Keith Willetts is chairman and founder of TM Forum, which works across multiple industries to enable the digital services chain. Originally established as an organisation to set best practices and standardisation for the back offices of telecoms operators, the Forum is now addressing the demands of an increasingly complex digital value chain – and the relationships of all the parties involved. Here, Willetts tells VanillaPlus how the Forum is working to help companies transform to a digital business through its upcoming TM Forum Live! events and new How To Guides
VanillaPlus: With transformation ongoing, both in terms of network technologies and also enabling technologies such as network functions virtualisation and software defined networks, what shape do you see the industry formerly known as telecoms taking?
Keith Willetts: The digital world is the biggest rock in the pond that any business will face – the paradox for telecoms operators is that they are simultaneously a key enabler of the digital world but also being impacted by it. But transforming to a digital business is much more fundamental than absorbing new technologies – it’s about really putting the customer at the heart of your business; about being very agile; very innovative and using technologies such as big data analytics – not just to support your existing business but putting IT at the centre of your operations.
At our TM Forum Live! event on 2-5 June 2014 in Nice, France we’ll be focusing on these kinds of topics as well as the operational implications of advances such as virtualisation.
We’ll also be launching the first two in our series of How To Transform guides.
These are: How To Transform to a Digital Business aimed at CEOs and business leaders and How To Create an Agile Business, which looks at how to transform operations to create very flexible, fast moving and low cost operational infrastructure using advanced IT.
VP: Is publication of these guides symptomatic of a zeal within the Forum to educate not just the telecoms industry but all those in the digital services industry?
Keith Willetts: Yes. The telecoms industry is a key enabler of the digital world that is allowing the creation of huge numbers of new types of service provider in numerous industry sectors around the world. They may provide very different services but all share many of the same operational challenges and all need to cooperate in a broad ecosystem. The Forum has the structure, expertise and tools to help both our existing members and a growing range of new service providers.
VP: How far outside their comfort zones are all the new dynamics of digital services taking your traditional CSP membership?
Keith Willetts: Well they are certainly being stretched in multiple ways. We initially saw a focus on cost reduction, then a growing interest in improving the customer experience. Now we are seeing a realisation that’s not nearly enough and becoming much more agile, moving rapidly, becoming much more innovative, learning how to partner in a value chain, being easier to do business with; creating value from data engagement are all vital success factors in the digital world.
The degree of change needed depends on where their current competencies are and what their market focus is going to be – for example whether they are going to be an infrastructure-based player; how are they going to go to market? Are they going to go into the apps space themselves, or go out through other companies’ routes to market?
There’s opportunity in enterprise applications that has to have a quality of service and support, and that’s something CSPs can provide. The internet of things and the multi-billions of connected devices offer real opportunities but you have to be in shape to grab these, not just watch others take market leadership. In a digital world, where competitors are just a click away, you have to change the way your business works and move quickly without having all of the answers.
VP: Is it still valid for CSPs to set themselves apart from other organisations in the digital world or should they recognise their role as a constituent part of a far wider value chain?
Keith Willetts: Communications are a fundamental enabler of the digital world and of course they are a critical component of that wider value chain. But really understanding that means that people who use your infrastructure are partners and customers, not the enemy as many still see over-the-top providers.
Transformation to a digital world is inevitable for every business on the planet – all businesses are affected in some shape or form and CSP’s need to be very clear about which part, or parts of the value chain they choose to play in. Are they focused in being a key enabler of other people’s applications or content services or are they the provider of applications and content as well? There’s a conflict between those two positions and that clouds decision making.
To broaden some of the thinking, TM Forum Live! is welcoming a number of non-telecom keynotes and speakers such as Michael Harte, group executive, enterprise services and CIO, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Albert Hitchcock, the CIO at Pearson.
The real heart of the Forum with over 900 member companies and tens of thousands of individual professionals from across the world is the ability to tap into their collective knowledge and experience to offer that pragmatic advice on how to transform. That where our How To Guides come into play.
VP: Is your message that the TM Forum encompasses the entire digital services arena getting through to your traditional CSP membership and is it a welcome message?
Keith Willetts: Yes, I think we are largely pushing on an open door. People are very rapidly realising that topics such as being customer centric; becoming more agile, virtualisation, big data, partnering, APIs and so on are not just issues for the telecoms industry. In fact, in many cases, telecoms has a lot to learn from other industry sectors as well as a lot to give.
VP: Do you think you can bring the traditionalists with you?
Keith Willetts: Of course many people inside telecoms operators are still doing fairly traditional network, service and revenue management jobs and want to do them better, faster and cheaper and we will continue to provide them with first rate support. But their jobs and their companies are changing fast and we need to broaden and deepen the range of topics we cover and at the same time embrace the broadening ecosystem that’s rapidly developing. To be brutally honest, those that don’t come on the journey into the digital world are probably not going to be around in a few years – they’ll be eaten up in a Pac-Man like industry consolidation where the strong consume the laggards.
There are lots of examples of companies who left it too late to transform and who hit a point of no return when you are leaking so much revenue that you don’t have resources to transform anymore. You keep pedalling faster and faster doing the same thing but in effect you’re already dead. Transforming quickly is the key to survival and growth.
VP: It’s not just CSPs that face the transformation challenges of the digital world, though, is it?
Keith Willetts: Absolutely. The focus of the Forum, TM Forum Live! and our How To Guides reflect that challenge. The telecoms industry is still a very big and very profitable market but we’re feeling the winds of change. And although we’re only in the foothills of the digital world, already major industries such as music, video and publishing have changed beyond recognition and companies from retailers to insurance, to manufacturers to farming, education and transport are all being disrupted by revolutions in the digital world. Some will get it and emerge stronger and bigger, some will leave it too late and disappear.
Nevertheless a window of opportunity to change exists, but it takes strong and inspired leadership to drive a company in a new direction. Our aim is to help and support the transformation process for any type of service provider and we have geared up our resources like our events and publications to help with the transformation.
