Tales of Digital Transformation: Making the Leap to Cloud
Despite the complex challenges associated with business transformation, the goals are not out of reach with consolidated, cloud-based systems.
Back-office infrastructure that service providers use for operations like ordering, billing and customer care have struggled to evolve so much that they have oftentimes been forced to multiply as business needs shifted. In a large operator, it’s common to run into 10 or more billing systems, with IT infrastructure investments increasing exponentially.
A 2017 survey of 100 global operators by ICT Intuition revealed that 76 percent intend to convert to cloud-based BSS by 2020. But converting numerous ordering, billing and CRM systems to a standardized, cloud-based solution is a risky proposition.
Thankfully, Netcracker’s pre-integrated solution can replace numerous legacy OSS and BSS domains, including customer care, self-service, ordering, product management, point-of-sale, billing, mediation, collections and partner management, among others. The ultimate goal for many operators is to implement standardized BSS operating processes and solutions that support all customers and services in any region.
Calculated Risk of Doing Nothing
Making the leap from multiple legacy solutions to a single cloud-based BSS platform is certainly a dramatic move. But when faced with multiple, standalone, inaccurate BSS solutions, the greater risk is doing nothing. In the era of 5G networks, IoT, SDN/NFV and evolving business services, most service providers cannot afford to sit back and wait any longer.
Across operators, time-to-market for new services still regularly exceeds one month, with more than half unable to launch offerings in fewer than three months. In addition, the costs of maintaining and operating so many diverse systems are steadily increasing, as is the number of errors being encountered. Add to that the growing scarcity of IT skills and an increase in order fallout, and change becomes not only necessary but inevitable.
The question, then, is how? Business, sales, marketing and support organizations within operators are frustrated with the slow pace of transformation that is preventing them from building new services and bringing them quickly and profitably to market. A fully integrated BSS stack available in the cloud accelerates transformation, increases flexibility, reduces time-to-market and improves reliability.
Rolling out cloud-based solutions and acquiring a single, fully-integrated back-office IT stack as a service may seem like a paradigm shift…because for many, it is. That being said, working with a strategic, market-proven and experienced partner can help service provider, even large-scale Tier-1 operators, transform to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving digital economy.