5G is paradigm changing - bringing with it a host of new services, as well as increased reliability, performance and efficiency. To build a 5G business and drive value, however, CSPs must ensure they meet their customers’ evolving expectations of more personal experiences, increased relevancy and deeper engagement. Katarina Radman, Calvi’s Director of Marketing explores the role bills play in augmenting the 5G customer experience and supporting business growth for both CSPs and their business customers.
5G promises lightning fast speeds, ultra-low latency, far greater reliability and a more consistent user experience than previous generations of mobile technology.
There’s a growing consensus that in the short to mid term, however, most 5G revenue growth will come from the business sector, where it will empower new ways of doing business and support a wide range of new services such as increased automation, robotization, autonomous vehicles, drones, and virtual and augmented reality. In short, 5G will drive massive efficiency gains for global businesses and transform the way we work.
“5G will lead to the creation of industries not yet imagined.” Accenture, 2021
Some hint at the scale of the value at stake is provided by an IHS Markit study for Qualcomm, which forecasts that over the next 15 years, $265 billion will be spent annually on 5G capital expenditure and R&D. It states that by 2035, 5G will support 22.8 million new jobs and $13.1 trillion of global economic output.
CSPs are often so focused on delivering network capabilities that it is easy to overlook what’s needed to turn all that network potential into revenue.
The real challenges start when they enter the commercialization and monetization phase of 5G. To be 5G-ready means not just delivering new networks, but unleashing the full potential of innovation, enabling experimentation, and unlocking the ability to react quickly and do things differently across a wider range of charging models, as well as a broad range of industries, business types and digital products.
Standing in the way of increased commercial flexibility and agility are traditional business support systems (BSS) that were designed for a far simpler world, where change occured more slowly, and services were charged in megabytes and minutes. To support their ambitions, CSPs need to be agile enough to launch new packages and offers rapidly, and easily refresh them at will. They need systems that can scale to support millions of B2B customers and billions of transactions. Systems that are flexible enough to pivot to new ways of monetizing services – shifting from volumes of data to guaranteed outcomes, for example. And they need a level of efficiency that ensures even low-cost services are viable and profitable.
While 5G is driving a BSS refresh to deliver the business performance required, it’s important not to overlook the last vital step in monetizing 5G. With every CSP offering a unique take on 5G – using it to support different vertical market opportunities and new ways to differentiate and add value to their business customers – telecoms bills will have to accommodate both the added complexity of 5G enabled-businesses, as well as the volatility of 5G services, which will be launched in greater volumes, change more frequently and have far shorter lifespans. That’s why if you’re serious about 5G, you need to be aware of the vital role bills are set to play in meeting customer expectations and driving new business value.
Amid all the excitement of 5G, it’ll be more important than ever that business customers can manage and understand their spending, and how this relates to their productivity and commercial agility. Bills play an essential role in this respect, but need to be clear, easy to understand and process, and personalized to the needs of individual stakeholders and business users.
Bills will also play a vital role in communicating 5G innovation to business customers and making offers business relevant – providing a unique opportunity to engage customers and align new services and offers with their ongoing needs.
Business model change will see the emergence of indirect models such as B2B2X, which require CSPs to account for supporting complex, interconnected ecosystems. This requires the sharing of costs and value between partners, along with a shift from charging for gigabytes to monetizing outcomes. Ensuring bills support emerging ecosystems and their needs is essential to maximizing 5G potential.
Most importantly, in the instant, always-on 5G market, time is money. While the opportunities are endless, exploiting them relies on having a business infrastructure that can support continual change and innovation and which works at the speed of marketing, not the speed of IT. Gone are the days when CSPs could wait for their vendor to make changes to their bills – with the vendor effectively acting as a gatekeeper to innovation – now they need tools that enable them to change bills as often as they need to.
Being successful with 5G requires CSPs to deliver the kind of commercial experience that resonates with the quality network proposition they’re busy marketing to their B2B customers – and that means re-evaluating how bills either support or impede such a proposition.
If you’re serious about 5G you need to consider if your bills can keep up with your 5G ambitions. To find out what’s involved and to discover whether your bills are 5G ready, why not speak to one of our bill consultants about a 5G workshop? Or check out how our flagship product Polaris gives you the tools to transform your billing experience not just intermittently but continually. With 5G, the sky is the limit. With Calvi Polaris the only limit to your billing experience is your own imagination.
Katarina has extensive marketing experience in the telecom industry, media, and new growth markets. She brings over 20 years of strategic vision and insight to product planning and positioning, sales enablement, and content creation. Katarina loves telling the compelling brand stories that need to be told and is passionate about building strategic marketing teams and plans that increase revenue and brand awareness.
Service providers are investing heavily in AI, but the success of these investments relies on having access to the right data. In telecoms, billing is one of the most important customer data sources. Find out why mastering billing data is a critical step in optimizing the success of AI, as well as the three main ways AI + billing data can be utilized.
15% of the global population has some form of disability, including visual, auditory, or cognitive disabilities. In many countries, it’s now a legal requirement to ensure that people with disabilities can access the information they need.
Exciting times are ahead in the telecoms BSS landscape! AI/ML has been merely an add-on with mixed results. But now, we're witnessing a paradigm shift. AI/ML is evolving into an essential capability deeply ingrained within BSS operations.
