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VANILLAPLUS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT JULY 2017
HOW TO KEEP YOUR CSP TO DSP TRANSFORMATION ON TRACK T H E
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VanillaPlus Digital Transformation Insight I JULY 2017
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ANALYST REPORT Our specially-commissioned analyst report, authored by Karl Whitelock, director for Global Strategy, and Troy Morley, strategy analyst, for Operations, Orchestration, Data Analytics and Monetization (ODAM) at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan
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COMPANY PROFILE: Amdocs Digital
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CASE STUDY Inside Three Ireland’s digital transformation project which Amdocs Digital is supporting with retail, self-service and mobile applications, while also consolidating and modernising the mobile operator’s IT operations
ANALYST REPORT
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VANILLAPLUS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT I JULY 2017
ANALYST REPORT
Karl Whitelock, director for Global Strategy, and Troy Morley, strategy analyst, for Operations, Orchestration, Data Analytics & Monetization (ODAM) at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan
Digital services transformation – are we there yet? Before the phrase digital service provider (DSP) gained popularity and before digital transformation was touted as a crucial necessity to long-term business survival, a variety of market dynamics were causing communication service providers (CSPs) to make essential changes in the way they address evolving customer needs
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or example, shown in Figure 1, data usage volumes for mobile customers have steadily risen over the last ten years. Globally, the number of mobile customers consuming more than 2GB of data per month has risen from 13% at the end of 2012 to 65% by the end of 2016. As a result, CSPs designed tiered data service plans as a means to align customer usage and willingness to pay. Then, competitive forces in some regions caused CSPs to rethink their data strategies and revert back to unlimited usage offers. Figure 1: Rising consumer usage data volumes
VANILLAPLUS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT I JULY 2017
From another perspective, Internet of Things (IoT) consumer devices – high-end cameras, drones and connected cars – now consume 500MB per hour or higher of data capacity. While some of this is over fixedline Wi-Fi networks, the volume of mobile video data created by these devices continues to grow. Adding to the equation is accelerated customer use of over the top (OTT) provided digital services. CSPs can no longer ignore the global change in customer attitudes and internet competitor focus on new digital services. These combined factors are especially challenging since digital services depend on ubiquitous broadband coverage and reliable network connectivity. Striking a balance between network services and the evolving digital services world is inevitable. But, what
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Source: Cisco Visual Network Index 2012-2017, Stratecast
How long will it be before the current unlimited data plans, which all have capped usage limits, no longer bring customer satisfaction? If measured data usage offerings are eliminated – as some prognostications imply through use of network technology that can support faster speeds, lower latency, and even higher data volumes – what will the next wave of CSP business strategy involve? How will digital services play a role and what kinds of operations and monetisation support will digital services need for business success?
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ANALYST REPORT Figure 2: Global communications market is at the centre of new business strategy
Source: Stratecast
does this mean for CSPs today? More specifically: • Will the market for network access services continue as presently defined? • To remain competitive and attractive to their core customers, must CSPs offer network access combined with digital services from an ecosystem of partners? If so, is there a proven set of industry best practices that can be followed? • How will digital services fit into the long-term strategies that CSPs are now creating? • Can existing processes work in parallel with new business solutions? • Is an economic approach to DSP enablement possible given today's regulatory restrictions, network technology evolution, competitive forces, and changing business models? IoT data and streaming video, combined with declining growth of voice services, places pressure on CSPs to operationalise network technology that better aligns usage demand with what the market is willing to pay for network access.
Network connectivity: the centre of new business strategy Looking beyond the CSP industry, as noted by Figure 2, advances in communications technology are playing a major role in the transformation of every industry in the world: taking them from a something-to-sell model to a digital services-to-buy model – also known as Anything-as-a-Service or XaaS.
