Working with a trusted partner can help operators focus on their core business during complex digital transformation projects.
With over 50% of telco CEOs seeing digital transformation as a business requirement going forward, CIOs are now already spending upwards of 1/5 of their budget on a broad range of digitalisation efforts in order to achieve improved technology and operational efficiency as well as more cost-effective ways to deliver services faster and cheaper, says Paul Hughes, director, Strategy, Netcracker Technology.
In recent surveys from Price Waterhouse Coopers and Colman Park, the impact of digital transformation highlighted stress points on both existing operation and technology demands. Data showed that 73% of telco CEOs see skill shortages as a threat to their businesses, and 1/3 claim that the majority of their budget is used to maintain existing systems and services, which critically prevents them from implementing digital service provider strategies. With operational restrictions creating an expensive barrier to success, it’s imperative for telcos to look for strategic partners to handle responsibilities and distribute the existing stress of change.
As economic and cost challenges increase in the 5G era, operators can always shift away from a CapEx investment approach to an OpEx services based approach, adopting a managed services strategy via a third party that can offer economic benefits, both in terms of cost of delivery, and operational efficiency. For many operators, the economic advantages of managed services supersede the longer term investments of in-house based transformations.
Below are four of the key benefits that make managed services a potentially preferred choice for operators that want to transform their business but avoid any slowdowns or bottlenecks from existing legacy infrastructure or processes.
Day-to-day management of IT solution usage and operations
As transformation forces operators to evolve their daily processes, the shift in technology creates a required shift of operations that aligns with the new technology strategy and roll out. In certain cases, the ability to leverage technology supplier expertise to guarantee a successful transformative outcome can extend to using domain experts that operate and manage the new infrastructure. This helps ensure a successful day-to-day operation.
Faster access to upgraded business processes and applications.
Complementing the day-to-day operations, managed services brings a new layer of expertise that helps ensure that all new technology value is maximised, new business processes are more efficient, and new applications are used to their highest effectiveness.
Dedicate resource allocation for tuning, upgrades, security and related optimisation needs
For many operators, system upgrades and patches are often seen as potential risks to technology or business continuity, requiring allocations of resources to ensure faultless operations. This may take resources away from other operational areas, reducing their effectiveness. Shifting all responsibilities to a managed services provider provides a service level guarantee that operations remain optimal, updates and patches are implemented smoothly, and critical resources can maintain their existing critical business functions.
Partner delivered solutions bring significantly reduced risk
With technology expertise comes the ability to optimise the technology stack. Embedded and partner-based applications become part of the operational structure, and their value is maximised. As operators grow their focus on new business verticals while trying to stay hypercompetitive in their traditional markets, managed services offers the ability to help renew focus on developing the business and letting the IT technology partners focus on just that…the technology.
The author of this blog is Paul Hughes, director, Strategy, Netcracker Technology
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