Today, we are all living in a digital era where the competition between telecom operators is becoming fiercer by the minute. They are under a lot of pressure to optimize their services and products to provide the best offer to their customers, while improving their revenue at the same time. Digital transformation has thus become a necessity for the telco carriers, in order to cope with the rapid technological evolution.
As traditional business models become outdated, operators need to rethink their operating models to have more intelligent operations that can enable them to provide more agile services to users with the best quality and unlimited experience.
According to the TM Forum’s newest digital transformation tracker survey, CSPs’ progress with digital transformation has accelerated substantially in the past year. Much of this was driven by a desire to increase operational efficiency. But CSPs’ next goal must be to transform their business outcomes – for example, retain more customers, deliver superior experience to them – and offer the level of business flexibility and agility they now require, in order to remain aligned with rapidly changing markets and emerging opportunities.
At Huawei OTF-2021 Event in Barcelona, we promised to establish our Digital Operation Transformation Center in the Middle East, and to provide the required digital platforms, expertise and share the latest best practices, to help carriers achieve their strategic digital transformation program and reach sustainable business growth.
Since then, Huawei has been able to collaborate with more than 20 carriers to implement their digital transformation vision and objectives. However, there is still a long way ahead for operators aiming for innovation. A collaborative approach is crucial at this point in a way that all key telecom players participate and share their innovative thoughts, experiences and learned lessons.
We want to give more chances to all stakeholders to jointly innovate and share their latest digital use cases. “Pooling Intelligence, Innovating Together, and Exploring the Road to Digital Transformation”, is the objective of our digital transformation innovation contest (DTIC), which is taking place for the first time in our Middle East and Central Asia region.
In line with our commitment to fostering progress and innovation, we have thoughtfully designed three digital transformation tracks that cater to the unique requirements of carriers: intelligent operations, ultimate experience, and agile business. Through these distinct tracks, participants can gain invaluable insights into the latest industry practices, unearth hidden talents, explore the vast potential of digital transformation, and bolster their capabilities across all aspects of the transformation journey.
Huawei believes that this is only the beginning. Many other excellent useful cases are yet to be revealed, and many excellent practices are yet to be shared, but this contest is certainly driving our operators to explore, share, and cooperate more with each other on the way to digital transformation.
During DTIC this year, Huawei invited award-winning teams, industry analysts, and experts from the digital transformation field to share expertise and insights.
Carrier representatives shared Huawei's digital transformation practices and experience and said, "Digital transformation is not a one-time effort, it's like a continual improvement. We need to keep exploring what and how we can improve and digitize."
Representatives of the digital transformation team shared cases of achieving business success in digital transformation by focusing on customer experience and intelligent operations based on their own digital transformation strategies.
During Huawei DTIC, more than 80 applications have been submitted by different telco carriers in ME&CA regions, while the top 20 have qualified for the final stage and were divided into three groups: Intelligent operation (6 Cases), unlimited experience (8 Cases) and agile business (6 Cases).
All of these submitted cases show how beneficial digital transformation is. Some achieved significant improvement in their operational efficiency of up to 40%, improved customer care response from days to hours and reduced customer complaints number by 30%, while other cases provided superior experience specially for VoLTE service quality assurance and VoLTE user number growth that increased fivefold in 4 months only compared to pre-digital transformation phase. Moreover, they achieved strategic business goals for improving marketing conversion ratio and ROI for new sites installed in the network for coverage or expansion purposes.
In summary, Huawei DTIC provide fruitful UCs from different operators in ME&CA region who were able to show tangible benefits and results obtained from digital transformation practices rather than only theoretical ones. Huawei will keep collaborating with customers in ME&CA region and globally as a key partner to develop more our tools, approaches and capabilities in digital transformation in order to enable carries to manage their digital transformation challenges and pave their way for the digital era with multiple digital services opportunities that lead to business growth and a more intelligent, connected and digital future.
