It is evident that emerging technologies are creating a major transformation in the Telecom industry. As of 2020, there were 7.9 billion mobile connections, and GSMA Intelligence is expecting that number to grow to 8.6 billion by 2025. Subscribers are relying on fast mobile data connection and high bandwidth to interact on various digital media platforms. Telco companies are expected to enter the IoT market with ready solutions, leveraging new technologies in order to improve the customer’s experience, while redesigning business models to maximize monetizing of advanced mobile networks.
In order to stand out from the competition, Telco companies must first recognize and overcome specific challenges that are faced within the industry. A while ago, we covered 8 Game-Changing Telecommunication Trends of 2018-2021, which you should definitely check out. In this article, we will discuss 5 critical pain points Telco businesses need to address in 2021 and the technologies and capabilities which we’ve proven will help resolve them.
Challenge 1: Data Segmentation and Redundancy
With such huge data volumes passing through and with so many workflow processes in place, Telco companies need a solid data strategy, and an effective way to continuously integrate new products and functionalities seamlessly. Moreover, they need a system which allows for effective data segmentation and avoidance of data redundancy so they can quickly identify and seize market opportunities. Being dedicated to delivering scalable solutions, our engineers provided a big European Telecom company with an entirely customized system using multiple metadata and configuration parameters, in order to achieve high flexibility and easy operational maintenance.
To address data redundancy, proper enterprise data warehouse management must be in practice and data must be stored appropriately. EDW’s act as a data repository and allow businesses to leverage near real-time data processing approaches for hot data combined with massive daily matches. For a major Telecom provider and client of ours, Scalefocus continues to integrate new systems in their EDWH, including Highway, an eCommerce platform, IFRS, GDPR, performance optimizations, refactoring, and portfolio integrations in the core data models.
Meanwhile, data lakes offer a flexible and scalable way to keep all market data flows fluent across systems, while providing valuable insights to place Telco businesses ahead in the international markets. Scalefocus has experience in implementing data lakes using Microsoft Azure, recently building a cloud-based solution for another client of ours, which lowered management costs significantly and decreased report generation by 27, eliminating manual processes for data collection and analysis.
Challenge 2: Low Customer Outreach and Conversion
Legacy eCommerce platforms have outdated, ineffective features which hinder or even eliminate the chances for high customer conversion and don’t place customer needs first. Luckily, there are several eCommerce solutions that are built in order to create a powerful omnichannel experience that personalize the customer’s path towards subscribing to a Telecom service. Such solutions give Telecom companies the power to perform complex customer profiling through CRM software, decrease customer churn through robust analytics, engage customers through chat bots and social media plugins, providing an online, offline and physical experience.
Scalefocus has actually implemented our full-featured eCommerce platform for a major European Telecom operator, customizing the system to their services, while focusing on providing high availability, performance and scalability. For another Telecom operator, Scalefocus was chosen to maintain, support and further develop their B2B/ B2C web-based Self Care portals and mobile customer apps. Our engineers migrated the company’s Web Farm legacy systems to new modern server, as well as performed rebranding, refactoring, code optimization and restructuring.
Our iOS and Android teams have also designed and developed a mobile app for a Telecom company that allows users to manage and configure their own accounts and mobile plans. Users can see an overview of their data consumption, SMS or minutes, subscribe or unsubscribe to any features, promotions and services. After launching the app, our client has decreased manual labor of customer support and store staff, while increasing revenue as users can now easily subscribe to new promotions. Furthermore, the company has gained valuable insights which they can use to finetune and tailor their services to specific customer interests.
Challenge 3: Lack of Agile System Integration
Due to the fact that many Telco companies still rely on point-to-point integration and laborious impromptu coding, much resources end up being wasted and onboarding external vendors, suppliers and warehouses becomes ineffective or impossible. Scalefocus builds custom integration solutions that sync existing message queues, API endpoints, and read data directly from its source: the database or produced files. To help meet your commitments to vendors and suppliers, Scalefocus builds an integration IT layer, that brings all their data in a single dashboard for more efficient, effective and accurate planning.
For a major Bulgarian Telecom operator, Scalefocus managed to successfully integrate its various systems: Amdocs OMS, CRM, billing, resource management, Prima, key accounts system, mail client, SMS center, user management system, fraud system and DWH.
“Number Portability One-Stop-Shop EAI is a fully automated solution for all types of number portability - mobile, fixed and non-geographic. It is compliant with the regulatory procedure announced by the Communication Regulation Commission. "ScaleFocus was a tremendous contributor to the success of Mobile Number Portability project. They truly showed a great commitment to providing outstanding IT consultancy and meeting our business objectives." Lyubomira Mihailova - Project Manager, Mobiltel
Meanwhile, for another client of ours, we centralized their electronic order management processes and significantly reduced the costs in communication with their strategic partner. We achieved this by designing and implementing a separation of the two partnering companies and implementing new software and services with multitenant functionalities that enable smooth transition and adapt quickly to dynamic market and customer behaviour trends.
Challenge 4: Poor Efficiency and High Operational Costs
Instead of focusing on expansion and innovation, many Telecoms are stuck in the dreaded state of figuring out a way to eliminate the constant repetitive business transactions across various business units. These analog transactions are usually responsible for lengthening the time to market and increasing costs and errors, thus sacrificing the quality of the end service and leaving more customers unsatisfied.
At Scalefocus we build RPA solutions that are based on UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism that enable Telecoms to drastically decrease operational expenses through automation and prevent human error while decreasing manual labor.
One success story from a US based Telecom provider, illustrates the positive effects of automating the processes related to workflows for requesting, approving and processing updates to their employee positions, compensations and bonuses. Partnering with Scalefocus, the company now enjoys a reduced processing time per request cut in half the time, less manual workload and human error elimination, as well as improved visibility and compliance by documenting and reviewing each step of every process.
Challenge 5: Technological Expertise and R&D
It’s normal for companies to experience some anxiety and confusion when implementing a new technology, however they must be proactive in learning how to assess and apply its beneficial features to their business. IoT is one technology that has opened the door for Telecoms to enrich their portfolio with a wide range of services that add value to their customers. And although Telecoms may have strong in-house technological expertise in IoT, the shift towards highly innovative solutions requires significant R&D effort.
First and foremost, Scalefocus offers professional consultation, which can help you navigate the murky waters of market penetration and business expansion using unfamiliar technologies, giving you greater clarity on what you’ll be able to achieve. Then, we go further by designing and developing custom solutions that will attract new subscribers and place your business ahead in a highly competitive environment. These solutions include smart home enablement (security, entertainment, remote work), 4/8K streaming, live events, and enablement of variety of real-time services via 5G's ultra-low latency.
We are currently leveraging our partnership with a leading German engineering company and their IoT suite, after successfully patenting and developing an in-house end-to-end smart parking solution that pairs their sensors and live gateways to allows users to easily find available parking spaces near them. We’re in the process of extending their IoT suite to offer Telco specific capabilities. We’ll cover that topic in an upcoming article, so make sure you follow our blog to keep posted.
Let’s Talk Telecom
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Why not start by taking a look at some of our clients’ success stories? Learn more about what leading Telco companies have achieved by partnering with Scalefocus and get in touch to have a chat with our team in a free consultation.