The Rx for transformation is CX

Telcos need to understand the changing enterprise business landscape and come up with new products and services to stay relevant in the market

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

A panel at TLF 2023 dissected many new-age factors like creating the foundation of secure, agile, and adaptable networks; adoption of multi-access edge computing; use of automation and AI, analytics, and programmable software capabilities; and providing an immersive experience.

Moderator Anil Chopra, VP and Head, CyberMedia Research set the ball rolling on a lot of these issues. He asked the most important question first – What does the customer want, especially after the changes in the last 2-3 years, with an explosion of data volume, and new possibilities with the 5G?

SPEED OF RETAIL, CLASS OF ENTERPRISE

Arun Karna, Managing Director and CEO, AT&T India answered that first by painting a picture; thanks to the rapid adoption of digital technologies, enterprises have got more distributed and expanded to the edge. “The WFH environments have also increased the need to provide secure and reliable access for enterprise applications. And these applications reside mostly in the Cloud. So, there is a push towards multi-cloud environments and SaaS-based apps, which is creating a new complexity and dynamic scenario,” he said.

“This is the perfect storm with some fall-out effects like rampant security concerns, a vast threat surface, rising customer expectations, and the need for instant access in enterprise scenarios. Cloud providers, collaborative providers and hyper-scalers are the new competition for telcos. Hence, telcos have to frame their strategies differently, as a network-centric technology solutions provider.”

He explained how telcos need to come up with a different set of product and service mixes and rethink customer and supplier relationships, invest more and more in innovation, upskill technology function, invest in platform-centric businesses – and make the customer experience better, simpler and more intuitive.