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Emerging market dynamics: customer demand is evolving and expanding Combined with the push of the market realities described above, emerging customer dynamics are providing the pull for business transformation. Shown in Figure 3, the traditional market segments addressed by CSPs include consumers, small-medium businesses (SMB), large businesses, and enterprises. CSPs sell services to these customer groups through retail business-to-consumer (B2C) and wholesale business-to-business (B2B) models. The opportunities for growth within each segment are significant but also require different tool sets for business success. While the details concerning each customer group cannot be addressed in an article such as this, there are some high points well worth considering, especially as virtual network functions (VNFs) go mainstream over the next 18 months. Large businesses and enterprises are using communication services, in particular mobile services, to enhance their previously delivered products and solution offerings. The addition of partner-provided capabilities is increasing the customer value proposition. The looming explosion of a connectedeverything world, with IoT services, is designed to address both business and consumer needs, and is applicable to an increasing number of opportunities in nearly every industry. The use of mobility services to help large businesses and enterprises offer traditional goods as XaaS offerings, are in full swing. Figure 3 also shows the two newest customer segments: Virtual Network Enablers (VNEs) and Virtual Business Enablers (VBEs). VNEs facilitate the provisioning, activation, operations and monetisation of
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This change in business strategy is possible through near-ubiquitous connectivity supported by enhanced processes that enable new ways to track, ship, facilitate and monetise goods. These processes increase security, embrace adaptable configurability, and are embodied with an intense focus on wholesale/retail financial accountability. Examples of this level of transformational change can be found within industries such as healthcare, transportation logistics, agriculture, air travel, government services, hospitality, financial services, public transportation, product delivery, and even the retail labelling market using NFC (near field communications).
At the centre of business change is a critical assumption; nearubiquitous network access and a reliable network connection. For people with a smartphone, survival in this digital age is defined by total dependence on a fast data connection with internet access, usually via a mobile device or some combination of mobile and a fixed-line connection. They expect 24 X 7 service availability, high throughput capacity, personal security, total reliability, and dependability of the apps used to keep their digital lifestyle current.
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
Figure 3: The demand challenge, complexity is winning
Source: Stratecast
wholesale network capacity for enterprises. VBEs have been discussed by Stratecast for more than five years now. The VBE marketplace enables partners to sell goods and services in a B2B2X manner, through the concept of digital partner ecosystem management. VNEs are not new, as they supported the first generation of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) beginning more than ten years ago, with many successful MVNOs from this era remaining. However, a second generation of MVNO, including the occasional fixed-line virtual operator, is now rising. This new-generation of virtual network operator (VNO) focuses on connected business opportunities in multiple industries, rather than a branded package of voice and text services for end-user customers. In this light, the VNE can be the enabling mechanism for enterprise-based MVNO and IoT initiatives, rather than requiring enterprises to directly engage with the CSP via its traditional systems and processes. VNEs will continue to transform as virtual network functions gain prominence. A VBE allows ecosystem partners to sell goods and services to a global economy. This enablement applies to what each partner brings to the market individually; but also provides the means for partners to assemble their service contributions with those from other partners, to yield new, never before established, virtual services. The ultimate business scenario for a VBE comes forward in this environment as each partner begins to use its natural assets and capabilities to adapt and adopt platform-based business models that involve other partners in the creation of new services. These new services could incorporate the original offering, combined with added capabilities of one or more partners. To address the business needs of the rapidly-evolving VBE marketplace, a CSP must be well on the path to becoming a DSP. Perhaps this is why there are so many different views of a DSP and the role it must play to meet the needs of market change.
CSP to DSP transformation – filling a tall order
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
Digital transformation is less about specific services, however, and more about how the DSP operates its business, and creates customer value. A DSP is a CSP that has transformed the way it does business, which can be characterized by a number of key traits as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4: Key traits of a digital service provider
Source: Stratecast
The key traits encompassed through digital transformation involve: • Becoming data driven. Data, and more particularly data analytics, have become increasingly important. However, the road to becoming a DSP takes analytics to a new level. CSPs often use purpose-built analytics to improve specific functions, such as billing or service assurance, which will continue to be important. However, DSPs require more, including a view across functional areas, customer insights, and intelligence that span silos heretofore
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Digital transformation is a tall order: asking companies, which in some cases have roots that go back decades, to now become more agile and change how they do business, especially when most remain profitable. Yet, the tides of change are here. For a CSP to transform to
a DSP, the CSP needs to continue providing communications services – the network connection – and then provide added customer value to that connection in the form of digital services.
