Report quality also improved, as now the compilation of the explanatory breakdown was created and distributed automatically with each invoice and could contain any details that a partner requested. Business relationships benefit immensely from such transparency and promptness of communication and, by transforming its business, this provider could build trust with all accounts.

Lessons for other sectors

After successfully transforming revenue and partner management for a major gaming provider, we noted that many of its past issues were not unique to the gaming industry anymore.

Telcos used to have simpler commercial rules. However, in recent years, forging partnerships with over-the-top providers became very popular. Thus, the variation of a combination of different offer packages and possible cross-industry partnerships is growing exponentially, and the revenue-sharing schemes are becoming increasingly complex.

One of the examples of emerging business opportunities can be 5G-influenced service offers. By targeting new types of use cases, operators will be able to achieve sufficient returns on their 5G investments and broaden their offer packages, consequently attracting new user groups and strengthening the influence over existing ones.

For instance, selling 5G services to other businesses, which then sell them as part of their offering to their own customers, is a very promising trajectory for many telecoms. This means expanding away from the traditional B2B and B2C business models by adding B2B2X—business-to-business-to-third-party. Under B2B2X, which encompasses both B2B2B and B2B2C, connectivity providers collaborate and share the rewards with B2B partners. Such partners can come from any sector: VR experience and streaming service providers, companies involved in creating smart cities, and so on. The revenue-sharing schemes can be quite complex, and contract audit processes may differ a lot from the standard. 

This means that the telecommunication industry will soon also be facing the challenges of complex reconciliation hierarchies, just as gaming providers did. Therefore, telecom operators and multiplay service providers can use the experience of this fellow industry to inform a more coherent vision of how to handle this challenge.

In particular, setting up portals for partners, where they can manage offers and services between different categories of customers, proves to be a beneficial solution for simplifying the relationships between different business parties. 

Just as in the case of the gaming platform provider, telcos should embrace workflow automation for major business processes for the partners, such as product offering, order management, revenue management and ongoing service relationship with their customers, in order to achieve higher speed and operational accuracy. To gain the mutual trust of the partners and clients, companies need to be able to track and measure the effectiveness of partner activities, including notifications and alerts based on business rules, providing corresponding transparent reports upon request, and using this data to predict the potential outcomes of contract changes.

The above requirements should be fulfilled by a solution that has native support for B2B, B2B2X and new evolving business models. It should allow third-party company settlement and partner-commissioning configuration. 

No one can deny that the world is changing rapidly right now. The best decision we can make for our business success is to anticipate the possible challenges of the future and start answering them today. By looking beyond a single industry’s needs and experiences, we can set the right course for digital transformation in a chosen sector. For telcos, where the evolution trajectory now looks similar to gaming, this means focusing on adding more value, enhancing the flexibility of operations, and providing more efficient ways to manage partners and customers.