As the pace of change accelerates in the Telecommunications industry, Telcos need to up their game. Traditional offerings that use outdated technology and approaches need to pave the way for advanced solutions that enable players to deal with the many uncertainties that come their way.
IoT and OTT services can empower Telcos with innovative and easy-to-use communication services while enabling them to offer services to customers at a much lower price.
The Challenges with Traditional Offerings for Telcos
With the number of digital customers expected to skyrocket globally, the demand for digital platforms for communication is set to surge over the next few years.
At the same time, as consumer behavior regarding traditional communication services changes, new players enter the market, and new technologies advance, the challenges with traditional offerings for telcos are many:
- Declining revenue: As telco offerings get commoditized, there are tremendous price drops year-on-year for the same offerings.
- Increasing cost: Even though price drops have to be made, technology has to be cutting-edge, and it must constantly evolve. For instance, Telcos have to constantly drive efforts in embracing new technologies like 5G – which increases the cost of operations.
- Increased competition: The move to digital models has several new companies entering the telco space, resulting in an increased competition that makes survival (and success) difficult.
- Reduced customer loyalty: With customers having so many new options to choose from, there is no longer stickiness with standard telco offerings, which puts customer loyalty in jeopardy.
- Regulatory/government pressure: As the industry gets increasingly regulated, there is immense regulatory and government pressure on pricing and operations, which makes it difficult for Telcos to drive revenue with their traditional core offerings alone.
Why IoT and OTT
The increasing number of companies entering the core telco market with innovative business models and technologies are introducing many challenges to Telcos with traditional offerings.
IoT and OTT services empower Telcos with the capabilities they need to efficiently manage every aspect of their business operations: from partner management to billing, invoicing to product bundling, revenue management to customer management, and more.
McKinsey estimates that IoT’s potential economic impact on factories will rise to as much as $3.7 trillion a year by 2025.
With IoT and OTT, Telcos can
- Open doors to newer revenue streams by reselling products from IoT partners and combining them with standard telco offerings. For example, pairing IoT services with smart home, health, or any other solution that needs live data or voice connection would benefit Telcos in enhancing their revenue.
- Increase stickiness with customers, especially enterprise customers, and ensure better loyalty and satisfaction. For example, a logistics company that gets truck tracking IoT solutions in addition to a data offering is more likely to remain a customer – thus reducing churn.
- As more and more objects get connected, they would need to send and receive data quickly and efficiently. The level of connectivity needed would further drive telco revenues, which will eventually improve the bottom-line.
Capitalize on the IoT and OTT opportunity
As digital proliferates the telecom industry, existing telcos find themselves struggling to drive revenue. Achieving YoY profits using traditional offerings in an environment that is fast-growing and expanding is almost impossible.
Building your own IoT and OTT services, partnering with existing players, or offering value-added IoT and OTT services are some ways to overcome these many challenges. They need to leverage the benefits of a unified billing ecosystem, real-time multi-party settlement, efficient commission management, and hybrid master catalog.
The OneBill Benefit
Cloud billing software company “OneBill” has over a decade of experience in pioneering and building cutting-edge revenue management solutions, enabling global Tier-1 organizations to efficiently manage billions of dollars in revenue.
In particular, OneBill’s Multi-Level Channel Management (MLCM) module offers the necessary building blocks to effectively manage business in the world of IOT, OTT and other multi-vendor/partner ecosystem. Some of the key features of the module is listed below:
- Unified billing ecosystem: One of the biggest benefits OneBill’s MLCM solution provides is having a unified billing ecosystem where all elements of efficiently managing partners are seamlessly integrated. Using MLCM, companies can bring all their resellers, distributors, partners and agents into one billing system to drive business with clear visibility and control.
- Real-time multi-party settlement: In a competitive business landscape where several stakeholders are involved in the sale process, OneBill paves the way for real-time multi-party settlement. Using OneBill’s MLCM, Companies can configure various settlement policies and processes for each partner along with multiple settlement modes depending on who is managing the end-customer. Platform also allows users to settle with relevant stakeholders in real-time avoiding lengthy reconciliation processes and disputes.
- Commission management: Companies can receive automated commissions based on an agreed set of rules and can create deals that are specific to each partner – whether it’s fixed commissions/fee or shared revenue model. They can define the process for each sale cycle and keep track of commissions in real-time while effectively managing and maintaining their cash flow.
- Hybrid master catalog: With OneBill’s MLCM solution, partners can create a Hybrid Version of the product catalog for a specific resale with unique product mix, price range, incentive models, and more. Partners can white-label customer invoices with their own branding. Partners also get a Partner Portal to manage their business and keep track of customers, product offerings, invoices, transactions and settlements.
Take a tour of the OneBill platform today.
