The drive to innovate is evident in all industries. However, each sector faces its own set of unique challenges. Therefore, those seeking to support businesses in their innovation endeavours must adopt a holistic approach. This should not only be business-centric but should also consider current customer and vertical alignment needs to their approach. By understanding the specific outcomes each industry aims to achieve, the right technology can then be applied, leading to genuine business transformation, says Daniel Valle, senior vice president, GSP International, at World Wide Technology.
With this in mind, we conducted research with industry leaders across healthcare, manufacturing and transportation from FTSE 200 companies in order to better understand the challenges they face when innovating and how service providers can better offer support. From this, it was clear that service providers’ unrivalled connectivity combined with a clear understanding of businesses’ verticalised ambitions would lead to genuine and profound transformation within the organisations.
In this article, I will explore industry leader’s pain points, consider their vision for an innovative future and suggest investments that service providers can implement to support these ambitions.
1. Healthcare: Enhancing telemedicine services
Recent years have seen a significant increase in the telemedicine market, growing approximately 20% per year between 2018 and 2023 in the UK. This growth presents an opportunity for service providers to leverage technologies like 5G to improve the delivery of services and enable remote care, against a backdrop of the UK’s digital divide.
With many UK homes lacking fixed line access and thus stable internet connectivity, 5G-fixed wireless access could augment existing infrastructure across rural areas to enable remote care in rural areas through enhanced connectivity. The West Mercia Rural 5G project explored how mobile telemedicine could make the NHS more efficient through virtual appointments, quicker response times and reducing the costs, time and emissions from transport. Accessing treatment in the comfort of a familiar environment, either at home or a care home, also reduces stress and negative impacts on patients which is particularly important for patients with dementia.
Industry leaders are also anticipating that augmented reality (AR) will play a critical role in creating more effective treatments. AR could be used to support the delivery of remote patient assessments, staff training, and even assisting surgeons during complicated procedures. For example, a surgeon could utilise AR to overlay imaging data from a patient’s CT or MRI scans or utilise robotics, controlled by AR, for precise manoeuvres during operations.
2. Manufacturing: Upgrading existing technologies
The manufacturing sector is responsible for a huge share of research and development spending in the UK. Despite this investment in technology, our research found that the internal knowledge and skills needed to utilise it is lacking outside of the developers themselves. This results in higher costs and lower profits due to inefficiencies in the production process, as employees are not able to use the new technology to its full potential and can become wary of upgrades.
When it comes to upgrading existing platforms, predictive maintenance is already revolutionising the way that the manufacturing companies we interviewed are approaching equipment preservation. By identifying problems before they occur, businesses were able to reduce downtime. To effectively implement a predictive maintenance programme, better connectivity and edge computing technology are needed. For service providers, this is an opportunity to build use cases and platforms.
Through working with service providers to improve infrastructure, manufacturing businesses can further enhance efficiencies as possibilities to utilise AI and machine learning open up. Through these offerings, businesses can reduce incurred costs by using real-time data visualisation to predict potential faults or malfunctions.
Manufacturers investing in digital twins can also replicate a physical product or system virtually. For example, Siemens is using digital twins to simulate complex product design and production planning, optimising its manufacturing process.
3. Transportation: Investing in modernisation
With the transport industry’s compound annual growth rate expected to reach 9.5% into 2026, growth is now less of an immediate concern. Instead, sustainability has become a key area where transport businesses are under pressure to innovate, requiring wide-spread modernisation to existing systems and significant investment.
One area where industry leaders are looking to modernise is by helping their businesses to become interconnected and focused on collecting more accurate data. To achieve this, businesses will need to widely adopt IoT, AI, 5G and smart data analytics. Fortunately, service providers can support here providing smart data solutions that can help businesses better understand their own efficiencies. Smart data, utilising real time transportation data, can also create Prognostication Crash Maps which identify high-risk areas for drivers to avoid. This reduces risk and journey times.
Automation support is also crucial to helping the transport industry realise the potential of its smart technologies, industry leaders shared. For example, billions of dollars of investment has poured into autonomous driving in recent years, fuelling the demand for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS).
Next steps towards innovation
Service providers are in a unique position where they can play a vital role in empowering innovation for both businesses and customers. They can provide close access to customers along with an existing network of thousands of pop exchanges across the UK.
So, to successfully help businesses on their innovation journey, service providers must look to tailor their existing 5G and telecoms offering to industry verticals: an achievement which is only possible through understanding the industries these businesses operate in. Central to this understanding, is developing deep partnerships with these businesses to create tailored solutions that give them the knowledge, confidence and support to implement the right solutions.
The author is Daniel Valle, senior vice president, GSP International, at Word Wide Technology.
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