Why You Need a CSP Partner to Succeed in a Digital World

This Industry Viewoint was authored by Ken Kennedy, COO and President of Revenue Management & Digital Monetization at CSG

In today’s digital world, the ability to survive as an enterprise has become an arms race. If an enterprise becomes complacent or fails to keep an eye on the future, it’ll quickly be outpaced by a more sophisticated competitor. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but to be the leader of the pack in a tight race, enterprises must find their unique edge.

While there are many ways to define that edge, enterprises must reconsider how they best serve their customers. Closer partnerships with communications service providers (CSPs) will enable them to accelerate their digital transformation and unlock value from 5G connectivity. Time is, of course, of the essence when it comes to rapid digital transformation, and successful enterprises will forge ahead into the brave new digital world by partnering with leading CSPs.

In 2023 and beyond, enterprises’ success will hinge on their ability to find the right CSPs to partner with. In turn, CSPs must build simple partner onboarding processes, easy integration systems and streamline the small details to help enterprises from every industry capitalize on the 5G opportunity. This aid from CSPs will be critical for a few key reasons: heightened competition from continuous new market entrants everywhere and increased customer demands for a sophisticated experience regardless of industry.

The CSP & Enterprise Partnership: A Golden Ticket to Success

Last year, we saw CSPs deliver connectivity as a service (CaaS), which enabled Enterprises to easily launch new services without worry about failure – CSPs allow them to tap into resources they already have access to; armed with low latency and powerful process speeds. Key resources offered by CSPs to their partners also include cloud-based systems that offer economic savings, scalability, and improvement of employee and customer experiences. Though it may be possible to find those things without a CSP partner, enterprises would have to work much harder and source from a variety of different places as opposed to the ease and availability of a CSP partnership.

By working with CSPs, enterprises can take advantage of the partnership ecosystem. CSPs have streamlined their onboarding processes and have an easier integration so partnerships can take off right away, and a plug-and-play partner system becomes possible. This standardization creates a consistency that can be scaled and replicated and allow all partners to interoperate in the same ecosystem with ease. Once enterprises become incorporated, complex partner ecosystems can more seamlessly emerge, and within that ecosystem, zero-touch partnerships will create dynamic new growth opportunities.

Partner onboarding and integration aren’t the only considerations, though. CSPs and enterprises alike have to streamline monetization practices like charging, billing, and partner settlements for a successful relationship and end-customer experience. CSPs will also embrace highly automated systems to benefit their enterprise partners, like zero-touch partnering, which allow for a competitive advantage in a digitally transformed world where automation is king. Zero-touch partnering enables CSPs to set devices up for their enterprises in a way that automatically configure them at a large scale and with no work required from the enterprise’s IT team. By automating processes that have long plagued enterprises by consuming time and resources, zero-touch processing can benefit all industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, and retail.

Modernization for Economic Resilience

With an influx of macroeconomic challenges, economic resilience is at the forefront for many enterprises and currently a priority over digital transformation. This means enterprises across industries will be challenged to reconsider their use of legacy systems that, up until now, have been “good enough”. CSPs will provide the handholding some enterprises need to transition to cloud-based systems to help lower their operational expenditures, which, in turn, will free up critical capital for more impactful investments. Some of this support will occur during the streamlined onboarding processes but should remain consistent throughout every partnership.

CSPs are transitioning their identity from telco to techco as they build tech hubs that drive innovation and revenue for themselves and their partners alike. This also means that both enterprises and their CSP partners will have to embrace the next generation of tech and leave behind older systems they’ve relied on in the past – a step that is daunting but wholly necessary.

Technology sophistication is not just about CSPs and their partners’ operations. More importantly, it’s about the ease of use for customers and employees. Labor shortages are expected to persist globally and across all markets, so it will be vital for survival to maintain—and retain—employees. Happy, satisfied employees are the inevitable precursor to happy, satisfied customers.

Rapid digital transformation, economic turbulence, and an uncertain view of the future are daunting concepts for enterprise leaders, but being left behind is even worse. To rise above the competition in this digital-first world, enterprises must differentiate themselves with a sophisticated customer experience. Enterprises can benefit by leveraging CSP partners that will rise to the challenge and carry them into the digital-first era. Is your enterprise ready for what comes next?

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Categories: Industry Viewpoint · SDN