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invisible to purpose-built applications. Perhaps most importantly, DSPs need to monetise this data to its fullest extent, which means providing insight to partners, at a price, as is now done for any other network asset. The DSP is a data-driven business, requiring high levels of automation, fuelled by the insights from both purpose-built and customer-level analytics. • Addressing everything in human-level real-time. A real-time response to market demand is a reflection of the instant gratification culture that is today’s business reality. In the past, a CSP’s post-paid customers received an invoice at the end of each billing cycle. Today, with tiered plans, even post-paid customers demand visibility as to how their usage compares with their subscribed data tier commitment. In addition, part of the appeal of digital services is their immediacy. When purchasing a digital good or service, the expectation is that once the purchase is complete, the product or service is immediately enjoyed, and the price for it acknowledged • Providing omni-channel customer interaction, with an eye on digital channels. Omni-channel has also become a popular concept. The term omni-channel refers to all customer contact and fulfilment channels looking, acting, and performing the same. This applies to a retail store visit, a web portal, an app on a mobile device, engagement with an authorised dealer, or a call to a customer service agent. Customers should be able to change between channels without losing information or needing to start a transaction again. While many CSPs are currently moving in this direction, for a DSP, the primary channel is digital. For example, 80% or more of the time, OTT providers engage in digital channel interaction with their customers. In addition, self-service is a concept that is affecting many industries. For a DSP, the entire shopping, ordering, delivery, installation, turn-up, and billing process must be automated and must be customer-driven.
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• Integrated platform that combines key strengths with the strengths of others. A DSP must provide an integrated platform that combines its key strengths with others, to create more value for whatever customer it chooses to serve. This, is the key lesson that CSPs can take from their OTT competitors. For example, Google was a search engine company that transformed into an advertising platform provider. Facebook was a social network that dramatically increased its value by morphing into a platform for launching other applications. Apple is a consumer electronics device company; but without its application and digital store platforms, it would be far less successful. And, much of Microsoft’s success stems from the ecosystem surrounding the programs that now run on its Windows platform. CSPs already have the main ingredients to become platform providers. They have established relationships with various customer segments. They provide highly-needed connectivity. They have established systems to operate and monetise their customer relationships. They just need to engage with the right partner enablement platform to orchestrate these multiple relationships in their move to becoming a DSP. • A business model and framework that is flexible, agile, and fast. The OTT suppliers are agile and willing to try fast, fail fast and change fast. CSPs, in general, are not known for any of these traits – which makes this the hardest piece of the puzzle, and one that will take the longest to transform. The move by CSPs toward virtual networks, utilising some combination of network function virtualisation (NFV) and software defined networks (SDN) has largely been driven with the goal of making CSP networks more flexible and agile. So, if a CSP moves to incorporate virtual network functionality, is it immediately a DSP?
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• Service focused. CSPs have long been focused on the network
connection, often to the detriment of what is delivered over that connection. However, DSPs focus on the content or services that ride across a network connection – while their customers assume that the connection just works.
