Successful development of intelligence and data products for enterprise customers (pt 1)

An “intelligence-focussed telco” is defined as one which sees the use of intelligence as a key enabler of revenue growth and cost savings in the coming years. Currently, an “intelligence–focused” company:

• has a clear but realistic vision of where intelligence can add value – and how much risk they wish to take in this immature market
• is trialling and deploying a range of new intelligence technologies
• may be building internal IP, company-specific capabilities or making acquisitions to build new capabilities
• has announced several partnerships with vendors that have sophisticated intelligence product sets
• already has a set of training programmes and other internal skill-building initiatives, as well as R&D capability
• has some prior experience selling data and analytics to its enterprise customers and is looking augment these product sets
• may have an IT services and consulting team, capable of delivering intelligence-related services.

Recent announcements from global telcos were analysed to understand their strategy and plans for the creation of intelligence products. These products monetise AI, ML and analytics as individual products or are used to provide other telco products with new capabilities for their enterprise customers. We identified three main strategies:

Progressive  Primarily looking to develop their own models (using their own data where necessary) to create intelligence products/services for their customers.  They will partner as needed to deliver certain elements of these products and to provide vertical-specific consulting and services; however, their focus is on creating in-house capabilities, and they show signs of willingness to take risks in new AI markets.

Partner  More risk-averse or in geographies where there are fewer opportunities for a telco to participate in the market for intelligence products, these telcos are beginning to create a range of partnerships.  Like the progressive, they aim to offer a variety of products/services to a range of verticals but work with these partners, who will provide some or most of the non-communication capabilities. Over time, we may see the telco provide some capabilities into an ecosystem or into a partner’s product rather than sell directly to their customers.

Pragmatist These are more risk-averse companies looking for small, well-defined opportunities to create their own products or work with partners. These opportunities are likely to be more mature and have clearer ROI.  Typical companies may be smaller and lack a full range of sales and other capabilities, or they may see limited opportunity in their geography.