EXPERTS, who gathered at the 62nd edition of the Digital Jewels’ Information Value Chain Forum held in Lagos, recently have identified new business opportunities for players in the sector.
The forum, which had its theme as: “Telco 2.0: The Game Changer”, featured, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Techno Vision, Tomi Davies; Senior Vice President/Divisional Head Retail Banking, First City Monument Bank, Olu Akanmu; Vice President, VAS Bharti Airtel, Francis Ebuehi; and Director of Information Services Ntel, Basit Arogundade.
It was moderated by the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer Digital Jewels Limited, Adedoyin Odunfa.
According to them, Telco 2.0 is a game changer as Internet Protocol has accelerated the maturity of many growth markets, stressing that the disruption was already causing concern in the telecommunications industry for operators and their partners.
Odunfa introduced Telco 2.0 as a multi-sided business model with the telecommunication operator at the centre, acting as an enabler between upstream partners (software developers, content providers, consumers, public sector and vertical industries) and downstream private and enterprise customers.
She stressed that the phenomenon changes the game for not just the telecommunications companies but the entire ecosystem inclusive of financial institutions, payment, technology and FMCG companies, among others.
Indeed, as they struggle with the harsh realities of the shift from being predominantly voice-centric to data-centric businesses, Arogundade said telecommunication companies now find themselves facing rapidly changing consumer behaviours and powerful new types of competitors who are investing heavily in infrastructure without a clear payback.
In addition, he said the firms operate under less benign regulatory environment, which constrains their actions, while they are being milked for dividends by shareholders, unable to invest in innovation.
In his own intervention, Akanmu, former Chief Marketing Officer of Airtel Nigeria, said the challenge of transformation of the telecommunication company was not just about the technology, but a challenge of leadership and strategic management. He recalled the sale of IBM to Lenovo, a transaction that was led by Louis Gerstner, who brought to bear his strategic leadership, customer-oriented sensibility and strategic-thinking expertise. Recognising that his first priority was to stabilise the company, Akanmu explained that Gerstner adopted a triage mindset and took quick, dramatic action. Other challenges, identified by Akanmu, were poor boundary access across board and poor collaboration between the private and the public sectors.
Davies said that the opportunity areas included core services; which will redefine the customer experience for telecoms through improvement of core product portfolio, more engaging marketing, leveraging of online sales channels, enhanced customer interaction and customer care.
Others, according to him, are vertical industry solutions, which will extend from telecommunications into IT and networking for corporate clients, and infrastructure services, which will expand and extend to wholesale and corporate offerings from network to infrastructure services such as mobile offload, and data centre capabilities to other operators and to corporate customers.
Davies said that other prospects include embedded communications, which will enhance communication-enabled business processes, voice and messaging integration, M2M and embedded mobility connectivity. Another is third-parties business enablers such as identify and authentication; marketing and advertising; as well as payments and customer care.
Exploring the transformation of the business model opportunities, Ebuehi pointed out that telecommunication firms collectively have assets that can impact consumer behaviour, secure distribution networks, sophisticated payment processing capabilities, trusted brands, a near universal subscriber base, as well as core voice and messaging products.
To realise a new business model opportunity, he said these assets must be re-organised, pointing out that a ‘two-sided’ telecoms market structure is required where telecommunication companies facilitate improved interactions and transactions between people and organisations. The firms must continue to attract retail consumers and satisfy their needs, he said.
In addition, they should extend the capabilities of their traditional consumer products to explicitly support enterprise business processes. To achieve that, Ebuehi said they would need to create open and standardised platforms that third party organisations can plug their enterprise IT and communications systems into – just as they plug into the telephone and Internet networks.
The forum is a quarterly gathering of ICT professionals. It provides a platform for knowledge sharing, information exchange and networking for executives as they climb the corporate ladder. This interactive session helps executives to keep abreast of pertinent trends on increasingly important issues which can affect their individual and corporate competitiveness.
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