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
Stratecast believes that virtual networks will be an important tool to assist CSPs on their journey towards becoming DSPs, but by themselves are not sufficient. In fact, some CSPs will continue to be the best CSPs they can be, and utilise virtual networks with no goal of becoming a DSP. In addition, some CSPs may make the transition to becoming a DSP prior to enabling any level of network virtualisation. • Putting the customer first. With an eye on selling network connections and basic services in the past, it is not surprising that CSPs have focused more on the network than on the customer. While the network remains essential, in general, network connectivity is assumed in the DSP value proposition. To provide advanced services that deliver high customer value, DSPs must move from a network-centric to a customer-centric business focus. The customer will be different for different DSPs. The customer may be a consumer, an enterprise, another CSP, a different DSP, a supplier partner, or something else entirely. To be effective, the DSP must understand who its customers are and focus on providing value to those customers. • An extensive partner ecosystem, which can provide a constantly changing array of digital services. Different vertical skill sets are required to offer a spectrum of quality digital services. In most cases, digital services involve an ecosystem of partners, which take on many forms. The key aspect of a partner ecosystem is an understanding by each participating organisation that no single group can do it all. Also, there must be a commitment that usage and customer revenue allocation will be managed effectively. A platform approach is the only way in which retail and wholesale transactions can simultaneously receive the right level of attention and accountability.
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
Survey on the importance of monetisation to CSP digital transformation Stratecast annually assesses the global CSP monetisation supplier marketplace. Due to the ubiquity of digital transformation discussions in marketing, and industry coverage, we included questions in our recently conducted 2017 survey concerning digital transformation strategy. The survey partitioned the ten largest suppliers of monetisation solutions, by revenue, from the rest of the supplier field. By inference, Stratecast believes that the CSP customers of these suppliers constitute the larger CSPs throughout the global marketplace, which are noted as the leaders category within the following discussion.
Is digital transformation necessary? Questions were asked to the global monetisation supplier market. Each respondent was asked to reply representing a composite view of their service provider customers. The first two questions to this audience were: • How important is support for digital transformation? • How important is the role of the monetisation functions in the digital transformation process? Every respondent agreed – the largest CSPs to the smallest – that support for digital transformation is essential today, and that the monetisation functions play an essential role in this process. A unanimous response, as noted for each of the questions is rare. In fact, of the 105 requirements asked within the 2017 Stratecast monetisation market survey, only these two garnered the same answer from every respondent.
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The digital business enablement platform creates a dynamic marketplace that enables the role of producer, provider, owner, and customer to be interchangeable. For example, a producer could supply its own services, but also use the ecosystem to buy and
resell different services, and/or bundle them with its own. So, this model offers multi-sided opportunities to all parties. The platform model recognises the importance of B2B activities such as repackaging, re-pricing, and reselling as part of co-innovation and co-investment. Hence, the supporting digital business enablement platform must be able to account for each partner’s contributions to the service offering and keep track of the revenue split, based on contract-defined agreements, going to each partner.
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Figure 5: Importance of the monetisation functions in digital transformation
Source: Stratecast
Stratecast views these findings as a confirmation that digital transformation is real, and not just continued marketing hype. We also believe this is a global movement – though there will be regions that will advance faster than others – and that digital transformation is not confined to a particular size of service provider. What monetisation functions are the most important for CSP digital transformation? Stratecast next asked the survey respondents about the importance of various monetisation functions pertaining to digital transformation. The survey specifically asked about the importance of such functions as: billing mediation, rating and charging, customer notifications, self-care, policy management, partner management and analytics as noted in Figure 5. The leading suppliers, which represent the largest CSPs, reported rating & charging, customer self-care, customer notification, analytics, and partner management as Essential monetisation functions for enabling digital transformation. Suppliers in the Others category stated that their customers also place a high level of importance on these same functions. Stratecast believes two additional functions are essential regarding digital transformation: policy management and billing mediation. Policy management is currently a key enabler of a range of services; and Stratecast believes this will continue in the DSP world. Also, in this era of ever-increasing data volumes – in all industries – mediation has become a key tool in managing and utilising the flood of data that all organisations face. In the CSP monetisation world, mediation plays a major role; and within a DSP, Stratecast believes mediation will continue to be critically important.
