Whereas CSPs used to roll out a user-tested plan in months or even years, this time window has significantly shrunk in the past decade or two. Companies that want to attract new customers and retain existing ones must realize that market conditions are evolving daily, and no longer allow for the time or room to build out an extensive use case that must be reviewed and approved by an internal corporate board.

Rather, the CSPs that will be successful going forward are the ones that can identify a moment of tension or opportunity, and pivot accordingly in digital time, breaking apart from an old mindset that dictates outdated, complicated and lengthy methods to invoke new developments.

Think holistically – quantity will bring quality

In the same vein of moving fast, which can mean sacrificing the time-consuming research of ages past, service providers must also learn to be comfortable with constant trial and error. The focus in this new digital world is exploration – making smaller investments in a wider portfolio versus bigger investments in a limited number of use cases. To thrive in digital time, CSPs must embrace the freedom behind this explorative process, ultimately releasing, encouraging, and cultivating imagination and creativity in their teams with the understanding that every idea no longer has to be a killer idea—just one backed up by data-driven customer insights.

For example, as opposed to lengthy field trials, service providers could explore a new service or capability within a partner ecosystem. Consider how T-Mobile partnered with Netflix to encourage subscribers to access Netflix’s online video content while bundling in T-Mobile’s provision of data to access it. Over time, the effect of pursuing many digital moments and testing out what works and what doesn’t will result not only in a holistic business approach, but also allows CSPs to practice being nimble in turning things on and off. Service providers should have a healthy fear that acknowledges someone in the market is likely to attract a customer before them, and that the company who creates the most compelling and regular “touch points” is the one who will ultimately be rewarded with customer loyalty.

Technology overhaul

In order to truly move into a new era led by digital time, service providers must also begin migrating their old, antiquated technologies (whether customer care, analytics or monetization) to new platforms that support the time-sensitive service being provided. New services call for new technology, yet many CSPs still rely on legacy systems that hinder their abilities to build thriving digital businesses.

While it may appear to be a more appealing short-term option to modify these existing technologies for the digital era, well-meaning attempts to update these systems often result in costly, time-consuming efforts that are prone to failure. Apart from the expense to upgrade or modify these systems, which snowballs into a reverse economies of scale cost problem, these older, antiquated technologies were fundamentally built for historic communications circles that serve a specific purpose and are unsuitable for rolling things out in the time frame demanded by modern circumstances. Rather than prioritizing time, these legacy systems were custom-built to focus on a singular task or project, resulting in closed systems that are also difficult to protect against potential security vulnerabilities.

Moving in digital time calls for a technology overhaul. In order to create an ecosystem of partners that can plug-in and adapt multi-vendor technologies, service providers serious about taking advantage of digital time must migrate to the latest technologies that are optimized to deliver digital experiences, digital operations and digital networks, including new customer engagement management, monetization and cloud virtualization solutions. These newer technologies provide open and configurable layouts that allow for collaboration and flexibility. From customer engagement management solutions to advanced network security options or BSS/OSS systems, digital time requires a technical overhaul and the clock is ticking.

The best way to go about this is not to “rip and replace” old systems in one fell swoop, which can greatly disrupt business processes and leaves the CSP without a backup plan. Instead, CSPs should develop a strategy that allows different technology segments to be walled off and phased out over time as they migrate to newer systems and learn how to master their digital operations using apt technology.   

This is no easy undertaking. By embracing the technical and operational changes need to reinvent themselves into digital service providers, CSPs can better serve their customers’ needs in digital time – delivering the right service through the right channel at the moment of truth – at the benefit of enriching and monetizing the customer experience and increasing customer loyalty.