Cloud imperative in Communications
October 22, 2020
RESEARCH REPORT
In brief
In brief
- With epic disruption across the communications industry, Communications Service Providers (CSPs) can no longer afford to ignore the power of the cloud.
- In the short and medium term, it can provide the resilience to survive disruptions and meet new demands for faster speed and better connectivity.
- Long term, it can mean product and services modernization, new user experiences, lean, efficient operations, and intelligent digital infrastructures.
- We explore the current context, challenges, critical steps and business growth opportunities for CSPs as they accelerate their move to the cloud.
CSPs are in the eye of the storm
In the past decade, technology-driven disruption has affected all industries, but it hasn’t played out evenly for everyone. The communications industry is in the very eye of the current storm, with digitalization changing nearly every aspect of the industry and, in the process, completely redefining what communications companies need to do – and be – to simply survive, let alone thrive.
But traditional CSPs face a massive challenge in responding, and so far, they’re struggling. While they’ve been very successful in the past, most aren’t equipped to compete with the highly agile and efficient new entrants that can quickly develop, test, and roll out new products and services to customers hungry for innovation – and do so at a much lower cost.
Substantial opportunity amidst disruption
Amidst the tide of economic and social shocks, there’s usually a flurry of frantic innovation and evolution. In this case, more than ever, technology will be at the center of transformation, as companies adjust to the new social and economic norms – reinventing themselves and their operating model and rethinking how they make money.
For CSPs, this is an unbelievable opportunity – a chance to execute the transformation they’ve long talked about and become more central, and more relevant, to our modern society.
Cloud will be the linchpin of not only achieving a new economic sustainability, but also completely new processes, operating model, organization, and products and services.
Cloud as the foundation
By harnessing the cloud, CSPs can capitalize on emerging opportunities, with the ability to:
Accelerate automation of digital channels
This will enable CSPs to deliver resilient and high-performing customer interactions; scale up or out in real time; reduce transaction costs; provide consistent, engaging, and flexible user journeys; and ultimately drive up net promoter score (NPS) through better personalization and interaction.
Leverage the trust factor to expand into the home
The global pandemic has reinforced the fact that the home is a critical fixture in our lives, and CSPs have the chance to offer Future Home services to make connected living a reality. Such personalized services – enabled by 5G, cloud, security, artificial intelligence (AI), and edge computing – are built on top of CSPs’ own or third parties’ capabilities.
Reignite relevance in the SMB segment
CSPs have a big opportunity to help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) drive their economic recovery through extended services in commerce, online collaboration communication, and security. Cloud brings SMB customers closer to the CSP, building connections between systems and partners, creating agility, and fostering rapid innovation.
Build the intelligent enterprise
By transforming data into insights across the enterprise, CSPs can become more agile and achieve sustainable growth. The cloud provides the pre-requisites for an intelligent enterprise architecture, leveraging intelligent technologies such as AI, machine learning (ML), IoT, and analytics to help the workforce focus on higher-value outcomes.
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Where to start and where it matters most?
As companies consider a move to the cloud, one of the most common – and important – questions we hear is, “Where do we start?” Accenture’s Cloud Assessment Framework can help give CSPs the answer.
The framework is primarily a combination of readiness (how prepared a company is for cloud adoption) and transformation potential (the company’s ability to re-imagine and reinvent), underpinned by innovation enablers (the increased leverage of data and ecosystem the cloud unlocks).
The framework also identifies the business impact of cloud adoption in three key dimensions:
- Top-line growth through new ways of working, partnering, serving clients, and monetizing;
- Cost and efficiency by shifting CAPEX to OPEX, and gaining cost flexibility and savings;
- Accelerated innovation in both the core business and in IT.
Looking just at the benefit of accelerated innovation, the cloud unlocks progressively bigger and more strategic business benefits along a CSP's transformation journey, ultimately enabling a complete reinvention of the business.
Unlocking the power of the cloud
The pressure is truly on for CSPs to change. They must move quickly from a relic of the past, to an enterprise that can innovate quickly and efficiently, and can capitalize on the huge wave of demand for 5G-related offerings that’s waiting to be unleashed. As owners of these powerful new 5G networks, CSPs are in a unique position to play a big role – but only if they can transform from connectivity provider to an orchestrator of value-added solutions that meet the needs of an entirely new breed of customers.
The cloud is the fundamental driver of this transformation and CSPs need to fully embrace it. Their future depends on it.
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