Survey: Telcos becoming digital service providers
February 10, 2016
Findings from a survey by CSG International, a global provider of interactive transaction-driven solutions and services, reveal that projecting over the next three years, the majority of Communications Service Providers (CSPs) said that offering digital services and transforming their business to become a Digital Service Provider (DSP) had the most potential to increase top-line revenue, with 28 per cent of respondents ranking it as the number one revenue growth area. The majority of service providers surveyed (52 per cent) indicated that most of their service offerings are digital today.
CSG conducted its survey, Transforming for Digital, designed to understand how CSPs are transforming their businesses better to support digital services, in partnership with Pipeline Market Research, polling approximately 100 CSPs worldwide to determine the current state, opportunities and challenges on the path to becoming DSPs.
CSPs worldwide said they are taking action on several initiatives to move business transformation forward over the next three years, including updating business processes (69 per cent); improving the customer experience across devices (62 per cent); improving technical resources pool (54 per cent); and updating IT and BSS technologies (52 per cent). In addition, the majority of respondents indicated they will be investing in creating a differentiated multi-device experience (69 per cent).
“While CSPs cited offering services across devices as a key investment area, they also acknowledged that there is much work to be done to align systems and processes to create a truly differentiated digital service experience,” said Ken Kennedy, chief technology officer at CSG International. “We believe that the combination of cloud-based systems that provide a faster route to monetising digital services along with specialised expertise in aligning processes, systems and resources are the keys to transforming the entire organisation to fully capture the revenue opportunities of the digital era.”
The survey also revealed that CSPs are not alone in their transformation initiatives. Almost all respondents said that a specialised managed service provider could help their organisation improve technology and business process, optimise existing systems to make the most of the technology investments, and align business processes to better support digital service initiatives. In addition, CSPs cited a third party’s ability to free internal resources to focus on innovation, with a significant portion (13 per cent) saying they would recover more than 50 per cent of their team’s time to focus on innovation.