Speakers:

Amber Jackson, Senior Reporter, Capacity

Trey Willis, CTO, Connectbase 

There can be a disconnect between what businesses want versus what telcos can offer. However, there is also an opportunity for telcos to play an important role in the digital transformation of different industries like connected vehicles.

This Capacity Europe panel explored those evolving business requirements and the risks of not addressing customer needs. Speaking on these industry challenges, Connectbase CTO Trey Willis said: “It’s not really about the network itself. What we need to start to talk more about is how the service itself is purchased, how the transaction happens and then how it’s delivered.”

He stated the fundamental issue could be one of pace.

“We know that enterprises live in this kind of real-time digital economy. Well, the delivery mechanisms that get them there need to support that same real-time kind of pace,” he added. “So the connectivity business, though, too often still moves at more of an analogue pace, not quite in that automated real-time kind of pace.”

Enterprises, he noted, need networks that behave “more like a cloud service, perhaps, more on-demand, more automated in a way, more usage-orientated in that way and certainly to be much more transparent and programmable throughout all of those phases in the lifecycle.”

Are legacy systems holding back progress?

Willis was blunt about the impact of outdated infrastructure during the session, arguing that legacy billing and delivery models are holding back connectivity providers from addressing the gap that enterprises see now.

Notably, traditional contract-based billing and manual delivery mechanisms, he argued, “simply don’t fit a dynamic enterprise world at this point”.

The solution lies in modernisation, he explained.

“Things like real-time quote capabilities. Think about things like real-time payments or settlements activities that speed up that accounts payable or accounts receivable process and eliminate errors through trusted systems of truth,” Willis said.

“If you don’t start to really address the gaps to deal with those anchors that we talked about a moment ago, you run the risk of becoming a commodity.”

Real-world results

ConnectBase demonstrated tangible results from modernising this year, with Willis sharing an example where the company addressed location accuracy challenges for a client.

“By taking what was 25% of what we call ‘fallout’ in the business where they weren’t getting an opportunity to service their buildings or that customer, in about 90 days, we cut that fallout down 80% just by using more accurate data systems in a more API-driven, transparent way,” he explained.

With this success, Willis advised other businesses follow suit in a measured but committed approach – looking beyond conventional metrics to prioritise customer trust and confidence.

On implementation, Willis advocated a measured but committed approach. “Start where the most friction is or the most opportunity is,” he said. “I tell my team regularly, if you’re 92% of the way finished with a project or milestone, you’re 0% to your customer. They haven’t felt it yet.”

A call for industry vulnerability

The session called for the industry to embrace openness.

“Be vulnerable, be brave,” Willis shared. “There’s an interesting balance in this industry to maybe not share as much, so maybe they don’t share their footprint. Maybe they don’t quite share their products in the deepest sense. Maybe they don’t share their pricing in the deepest sense.”

But this reticence, he argued, is counterproductive. “I think too often we hold on to the data as if it’s uniquely special, and the honest truth is it’s not by itself,” he added. “It’s what you do with that data and turn it into information and then knowledge and do things about that to better service your customer.

“No one grows alone anymore. You just can’t do it fast enough.”

Looking ahead, Willis highlighted just how urgent transformation is.

“Connectivity powers the operating system of the digital world. I think that’s a matter of fact,” he said. “The next decade really of breakthroughs and innovations really are dependent on the connectivity industry in the same way or more so, which is all the more reason that this transformation is really important to start now.”