In April 2022, twimbit, in partnership with F5 Networks and Kyndryl, organised the 2nd ‘Asia Pacific Telecom Summit, 2022: The Next Frontier.’
During the session, ‘New Growth Engines, we had two eminent speakers;
- Raja Mansukhani – CEO of Boost connect
- and Prem Menon – Head of Strategy, Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB)
Manoj Menon, Founder and Managing Director at twimbit, ignited the conversation to understand the new growth engines in adjacencies and the enterprise business for telcos. We at twimbit have helped summarise the key takeaways from this session.
#1 Telcos and financial services providers can leverage the mutual synergies
“We have leveraged, we continue to leverage in our positioning within the Axiata Group, and our footprint has gone beyond the data set of operators that we are connected to.” – Raja Mansukhani, CEO of Boost Connect
With growing digital opportunities in the region increasing due to the pandemic, this will further encourage the growth of adding more efficient and high-speed internet services like 5G. Amidst the commoditisation of core connectivity services, telcos strive to differentiate by enabling digital services for their customers. However, telcos alone cannot build these digital products and services as they depend on collaboration.
On the other hand, the developers of these digital services need a wider reach and branding, with which telcos are readily available. Despite the synergies, the interesting point was that the latter does not solely depend on telcos because they have expanded their reach to the non-telcos.
#2 Enterprise 5G bears excellent potential, but it is not a one-shot game
“5G alone by as a service doesn’t mean anything for enterprise. Because when you look at an enterprise organisation, it is about curating the entire value chain that how you stitch that to address a particular use case, and build that as a service and a solution.” – Prem Menon, Head of Strategy, Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB)
5G rollouts are not enough as there is a need to facilitate operators to understand business challenges and then establish their roles to build use cases.
There is excellent potential in this, but how will this be achieved?
It is a step-by-step journey for the 5G solutions provider from identifying the early use cases to eventually building vertical-oriented solutions that are inherently replicable and scalable within that particular industry, as Prem Menon states. Hence, DNB is taking specific steps to make this vision a reality:
- DNB begins with understanding the pain points of 12 vertical industries by engaging with the customers directly.
- DNB is also building an inter-operability or validation centre, where they can bring all the start-up solution providers and those who have tested their solutions on 4G. And then bring them to the 5G tested stage, run the solution, and finally publish the same on their website.
#3 New growth engines need new measures of opportunity and success
- These new measures involve telcos to garner information on what customers consume, whether it be gaming, entertainment, or financial services. This measure will help telcos understand how they can fulfil demand and create value. Besides measuring the opportunity, telcos must have agile processes to respond to consumer demand.
- Digital lifestyle services need a new set of performance metrics such as:
- GTV (Gross Transactional Value),
- Revenue capture from the overall transactions,
- and the margins derived from the gross transaction.
#4 Fresh talent and employee empowerment are necessary for new growth engines
Some of the steps in the area of building talent and employee empowerment:
- Building the necessary skill and talent by incorporating the learning process around new technologies such as AI and IoT as part of the university curriculum.
- Building innovative products in the digital space urges to provide flexibility in the level of experimentation for the employees.
- Being attentive to people’s needs, an agile workflow, and empowering and allowing them to disrupt an experiment should be at the core DNA of every digital company.
Therefore, building new growth engines, whether digital lifestyle services for the customers or vertical solutions for the enterprises, will be a step by journey for the telcos. This is because attracting the right talent to build, run and scale digital services still proves a challenge for telcos. Hence, there is a need for synergies.
Telcos cannot afford to escape the path of collaboration with the customers and other ecosystem players. Besides generating additional revenues for telcos, new growth engines will give them solid ground to differentiate from others. Not to forget, entering into new segments requires preparing the organisation in terms of both people and processes.