Telecoms operators can take advantage of the AI revolution by optimising their own business activities and acting as ‘technical’ AI platform enablers for other industries, which are expected to spend US$15bn annually on AI business operations by 2021
These are the key findings of a new white paper published by Solon Management Consulting, showing the enormous potential for telecommunication operators to play a central role in the AI market.
There is an ongoing AI (r)evolution as improved machine learning techniques, which form the most commercially important subset of AI technology, are enabling companies to discover and operationalise previously hidden insights.
Increasing data availability and higher processing power are facilitating this evolution, allowing better methods to be used on more data at a lower cost.
Mirko René Gramatke, managing director at Solon and leader of the firm’s ‘tech-enabled business innovation activities’, said, “Given the challenges of diversifying away from the telecom business, we suggest an incremental approach that allows telcos to grow their AI capabilities without committing excessive capital.”
“Implementing changes that can bring in significant margin expansion does not take a long time as they rely on assets that already exist in successful telecoms operators: data availability, analytics know-how, a strong sales organisation and a results-driven management,” he added.
The authors outline the initial steps to take for telecoms operators to claim their share in this strongly growing market and describe four high priority use cases to operationalise automated decision in critical areas of their business:
▪ Optimised network roll-out planning: AI/advanced analytics can help telcos move from deploying network to achieve network KPIs to deploying a network that optimises for financial outcomes such as cross/upsell, renewals and new subscriber gains
▪ Customer outcome focused network optimisation: AI can help provide the link between network KPIs and profitability, allowing optimisations of financial outcomes
▪ Marketing optimisation: Telcos can improve the time, channel, message and offer of their outreach, improving their marketing ROI
▪ AI/advanced analytics guided sales steering: Granular assessment of market potential and advanced analysis of structured and unstructured sales related data can help better focus sales teams.
