The diagram below sets out a rough estimate of the financial value from 11 areas of telco benefit/cost due to the addition of new types of A3 (both internally to the telco and also externally among customers and partners):
First, it should be noted that telcos will generally be less impacted by the implementation of, particularly, AI technologies than other verticals – because of their nature as service businesses. Then, looking at the bars on the diagram from left to right:
New Internal Capabilities
Augmented Customer Experience Includes technologies to support both digital and human interactions with customers and their “things”. Cost savings will be made by speeding up or deflecting human interactions which will bring headcount savings
Augmented Experts Technologies which improve the ability of humans (either those with expert knowledge or teams with more functional duties) to make good decisions and execute them effectively. Of less value than the first item as team sizes are not as large as customer facing teams
Intelligent Automation Potentially the largest financial benefit due to the options for capex/opex savings as the major processes operate more efficiently and use less resources
AI Design Not so beneficial to telcos as other product-creating or manufacturing companies; but benefit still seen from reducing costs to innovate and better design of networks and other capex-intensive systems
New Customer Requirements
Edge Intelligence Opportunity for larger telcos to increase revenues and decrease costs on the network by deploying A3 technologies at the edge
Smarter Customers A3 will, of course, be deployed generally across the telco’s customer base. It is assumed that there will be relatively small impacts on the telco – with some need to add information or integrate processes into activities such as the customer’s digital twin
Data Economy Those telcos which continue to wish to monetize their data and create A3 products for their customers will generate this financial value via participation in an increasingly sophisticated data economy. This value will remain modest in comparison to internal cost saving opportunities
Technology Change
Increased Intelligence This is the deployment of increasing amounts of intelligence/automation. Deployment, on its own, won’t generate value
Organizational Change
Trust The cost of implementing new processes, policies and technologies to deal with issues related to trust (ethics, integrity, openness etc) will not be negligible going forward
Value Generation Similarly, the ability to calculate business models and measure results from A3 projects – plus run appropriate risk mitigation programs will have a cost to the telco
Skills Educational and hiring programs will be required to staff the telco in its creation of new A3 technologies.
