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Digital Transformation So what? Haven’t we always been doing digital transformation in the telecom industry? Surely all the effort and investment that has gone into the move towards all IP network in the last decade have all been about the move to digital? We have all heard that comment before, but with the speed of change in the world these days, digital transformation has become a do or die activity. But a question that is rarely asked and answered is: What does digital transformation actually mean? In truth, it is far more than anything to do with the word ‘digital’, or technology itself. It is all about reinventing ourselves, our businesses and even our societies and to fully accept that change should be designed into everything we do. As George Bernard Shaw said:
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” A very appropriate reminder, and as a later article in this series will explain, digital transformation starts with ourselves. If we cannot change our mindset, we are highly unlikely to be able to change our approach, our teams, our services and our businesses. THE FUNGIBILITY FACTOR Let’s start with a word that is rarely used in polite society - fungibility. From my point of view, this word describes perfectly what digital transformation is all about. It means that everything we do should have the intrinsic ability
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to be substantially changed. To some extent, the telecom industry has striven for years to achieve the opposite. We have designed networks, systems and sales approaches to standardize everything. Furthermore, we have frozen changes around major holidays and implemented approaches where any contract, especially for transmission and connectivity services, must last for at least 12 months, otherwise termination charges will be applied. You want to increase your capacity? Sure, we need to cancel that order, waive those charges if the new order is of greater value, provision a new circuit, changeover the service to that circuit and then cancel the old one. Yes, this is somewhat old school, but I’m sure many readers will recognize the approach. But what today’s customers want now is what they experience in their day to day lives complete flexibility in approach, in commercial terms and the technology they choose to use. And what’s more, they want to be able to control it themselves, to see how well it is performing and to tie the service they are getting directly to their own processes, so that they don’t even need to contact us to improve their service. EMBRACING THE CLOUD MENTALITY IS NOT AN OPTION The unicorns of today are dominating the world and driving customer expectations towards the instant gratification of mobile app-based
