Best of breed or best of suite, what is the best mix to create great business value?

Different times and opportunities ask for different solutions. Within the Telco industry (one of the initial subscription focused industries) the opinion on what is best has changed over time.

Starting as a best of breed industry to coop with the changing business needs and new services, that were introduced in the early days, the preference shifted to implementing large best of suite solutions. As many components as you could get from one vendor was the way forward, getting away from all the complexity of integrating different vendors, maintaining their platform and complexity of aligning road maps to introduce new services, commercial offers and features.

Best of suite was the way to improve time to market for standard offering launch and reduce cost, the down side of not having the best component for every job was a compromise most companies were happy to take.

This approach led to large, long projects with a high failure rate and in many cases spending more than double the original intended budget. Projects that only started to deliver very basic implementations after more than 24 months were and in some cases still are normal.

Now we are on a new cross road again and companies have to rethink their platform strategy once more. Traditional Telco is declining and operators are looking into new revenue streams. 5G and IoT will bring new opportunities, either in just selling connectivity but most likely more in selling new / additional end to end services and experiences. The current platforms are completely build around the mobile subscriber or fixed line requirements and do not really support these new services in their data model. As a result of this operators will have to integrate alternative solutions into their network but with their best of suite solutions, focused on integration of components of the same supplier, this is not an easy thing to do.

New solutions are required to allow operators to shift their business models from traditional Telco to new services. A new way of thinking is required to prevent operators having to launch long and expensive programmes that will only prepare them for the future when the future is there already, missing out on the early opportunities that will determine the market for years to come.

Telco operators will have to transform into Service providers, where service has to be seen in the widest sense of the word. Any type of service and any combination of services to create unique propositions improving both the customer experience as the bottom line of the company. These Service providers will not only come from Telco operators but also come from Utility companies, Insurance companies, Car manufacturers and many other industries moving into this subscription market.

Moving their solutions to cloud, using open API integration frameworks, connect to eco systems of small(er) service providers that create instant business value and allow the new Service providers to trial and error launching new services to reinvent themselves is required.

Service providers need a flexible product catalogue, sales process, customer management and invoicing platform that forms the heart of their business. This platform allows them with strong integration and provisioning capabilities to integrate to any 3rd party service they require to create their bespoke proposition. It is no longer about selling only your own assets but much more about how do you use your assets combined with external ones to create the right proposition for your customer base.

As a result of this a hybrid model between a core, smaller best of suite integrated to a large system of best of breed services and solutions will appear.

Service providers will have to design effective strategies to start their transformation to this hybrid model today to be able to serve their customers tomorrow