Page 112 - SAMENA Trends - September 2019

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

Digitalization will play a to assess their risk appetite as well as up from 56 million just five years ago. After
studying 172 million interactions, Crowd
market conditions before committing to
big role in managing Sales such changes. The other way to make this Analyzer came to conclusion that Middle
and Distribution system transition is to wrap the legacy telecom East’s youth were using social platforms
much more effectively systems and processes with new digital to discuss brands, lifestyle, business &
capabilities as well as new digital thinking
politics. One of the findings Twitter has
for real time tracking which will catalyse them into digital service the highest penetration globally in Saudi
of sales, inventory, new providers. In order to make this transition Arabia and Saudis use YouTube on a per
the operator will have to bring digital
capita basis more than any other country
product launch, effective transformation across its entire telco value globally. 56% of MENA’s population –
utilization of feet on street chain consisting of discovery, acquisition, regularly use the Internet well above the
and incentivization of the fulfilment & distribution, servicing and world’s average and in some of the smaller
retention. Secondly, it will have to put
GCC countries it is 90%.
channels. the digital enablers in the backend for
making the digital transition. So, it will As these digital behaviours get
these interfaces for Customer Lifecycle need a renewed building blocks (discovery, strengthened and reinforced in time,
Management. acquisition, fulfilment, servicing, retention), telecom companies will have to build new
as well as digital enablers to magnify BSS capabilities which would allow them to
Going forward even Customer Care capabilities. acquire and reach out to customers on
Systems would need to interface with these new digital channels.
Social Media interfaces to be able to serve Building Block for CSP transformation
the customers on the interfaces of their For many years SMS, IVR, & USSD were While traditional acquisition channels like
choice. the primary channels for discovering new email, POS, & website content are efficient
services. The popularity and high open in their own right, they are not aligned to
Similarly service delivery systems will also rates of SMS allowed telecom operators the digital needs of today’s customer who
need to evolve to support new age Digital to push messages on the basis of some have a digital first agenda on their mind.
Services partners and content/service predetermined rules or triggers based For example, in today’s world where digital
delivery by use of new age technologies in on context. Similarly, IVR provided a first companies like Amazon, Uber are
AI/ML, AR/MR/VR, Facial Recognition, low convenient way to search operator bringing markets right into the customer’s
latency simulcast, multi-player gaming or databases for information. USSD also home and on their mobile, why should
eSports etc provided a medium to the customers the customer have to go to their retailer
to extract information from telecom for something as simple as a top-up or a
Similar capabilities will be needed in databases with hash codes. recharge?
the backend systems mentioned above
to support smart speakers, which will However, with MENA customers spending In order to cater to these customers,
be another channel that customers of more time on social channels like telecom companies have to bring new
tomorrow will use heavily for their needs. twitter, Facebook, Instagram, telecom capabilities like digital marketplace,
Digitalization will play a big role in companies are realizing very quickly IoT enablement, e-kyc, multi-channel
managing Sales and Distribution system that they can no longer depend on these management. A digital marketplace would
much more effectively for real time traditional channels for driving customer allow the customer to add new services to
tracking of sales, inventory, new product engagement. To understand the shifting their product from any device, any location
launch, effective utilization of feet on street nature of customer engagement, one at any time of their choosing. One of the
and incentivization of the channels. has only to look at the latest Hootsuite & roadblocks of MENA’s e-commerce is
Traditional CSPs who have succeeded in APCO worldwide data, according to which the lack of access to a broad and deep
making the digital pivot will have the same Facebook is the most dominant platform selection of products amply made clear
set of unique digital capabilities that are in the Middle East, with 180 million users, by Souqs 8.4 million products compared
the cornerstone and hallmark of success
in today’s digital ecosystem.

Making the transition
One could approach this transition in two
different ways. Firstly, replace existing
legacy systems with a robust digital
core allowing the operator to offer digital
services just like any other digital service
providers. Since this approach will be
driven by big ticket investments, and a
long gestation period, the operators will’ve

112 SEPTEMBER 2019