The telecom industry has historically been focused on individual consumers who consume a bunch of services including voice, video, Internet, and other communication services. But almost every telecom company now finds the B2C market saturated, with little or no scope for differentiation or driving long-term innovation. The current challenges of the B2C market are a great driver to turn towards the B2B landscape to target large-scale enterprise customers to capture a bigger market share and achieve higher revenue.
The enterprise opportunity
Most global telecommunication carriers are largely focused on capturing growth in the consumer segment. But increasingly saturating mobile markets, the constant disruption from OTT providers, and growing price wars have put the B2C market under immense pressure.
Although large enterprise customers already have established, long-term contracts with Cisco, AT&T, Dell, and others for wired connectivity and Microsoft, AWS, Google, and others for cloud connectivity, there is sufficient room for a telecom service provider to provide the backbone for these solutions. This is in addition to the increasing demand for robust connectivity by the small and medium enterprise clients that presents a massive growth opportunity for telecom providers. This is especially evident in today’s post-pandemic age, where almost every business is looking to go digital.
But it’s not just higher growth rates that are enticing; along with growth, telcos also stand the chance of improving their profit margins, especially as digitally-savvy, new-age companies are willing to pay more for modern and differentiated services. As data services act as the foundation on which a broader Information and Communications Technology portfolio can be built, they present a great starting point for telcos to venture into the B2B world via the delivery of Managed, IoT, and unified communications and security services.
The benefits for enterprise customers
In the extremely crowded and competitive telecom market, enterprise customers offer a huge opportunity to drive business-wide transformation. As revenues across the B2C segment slowly stagnate, the B2B market acts as a treasure trove of opportunities, especially in today’s age of hybrid work.
As a massive number of enterprises across the world now leverage the hybrid workplace model to run their business, they find themselves struggling to keep up with the pace of modernization. The presence of outdated legacy systems and siloed tools restrict them from efficiently running their operations, while also hampering the experience employees and customers have with the business.
Although telecom providers have always been laser-focused on consumers to grow revenue through individual and residential services, as the pressure to digitalize intensifies post-pandemic, telecom companies can drive exceptional growth and success by targeting the enterprise customer, allowing them to:
- Re-architect, refactor or replace complex legacy communications networks and systems
- Move away from wired networks toward more efficient and scalable wireless options
- Reduce the cost and complexity of managing rigid systems and bring innovations into the market
- Enhance the ability of the enterprise network to combat threats while protecting the business, employees, and customers from cyberattacks
- Improve the speed and efficiency with which enterprises within the business as well as with customers and partners
- Meet service delivery requests in a way that best meets end-user expectations
The benefits for telcos
Telcos seeking to establish direct and strong relationships with enterprise customers have several reasons to now venture into the B2B market to sell modern and innovative services and fundamentally disrupt existing offerings. Leveraging agile and digital savvy tools can aid in creating new kinds of customer-centric solutions and bring them to market at an unprecedented pace.
Migrating to the B2B space is not only a good way to expand the footprint and enhance digital connectivity; it is also becoming a crucial element of business strategy and operations. Here are 3 reasons why it’s time for telecom companies to leverage the massive enterprise opportunity:
- Drive innovation across industries: Unlike with individual customers where opportunities for innovation and scalability are limited, with enterprise customers, telcos can drive innovation that scales across industries. Telcos that capitalize on trends like 5G can enable manufacturers to more efficiently support critical applications, energy companies to remotely monitor their grids, healthcare agencies to deliver intelligent healthcare, and more. Other options include seamlessly bringing together M2M, Big Data, and AI to create a new world of business messaging. The ability to scale innovation across industries is a great way to seamlessly expand its footprint in the B2B space and boost revenue.
- Exploit the as-a-service model: With the demand for SaaS-based offerings constantly surging, the enterprise market offers a great chance for telecom companies to keep up with the demand. As companies across manufacturing, retail, education etc. seek greater connectivity, speed, and efficiency, the as-a-service model is a great way to deliver top-notch cloud, IoT, edge computing, Unified Communications, and other advanced communications services to take the business to the next level.
- Offer better platforms and bundles: The enterprise market also allows telecom companies to enhance their reach through the delivery of better platforms and bundles. For instance, telecom companies that offer connectivity services to a car manufacturer can also provide bundled services for consumers’ personal devices such as their phones and tablets. These bundled services can not only improve compatibility; they can also streamline the end-user experience.
For an industry that has largely targeted only individual consumers, the enterprise market offers a great opportunity for telcos to expand market share, reach new customers, and drive higher revenue. Although the concept is relatively new, prioritizing digital connectivity to conduct business operations should be a top priority for telecom companies in the coming years, especially as robust connectivity infrastructure has now become the backbone for smooth, resilient, and efficient business execution. Moving to the enterprise can not only aid in maximizing profits; it can also empower telcos to capture the low-hanging fruit and build a framework for continuous evolution and transformation.