How digital transformation impacts the CSP industry

14 Jan 2019

Are we done hearing about digital transformation in 2019? Hardly, digital transformation (DX) is expected to continue to drive changes in the telecommunications sector in Asia.

At the Barcelona Mobile World Congress 2018, Steven Zheng, chief marketing officer for Huawei Global Services said there is not turning back the digital tide. He cited an IDC report that estimates 39% of carriers are either developing or executing a digital transformation strategy. At the same time, he cautioned the many challenges facing industry players including understanding their own market position, identifying opportunities and value streams that will drive digital transformation, developing success metrics and monitoring these on an on-going basis.

In addition to looking at internal transformation efforts, HGC Global Communications chief digital officer, Jacqueline Teo, said CSPs need to look at the digital transformation that their enterprise customers are themselves undertaking.

“How do they continuously create services, how do they continuously add to what they can already do, how do they continuously pivot and understand where their customers are going themselves digitally. Just about every industry is going through this disruption so CSPs are in a very unique position in that they have to think about digital transformations in the context of the customers,” she explained.

Can a CSP be a digital partner to its customers if it, itself, is not digital or going through the motion of becoming digital? This was a thought shared by Teo who quipped that it’s a hard place to be in for non-digital CSPs.

“Like in every other vertical, the people the process the technology needs to have that new way of thinking, that new way of doing things, those new skills that people are looking for in the market,” added Teo.

In this exclusive with Telecom Asia, Teo talks about the importance of DX to CSPs and the important role of CSPs in the enablement of the transformation of all the other vertical industries as well as consumers who will be the end consumers of this transition.

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