Telco to Techo with our Center of Excellence

It's tough, but lets make it easier – amplifying the Telco to Techo journey

Changes in the IT landscape create opportunities for Telco (Operators) to transition to Techo’s. Many telecommunication businesses have already identified the opportunity for driving technology solutions to their customers.

This not only enables the Telco to unlock new revenue streams –, but let me highlight that this revenue stream works completely different from traditional GSM and mobile services and event access services (LTE, Wireless, Fibre) – the base points for running technology solutions.

?With the coverage that Telco across Africa are reaching, the opportunity for offering technology to their large customer bases brings new value-add and revenue streams to help businesses of all sizes to adopt technology under one roof.

In addition, the opportunity of positioning technology solutions to bring a wealth of new value propositions and enhance the digital transformation experience for consumer and business customers is key.

?But where to start?

The telco-to-techco journey involves a couple of key steps in order to become successful. The simplicity of this journey will depend on the route our Telco decision makers take – executive sponsorship is critical.

Let’s consider that driving technology and cloud solutions to customers is different from what Telco’s are used to offering. This includes enabling annuity-based revenue streams, understanding the complexity of billing and price management as well as giving the customer a smart way to transact via intelligent platforms.

The process can be long and sometimes cumbersome, streamlined or fast. Now when I say fast, in my experience it can be as fast as getting the Go-to-Market and starting the execution in 3 months, however, in most cases, we have seen this take Telcos 12 to 18 months and sometimes longer by this time the market and technology need has moved on.

?The starting point would be for telcos to realign their strategies. The ultimate decision-making sits with internal and senior stakeholders sponsoring the product, sales, and operational teams to kick off the prioritization and activities to drive these new ambitions through alignment. These activities require the enablement of sales teams and the involvement of these teams from day one to find success.?

?Many telcos may choose not to shift their focus and incorporate productivity and cloud technologies to their customers, however, those who are seen differently – have an edge when it comes to becoming a one-stop-shop for customers.

Furthermore, this assumed opportunity for positioning bundles including a phone, tablet, or laptop with key productivity software is seen as very attractive and seamless to customers.

As part of this shift, telcos are re-examining their strategies toward their telecommunications infrastructure, such as their large portfolios of towers and the infrastructure that supports them. While many have opted to keep their tower portfolios in-house, more telcos are looking to sell their portfolios to a specialist tower company (tower), and then lease them back.

?Three key considerations:

·????????Changes associated with the spending methods from customers and the impact these pose across functions in the telecom’s operator business.

·????????A clear view of the Telco’s aspirations and profit expectations to be considered associated with GP.

·????????The telco-to Techo transformation implications from a capex and opex trends

·????????Effectively managing the activation and consumption of technologies sold to the customers.

·????????Do you not want to add in the data, IE telco customer intelligence?

First Distribution has a unique Telco value proposition. With the support of Microsoft Africa Transformation Office (ATO) we have successfully built out a Telco Center of Excellence (COE) where we kickstart the delivery of delivering technology solutions with the Telco to their customers.

Firsts Distributions objective is to support both vendors and Telco’s across Pan-Africa to scale and pivot the positioning and activation and consumption of productivity and cloud technologies to consumers as well as small, medium, and corporate business customers.

Is there a cost implication to the Telco transitioning into a Techco?

There is no reason for the techco to heavily invest upfront in positioning technology solutions like productivity, cloud to their customers. First Distribution enables the knowledge share, aggregation platforms, and price management. Working closely with Telco’s stakeholders throughout the journey to success.

<Natasha Bezuidenhout - Business Executive 23082022>