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Source: Stratecast
Stratecast next asked the four-option question: What monetisation solution approach(s) are your customers engaging in to address their needs for digital transformation? • Cloud-enabled software, private cloud model • Traditional on-premises software licence model • Managed services model • Cloud-enabled software, public cloud model, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) While there was complete agreement on the importance of digital transformation for CSPs, and on the role of monetisation in that transformation, Figure 6 illustrates that there is much less agreement when assessing the solution approach to digital transformation. All respondents agreed that solutions need to be cloud-enabled; but the leading suppliers/large CSPs are not convinced that engaging with the needed operations and monetisation solutions for digital transformation using a public cloud SaaS model is the right approach. These industry leaders believe that managed services are as important as private cloud, but also believe that traditional on-premises software licensing models are equally important to at least a substantial number of service providers. Stratecast believes cloud-enabled business management and monetisation solutions are critical for any digital transformation strategy. From our perspective, public versus private is a choice that is dictated by preference, by the size of the CSP/DSP, and even sometimes by regulation. If a business management or monetisation solution is truly cloud-enabled, then the application software could be delivered through a more economical public cloud option, while customer and process logic data is placed in a private cloud environment. Stratecast believes that this hybrid cloud approach to solution deployment is quickly becoming the preferred means for digital transformation solutions. We expect the results of our next industry survey to reflect this line of positioning.
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What is the best solution approach to achieve digital transformation?
Figure 6: Importance of solution approach to digital transformation strategy
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
Figure 7: Strategic focus of CSPs’ transformation strategies
Source: Stratecast
Strategically, where are CSPs focusing in their transformation? Finally, Stratecast asked: Digital Transformation, or the transformation from CSP to DSP, has different meanings to different organisations. What is most important in your digital transformation strategy? • Support for partner ecosystems (horizontal orchestration) • Enterprise business enablement • Monetizing IoT service offerings • Enable and charge for virtualised network functions (VNFs) Figure 7 shows that partner ecosystems, enterprise business enablement, and monetising IoT offerings are all reasonably important to the transformation strategies of both large and small CSPs. Stratecast believes the CSP priority focus for each of these strategy components is as follows: • Partner ecosystems. To provide the most value to both consumer and business customers, a DSP will need to engage with a large ecosystem of partners. A DSP will need to be agile; with the ability to fail fast as business needs evolve. Digital services need to be offered quickly; and if they do not resonate with the customer base, they need to be removed quickly. DSPs will not have the luxury of months or years to roll out new services; hence, the need for partners. New digital services in the not-too-distant future will need to be introduced in hours – or days, at worst. • Enterprise business enablement. Enterprise business enablement has multiple flavours. These may be new digital services, perhaps from a new partner ecosystem that serves the enterprise market in a business-to-business (B2B) model. These may be a combination of digital services from multiple sources in a B2B2X model. Or perhaps this may be a DSP helping an enterprise to offer its products in a service model (XaaS). All forms of enterprise business enablement will be essential in the future DSP landscape.
• Monetising IoT. Most agree that the IoT will have a significant impact in the coming years. However, there is currently not a lot of discussion about how to monetise the millions or billions of devices that will someday soon make up the IoT. If a future DSP wants to benefit from this quickly growing market, its digital transformation strategy must tackle IoT monetisation. • Charging for VNFs. As virtual networks move from the planning stages into reality, network functions that are now a dedicated piece of hardware will become virtual, or VNFs. These VNFs are software that can come from multiple sources. Software that can be spun up and spun down. This creates new ways to compensate the creators of the VNF, new licensing challenges, and new usage to monitor and monetise. Monetising VNFs will become an interesting proposition in the next few years. Stratecast is impressed that the leading suppliers/large CSPs/DSPs (where this will first become an issue) are thinking about how to address this challenge now.
The last word CSPs have been at a crossroads of sorts many times over the last two decades, as they have decided how to face down one form of competition after another. They mostly learned a few technology tricks that helped them win the day, and then went back to business as usual. Now, we are again at a crossroads; only, this time, the surrounding fields have sprouted enormous new competitors armed with lots of cash, better business models, more flexible and responsive technologies, and even more recognizable – and might we say hipper – company brands. Some CSPs may indeed sell their souls this time in order to transform into the one thing that will help them compete in the new internetinspired communications marketplace: a digital services provider.
