above, such complexities as disparate data and network models, rampant data integrity issues, a plethora of unsynchronized inventories and the multitude of different technologies in the physical network cannot be dismissed as “old school” or the visionis doomed to failure.

There are two fundamental principles when it comes to successful outcomes of digital transformation programs. First, success depends on the business’s commitment to delivering the desired customer experience over digital channels. Second, the degree to which businesses can continue to blend previous generation network services and infrastructure into a newly digitalized business model will determine success in service offerings. This includes the ability to adapt to new physical delivery models, as networks continue to evolve, and as new technologies are deployed or combined to create entirely new services.

Getting to desired customer experience

Digital transformation is bound to fail when the focus of the effort is on anything but delivering the experiences that operators intellectually understand their customers want. It’s not a secret to know that over the top (OTT) players have eaten the operators’ proverbial lunch because they better understood how to deliver and keep delivering desired customer experiences. Their approach was simple: focus on customer experience first and then work downward to enable that experience. Think about personalization and the ease of binge-watching as two great examples. But how can operators do this, given the conditions mentioned above?

At the business systems level, some operators are considering saying, “let’s start fresh,” and building a service and experience roadmap underpinned by a digital culture that leverages cloud-native commerce services. In other words, step around legacy business systems wherever possible to really commit to building a digital culture for a digital service provider business.

Of course, this is no small recommendation as creating a new business has associated risks and costs, but a growing number of service providers are taking precisely this approach.  

Others are taking a more targeted approach to the systems that can be completely leapfrogged without going so far as constructing a new digital brand. High-value targets for building afresh rather than trying to fix old include the product catalog, converged charging, and even billing and invoicing. With each of these applications, a forward-looking deployment—evolving from a starting point of managing all new customers and new transactions and orders in the new platform rather than depending on massive, high-risk migrations—can be surprisingly cost-effective. It can also unlock the immediacy of enhanced customer experience and accelerated delivery of personalized offers.

Moving to contextual engagement

This leads to the second point for successful digital transformation: moving to contextual engagement. Understanding customer behavior at a granular level can reap huge benefits. Telecom operators often focus on selling and supporting their core services to current and potential customers.

And this is possible by leveraging the big data capability to which all operators have access. Big data enables operators to effectively promote these specific products and offers by placing the right offer at the right time to the right set of customers. A contextual platform provides the means to gather customer data so that the offers are placed on digital channels. Digital technologies, fueled by analytics, have enabled telecom operators to execute this one-to-one personalization. Done right, personalization enhances customers’ lives and increases loyalty by delivering messages that anticipate customer needs. These customer benefits translate into