Infographic: Digital Transformation Challenges Defined

Legacy OSS/BSS infrastructures are among the biggest challenges that operators face when it comes to their digital transformation migrations, according to a recent survey.

UXP Systems Inc. , which specializes in user lifecycle management, announced the second part of its European Operator Survey results this week, which looked at the business drivers, challenges and business needs in regards to operators' digital transformations.

UXP conducted the survey at last month's CEM in Telecom event in Prague with customer experience management experts from large telecom operators based in Europe.

When it came to defining the needs of their businesses, the operators called out the challenges they faced with their existing back-end systems. In the survey, 82% of the respondents agreed with the statement: "If we could build the infrastructure we need to support digital services today and in the future without having to change or modify our B/OSS systems, that would be extremely valuable."

Communication service providers are in the midst of the one of the largest evolutions in the history of technology, which could play out over the next 20 years, but there are a lot of moving parts and challenges. While operators are focused on enabling technologies such as SDN and NFV in their digital transformations, there's also a need to build touch points with subscribers, although the latter is often overlooked.

"The interesting thing about operators that are transforming is that very few understand the critical role that digital identity plays in their transformation plans," said UXP Systems Founder and CEO Gemini Waghmare. "All of the Internet leaders and OTT providers -- Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon and others -- understand that providing digital experiences requires a user relationship with anyone that consumes a service. The problem is that telecom operators have back end infrastructure that is vectored around an account number, or a SIM, and not around users. Over the years they've gotten good at managing customer relationships with whoever pays the bill.

"But they don't yet manage user relationships with whoever is consuming one of their services, and there's a big difference. Lets face it, whoever owns the user relationship is going to win. Operators have the opportunity in front of them to own their users, and they're going to have to get very good at it before it's too late.”

Part 1 of the survey asked the operators to asses the common elements in their transformations, rank specific concepts and rate their own capabilities.

(For more on digital transformations, see The State of Digital Transformations, Hurdling Digital Transformation Obstacles and Spurring Digital Transformations Forward.)

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation