incremental changes to the status quo but leading the organisation towards a new way of thinking. In short, figure out your business strategy before you invest in anything.

Just as importantly digital transformations need to factor in the human element. If your staff feel that the new tech is going to replace them, they will consciously or unconsciously block these changes. 

They’ll resist these changes hoping that the management will abandon their effort to save their jobs. Leaders need to recognise these fears and show that the digital transformation progress can benefit everyone.

Management also needs to stop thinking that just a new app or software alone will automatically create great customer experiences. Designing things from the outside-in based on what customers want is a better approach.

For a non-telco example, Santa Clara County’s Department of Planning and Development made smaller-scale, targeted improvements to their permit approval process and customer portal based on what customers want. This was based on 90 individual interviews with stakeholders about the process. 

In that regard, telco players who want to digitally transform should ideally do it with a clear vision of how they’ll improve the customer experience or work with someone who knows which telco experiences mobile users love best.

We’ve also seen this urgent need for telco digital transformation and want to share our approach with you, which we call:

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The Parallel, Cleanslate Full Stack Approach

The parallel, cleanslate full stack approach means planning and building up your customer experience and software requirements from the ground up, or a clean slate. We’ll provide you with our tried and tested software that covers everything a digital telco needs, which makes it full stack. The new digital brand we make with you will run parallel to your existing telco brand.

Parallel:

The idea is to let your telco ride on the software we’ve built up from our digital–only, customer-first foundations using a parallel digital brand so that your existing telco operations aren’t disrupted. Via the digital brand and our software, your company will gain quick access to onboarding, testing and billing non-telco partnerships.

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Cleanslate:

Innovation and discontinuation will likely be more successful by returning to a clean slate and looking at solving the existing (old or established) problem but in a radically new way, enabled by a new set of technological and operational tools and a new perspective.

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Full Stack:

Our software was built from the ground up with customer experience in mind. It’s digital-only, cloud-based and covers the full stack of telco software from digital user experience, martech, digital engagement, BSS functions and data analytics. 

Considering that our Circles software is the backbone of our own digital telco brand Circles.Life, it’s built based on consumer journeys, experience and our own proprietary data. Our software is something we pride ourselves on being ‘by operators, for operators.’ 

Once everything with the newer brand and infrastructure is ready for you to fully take over, you can then make the full switch to the new brand using the up-to-date technology and staff know-how. 

We used this method during our collaboration with KDDI when developing povo, KDDI’s digital telco brand in Japan. Our software enables povo to sell its 0 Yen monthly plans with ‘toppings’ that lets mobile users customise their plans to their heart’s content. 

Additionally, other non-telco services povo offers includes video streaming and we’re currently working on more. Since its inception, Povo has since gone on to win the Telecom Company of the Year in the Asian Telecom Awards, and we couldn’t be prouder what the team has built. 

There’s a lot of risk with getting digital transformation wrong, but we believe the way is still forward. With AI, a changing landscape, and more demanding customers spurring digital transformation across our telco industry, it makes sense to work together to take things to the next level.

If you’re interested in how our clean slate approach works or how we can help you, get in touch with us!