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Every industry experiences occasional flurries of marketing hype. Often these squalls are short-lived and do not amount to much. There is lots of wind, but little accumulation. Digital transformation in the
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
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ANALYST REPORT
communications industry has moved beyond the marketing department and is now a global storm, affecting every region of the world and every size of CSP. Every monetisation supplier reports that its customers view digital transformation, and the role of monetisation within that transformation, as essential. The road to becoming a DSP is not necessarily long. However, it is paved with persistent operational obstacles tied to agility, which CSPs have been trying to overcome for decades. The problem all along has been the measured, or tempered, approach to clearing those obstacles taken by both CSPs, and their hardware and software suppliers.
Transformation efforts so far have been qualified, curtailed by somewhat understandable protectionist tendencies, and an unwillingness to tamper with a working, profitable business model. So, it appears that to move ahead with the journey toward becoming a profitable DSP, CSPs simply have to do wholeheartedly what they have been doing half-heartedly all along. They must commit to going all in by opening their networks and systems, and enabling agile, real-time support systems. Only then can they form ecosystems with new market players that were born that way, and operate from the perspective of equal partners.
About ODAM The processes and tools that communications service providers (CSPs) have utilised to run their businesses have changed over time. More than a half-century ago, CSP network and business management processes were manual (OAM&P). As CSPs evolved over the years, so did the operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) that address CSP business and network management needs. In recent years, the lines between OSS and BSS have become less clear, with much overlap. In addition, the roles in which OSS and BSS operate have expanded beyond traditional boundaries. As such, Stratecast now uses the term Operations, Orchestration, Data Analytics & Monetization (ODAM) to encompass both the traditional OSS and BSS functions and the new areas in which business and operations management must now work together, including virtualised networks and telecom data analysis.
About Stratecast Stratecast collaborates with our clients to reach smart business decisions in the rapidly evolving and hyper-competitive Information and Communications Technology markets. Utilising a mix of action-oriented subscription research and customised consulting engagements, Stratecast delivers knowledge and perspective that is only attainable through years of real-world experience in an industry where customers are collaborators; today’s partners are tomorrow’s competitors; and agility and innovation are essential elements for success. Contact your Stratecast account executive to engage our experience to assist you in attaining your growth objectives. For more information, visit www.stratecast.com or email inquiries@stratecast.com.
About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to use visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today’s market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the Global 1,000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organisation prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? For more information about Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Partnership Services, visit http://www.frost.com.
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VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
COMPANY PROFILES
Shannon Bell is head of product management, strategy and go to market for Amdocs Digital. Noted below, are Shannon's views concerning her company's focus on CSP digital transformation. This interview was conducted by Karl Whitelock, Global Director Operations and Monetization Strategy at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan
Karl Whitelock: Transformation can take on many forms. What should CSPs consider when defining their digital transformation strategy and in what priority order? Shannon Bell: When defining strategies for digital transformation, it is important that service providers consider the impact from a few angles – the digital customer, the digital economy, digital technology and the digital organisation. These are essential factors in transforming from a communication service provider to a digital service provider. From our vast experience we realise that our customer’s digital transformation is not an IT programme, it is a business programme that has broadreaching effects and to be successful it must take into account the organisational impact on culture, business processes and technology. Typically, when most people talk about digital they think about digital engagements and more specifically how you serve customers in their channel of choice. But digital transformation is more than just engagement – it is about digital services, how you drive innovation into the market, utilise new business models, and achieve competitiveness in a dynamic market. And, we believe there are different strategies to achieve these transformation objectives, ranging from full business transformations to horizontal digital experience transformation and down to individual channel digitalisation programmes. KW: CSPs must change because digital transformation is a journey – something you cannot stop at once you get there. What is the right digital transformation pathway CSPs should consider? SB: We believe that every digital transformation journey is unique to the CSP, because it is a business transformation and not just an IT system transformation. That being said, we do believe that CSPs must look at their overall objectives and decide how to approach the transformation. We equally believe that it is critical to set milestones along the path to transformation in order to bring value to the business stakeholders and drive an overall change within the business. CSPs follow more than one path towards digital maturity as each business has unique strengths and needs. We focus on supporting three different variations: Full business transformation, digital experience transformation, and digital channel augmentation. The digital experience transformation focuses on introducing omni-channel care and commerce capabilities to the CSP environment. Digital augmentation addresses the digitalisation of a single channel, such as digital or social, paving the way to future transformation and integration with additional channels.
