Digital technologies are transforming industries worldwide, and as 5G deployments ramp up, communication service providers are increasing their strategic focus on enterprises to accelerate revenue growth. Here, we reveal the key capabilities that service providers need to capture industry digitalization opportunities, and identify the most critical places to start.
From transport and logistics to healthcare, the digitalization of industries is beginning to unfold across the world. Leading service providers are in a strong position to capture new business opportunities associated with this digital transformation, and efforts to capture a piece of the enterprise market are mounting. However, there is still a long way to go. To maximize the value from these opportunities, service providers must quickly become more focused and determine their strategic ambition beyond mobile broadband in targeted industries. Furthermore, strategy execution is becoming increasingly important to succeed.
To understand exactly what execution capabilities service providers must build to successfully capture these industry digitalization opportunities we recently conducted a new global study:.Capturing business opportunities beyond mobile broadband. The study points to clear gaps in the readiness to build the most essential business and operational capabilities, which act as barriers to attaining service providers’ strategic ambition beyond mobile broadband. To close these gaps, it is crucial to identify where to start and take action immediately. Here, we outline the key insights from the report.
Embrace industry digitalization to accelerate revenue growth
Looking ahead, service providers’ revenues from existing business, mainly driven by connectivity, are expected to remain close to stagnant. However, many service providers globally foresee growth opportunities in leveraging 5G to solve enterprise pain points. As a result, they are exploring new ways to capture a larger share of the potential global ICT revenue enabled by 5G – which, based on an analysis of ten specific industries, could be USD 700 billion by 2030. Service providers are increasingly focusing on B2B and B2B2X looking beyond connectivity. To build a strong position in the enterprise market, service providers must be prepared to work more closely with different ecosystems of partners, co-creating and exploring new business opportunities and use cases together.
Determine “where to play”
Today, service providers are predominantly prioritizing a few industries in the short term, although their strategic analysis of which industries and enterprises to target is often limited. Those which have not yet clearly identified “where to play” in the enterprise market and defined the strategy for approaching targeted industries need to make this their first priority.
Service providers should define a clear and consistent end-to-end digital strategy for the enterprise market, carefully considering short, mid and long-term targeted industry verticals and value chain positions based on a competitiveness analysis. To successfully execute this strategy, they must also efficiently develop execution capabilities across business, operations and technology domains.
Close your most critical capability gaps
Leading service providers acknowledge that they experience wide readiness gaps across primarily business and operational capabilities. These gaps are centered around their ability to engage, sell and deliver solutions to enterprise customers, to execute their strategies. As a result, they will struggle to establish a valuable position in the enterprise market if they do not immediately accelerate efforts to build key capabilities.
The Capturing business opportunities beyond mobile broadband study suggests that service providers should first prioritize the capabilities assessed as the most critical to develop, including:
Effective B2B and B2B2X go-to-market
Leadership and culture
Industry knowledge of targeted verticals
Skills
Service orchestration, assurance and automation
Remember that one size does not fit all
Service providers around the world are not the same, and their digital strategy must be adapted to suit their unique circumstances. Furthermore, the development of execution capabilities should reflect the strategic ambition. In this study, we have identified two potential strategic archetypes for service providers based on their strategic ambition beyond mobile broadband; service and platform enablers and end-to-end service providers. Depending on the preferred archetype, service providers need to focus more on strengthening certain capabilities to reach their target position.
Although the nature of the most critical capability gaps identified in the study are all complex and challenging to bridge, we believe it is fully feasible to achieve. However, it needs to be an evolutionary process starting with an honest assessment by the executive teams of service providers to identify their own capability gaps. It is our hope that this study can go a long way toward raising an awareness of these gaps and the key pain points. Understanding such challenges, what they mean and how to overcome them, will represent an essential stage in determining clear steps for the future.
Download the full study "Capturing business opportunities beyond mobile broadband" today to deep dive into these insights, and understand which five execution capabilities will make all the difference.
Source: Paper.li