Amdocs is a leading software and services provider to the world's most successful ... organisation with intelligent busi
COMPANY PROFILES
Shannon Bell is head of product management, strategy and go to market for Amdocs Digital. Noted below, are Shannon's views concerning her company's focus on CSP digital transformation. This interview was conducted by Karl Whitelock, Global Director Operations and Monetization Strategy at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan
Karl Whitelock: Transformation can take on many forms. What should CSPs consider when defining their digital transformation strategy and in what priority order? Shannon Bell: When defining strategies for digital transformation, it is important that service providers consider the impact from a few angles – the digital customer, the digital economy, digital technology and the digital organisation. These are essential factors in transforming from a communication service provider to a digital service provider. From our vast experience we realise that our customer’s digital transformation is not an IT programme, it is a business programme that has broadreaching effects and to be successful it must take into account the organisational impact on culture, business processes and technology. Typically, when most people talk about digital they think about digital engagements and more specifically how you serve customers in their channel of choice. But digital transformation is more than just engagement – it is about digital services, how you drive innovation into the market, utilise new business models, and achieve competitiveness in a dynamic market. And, we believe there are different strategies to achieve these transformation objectives, ranging from full business transformations to horizontal digital experience transformation and down to individual channel digitalisation programmes. KW: CSPs must change because digital transformation is a journey – something you cannot stop at once you get there. What is the right digital transformation pathway CSPs should consider? SB: We believe that every digital transformation journey is unique to the CSP, because it is a business transformation and not just an IT system transformation. That being said, we do believe that CSPs must look at their overall objectives and decide how to approach the transformation. We equally believe that it is critical to set milestones along the path to transformation in order to bring value to the business stakeholders and drive an overall change within the business. CSPs follow more than one path towards digital maturity as each business has unique strengths and needs. We focus on supporting three different variations: Full business transformation, digital experience transformation, and digital channel augmentation. The digital experience transformation focuses on introducing omni-channel care and commerce capabilities to the CSP environment. Digital augmentation addresses the digitalisation of a single channel, such as digital or social, paving the way to future transformation and integration with additional channels.
KW: In the quest to help CSPs become more effective in a digitally transformed world, what makes your organisation's digital transformation approach different from others in the competitive solution supplier marketplace? SB: Amdocs is the leading provider of solutions to enable a CSP's digital transformation, by delivering some of the largest transformations in the world. A few of our differentiators include: • A holistic digital approach combining solutions for digital channels and the engagement layer, as well as driving the new digital organisation with intelligent business processes and new revenue streams. • Open, cloud-native solutions that enable business agility and faster time-to-market, with DevOps processes, and intelligence embedded across the offering. • A comprehensive and modular portfolio, enabling digital experiences across all engagement channels, and covering the full scope of digital for service providers – from engagement to network to BSS. • System agnostic approach enabling a digital experience transformation across existing BSS systems. • Core BSS expertise, bringing a deep understanding of complex, end-to-end telecoms processes and systems. KW: Gaining intelligence about the customer experience is a dynamic process and a richly rewarding business opportunity. How does intelligence – insight gained from customer experience and network operations data – impact the strategy of a CSP's digital transformation journey? SB: Intelligence is an integral part of every digital transformation, and it is often overlooked. As part of our digital enablement platform, we see intelligence in terms of: enabling the preferred mix of human to nonhuman based engagements, intelligent converting of care into commerce within every channel, utilising big data to drive personalisation, and taking advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. We believe that this needs to be considered from day one – as the CSP is defining the objectives of the programme, it needs to look at how they can make every part of their business and their engagement with the customer intelligent. A simple example is in utilising intelligence to drive non-human engagements. Most CSPs have strategies to drive 80-90% of their engagements with customers through non-human interfaces by 2020. To achieve this, they need to use the data they have to drive non-human interactions through applications, and finally to use machine learning to ensure their business continually grows smarter.
About Amdocs Digital Amdocs is a leading software and services provider to the world’s most successful communications and media companies. As our customers reinvent themselves, we enable their digital and network transformation through innovative solutions, delivery expertise and intelligent operations. Amdocs and its 25,000 employees serve customers in over 85 countries. Listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, Amdocs had revenue of US$3.7 billion in fiscal 2016. www.amdocs.com
IN ASSOCIATION WITH AMDOCS DIGITAL VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INSIGHT REPORT JULY 2017
11