KW: In the quest to help CSPs become more effective in a digitally transformed world, what makes your organisation's digital transformation approach different from others in the competitive solution supplier marketplace? SB: Amdocs is the leading provider of solutions to enable a CSP's digital transformation, by delivering some of the largest transformations in the world. A few of our differentiators include: • A holistic digital approach combining solutions for digital channels and the engagement layer, as well as driving the new digital organisation with intelligent business processes and new revenue streams. • Open, cloud-native solutions that enable business agility and faster time-to-market, with DevOps processes, and intelligence embedded across the offering. • A comprehensive and modular portfolio, enabling digital experiences across all engagement channels, and covering the full scope of digital for service providers – from engagement to network to BSS. • System agnostic approach enabling a digital experience transformation across existing BSS systems. • Core BSS expertise, bringing a deep understanding of complex, end-to-end telecoms processes and systems. KW: Gaining intelligence about the customer experience is a dynamic process and a richly rewarding business opportunity. How does intelligence – insight gained from customer experience and network operations data – impact the strategy of a CSP's digital transformation journey? SB: Intelligence is an integral part of every digital transformation, and it is often overlooked. As part of our digital enablement platform, we see intelligence in terms of: enabling the preferred mix of human to nonhuman based engagements, intelligent converting of care into commerce within every channel, utilising big data to drive personalisation, and taking advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. We believe that this needs to be considered from day one – as the CSP is defining the objectives of the programme, it needs to look at how they can make every part of their business and their engagement with the customer intelligent. A simple example is in utilising intelligence to drive non-human engagements. Most CSPs have strategies to drive 80-90% of their engagements with customers through non-human interfaces by 2020. To achieve this, they need to use the data they have to drive non-human interactions through applications, and finally to use machine learning to ensure their business continually grows smarter.
About Amdocs Digital Amdocs is a leading software and services provider to the world’s most successful communications and media companies. As our customers reinvent themselves, we enable their digital and network transformation through innovative solutions, delivery expertise and intelligent operations. Amdocs and its 25,000 employees serve customers in over 85 countries. Listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, Amdocs had revenue of US$3.7 billion in fiscal 2016. www.amdocs.com
IN ASSOCIATION WITH AMDOCS DIGITAL VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
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CASE STUDY
Three Ireland launches digital transformation with Amdocs Three Ireland moved to buyout larger rival Telefonica O2 Ireland for €850 million in June 2013. Following the completion of the acquisition, Three became Ireland’s second largest mobile operator with two million subscribers. In March 2016, Three commissioned Amdocs to lead its digital transformation to support its shift from being a large telco to an internet company offering connectivity and services. Amdocs is providing Three with retail, self-service and mobile applications, while also consolidating and modernising its IT operations, enabling Three to deliver a market-leading digital customer experience
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igital experience transformations target new engagements in stores, contact centres and across web, mobile and social channels. This approach aims to simplify underlying processes, introduce new modes of communication and provide contextual, omni-channel experiences for the digital customer lifecycle. By creating a sales experience similar to Amazon, it enables Three to meet its stated promises to customers.
The challenge Following the acquisition, Three had a number of challenges to address, including: • Difficulties in creating a consistent customer experience • Two portfolios of retail products that required changes with every new offering • Duplication of IT systems, which meant two sets of customers and two cost bases • Replacement of old systems
Three’s customer promises:
Amdocs as a strategic partner
1. Make ourselves future-ready
Three chose Amdocs because of the company’s experience in digital transformations globally, its leadership in the telecoms industry, and its track record of delivering on time and on budget. Three viewed the experience and benefit from Amdocs serving CSPs around the world as an advantage that would enable it to take advantage of best practices and previous lessons learned.
2. Make it easier for customers 3. Make their life better
Business goals
“Three aims continue to evolve and innovate with Amdocs by our side, working together, we will be very successful as a partnership,” says Stephen Reidy, the chief information officer at Three Ireland.
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The primary goals of Three’s digital transformation journey were to: 1. Offer a world-class customer experience, providing meaningful products while removing friction away from customers via digital engagements and omni-channel capabilities, while enabling the delivery of personalised experiences, offerings and rate plans 2. Achieve faster time-to-market, by transforming its IT infrastructure and simplifying business processes, ensuring that Three continues to be a leading player that is also innovative and cost effective 3. Implement a cost-savings strategy, providing substantial cost and operational efficiencies to reduce annual IT costs, enabling Three to continue to deliver attractive pricing to customers
Stephen Reidy
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Elaine Carey
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
Elaine Carey, the chief commercial officer at Three Ireland, adds: “Amdocs is very much a partnership, it is not a vendor, it’s not us and them environment, it is sitting at the table and working with us to deliver what is needed,” she says. “It is very much a three-way relationship in delivering a digitally transformed business in order to give us a unique differentiator in the marketplace.”
comprehensive, digital experience solution, using customer data, digital interactions and new engagement channels to capture the world of digital immediacy and rise to a new level of customer experience,” explains Eric Updyke, the group president of systems integration and operations at Amdocs.
The process The solution The solution includes digital retail, self-service and mobile applications and a full omni-channel experience for Three’s customers. Under a fiveyear managed services model, Amdocs is acting as lead systems integrator to consolidate and modernise IT systems across all lines of business to overcome system complexity, simplify business processes, provide substantial cost and operational efficiencies and enable the delivery of innovative offerings and rate plans for subscribers. “Amdocs software and services provide Three Ireland with a
The first step following the merger was to stabilise and upgrade the billing platform and move into new state-of-the-art data centres. The second phase launches the digital transformation process with the implementation of a single set of systems to allow faster time-to-market, consolidate business intelligence reporting and lower overall complexity. The third phase implements the digital applications to be used for retail, self-service and mobile channels, as well as executing on an omni-channel customer experience.“Having very clear KPIs that can be measured, so not just digitalising for digitalising’s sake,” was important adds Carey.
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Amdocs Digital Experience enables you to deliver a contextual omni-channel experience over the entire customer lifecycle via our digital enablement platform. It supports engagement with your digital customers in their channel of choice, harnessing the optimal mix of both human and non-human interactions, to meet even the most complex service demands. As such digital transformations can be implemented on top of any BSS, we provide the increased agility you need to continually and consistently deliver on your customer promises. Amdocs Digital Monetization helps service providers monetise the digital economy. Our solution enables digital service providers (DSPs) to quickly launch innovative new products and offers to market, and enrich them with partner offers and new business models. Realtime user controls put the power of charging at customers’ fingertips and deliver digital immediacy and personalisation.
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Amdocs Digital Intelligence aia is Amdocs' intelligence platform. It delivers a set of capabilities that are integrated across the portfolio to realize the vision of injecting intelligence into all parts of the service provider's business and the customer lifecycle. aia combines machine learning, artificial intelligence engines and cognitive capabilities from global partners and from recent acquisitions, along with Amdocs’ real-time data management platform and extensive telco-specific domain expertise. Technologies & Service Agility provides flexible solutions for different stages of digital transformation, delivered on top of any environment. Our cloud-native microservices based platform enables an always-on experience, maximising your business agility and time-to-market. For more information, visit: Amdocs Digital Experience Amdocs Digital Blog
IN ASSOCIATION WITH AMDOCS DIGITAL
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
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