Are Legacy Systems Stifling CSP’s Growth?
Introduction
Communication Service Providers in the U.S. are grappling with the demands of a rapidly expanding market and evolving customer expectations. This is because there’s been a significant shift in the way consumers connect, entertain, work and conduct business. According to reports, data traffic is expected to rise to 1.8 million Petabytes by 2026. Despite this growth in data usage, compound annual growth of CSPs is only expected to be 1.7%.
To stay ahead in a hyper competitive market amidst falling ARPUs (average revenue per user), CSPs must digitize their business, improve their service offerings and continuously improve customer expectations. At the same time, it is important from a business perspective to reduce operating expenses and improve margins.
Yet, most CSPs struggle to keep pace burdened with their legacy systems that introduce a lot of complexities in managing services, customer care, billing and more. Let’s have a quick look at some of the challenges faced by CSPs burdened with legacy systems:
Challenges posed by legacy systems
Billing bottlenecks: Legacy systems often struggle to adapt to evolving billing models. This greatly hinders CSPs from implementing flexible and customer-friendly billing solutions.
Customer service snarls: At a time when customer expectations are on the rise, outdated interfaces and rigid structures of the legacy systems can pose challenges in delivering seamless customer care experiences. This is not a risk that any business can afford to take today.
Service stalemate: Legacy systems hinder the swift deployment of new services, making it challenging for CSPs to meet customer expectations for flexible plans and improved service management. This is because these legacy systems are typically outdated and are not built to cater to the diverse needs of their customer base.
Security concerns: Aging legacy systems often lack robust security features, exposing CSPs to heightened cybersecurity risks. As the telecommunications landscape evolves, legacy systems become more susceptible to data breaches and vulnerabilities, compromising the integrity of sensitive customer information and undermining trust in the services provided.
Data black hole: One drawback of legacy systems is their incapacity to effectively extract insights from vast data volumes, hindering stakeholders from making informed, data-backed decisions.
Yet another drawback of outdated systems is that by sticking to old systems, opportunities in the evolving telecom landscape go unnoticed. With the industry converging around 5G and upgraded networks, collaboration opens new revenue streams. Failing to modernize means missing out on these opportunities and losing ground in a dynamic market.
Modernization – a game changer for CSPs
Before we dive into the benefits of modernization, let’s make one point clear - modernizing is more than just tech upgrades; it's a comprehensive strategy that involves streamlining operations, boosting flexibility, and gearing up for the future.
Streamlined operations and cost reduction
Modernization streamlines operations, reducing costs significantly. This means embracing a more efficient operational approach. For instance, with modernization, CSPs can automate the billing process to not only reduce the chance of errors but also free up human resources, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks. The result? A leaner, cost-effective business model.
Scalability and adaptability
In a rapidly changing market, the need of the hour is scalability and adaptability. Let’s imagine you're launching a new mobile plan, and there's a sudden surge in customer inquiries. With a legacy system, managing this increased workload might be challenging. But with modernization, your system can easily scale up to handle the spike in inquiries, adapting seamlessly to the changing market dynamics.
Improved customer experiences
Modernization prioritizes an enhanced customer experience by offering services that keep the customer at the center- be it in terms of billing, data plans, customer service, user interface and so much more. This is to cater to the diverse needs of the customer base, ensuring satisfaction and loyalty.
Lead the charge in innovation
Whenever there’s been an advancement in technology be it 5G, cloud or AI, innovative players in the market have always managed to seize new business opportunities. Modernization equips CSPs with future-ready capabilities, allowing them to lead the charge in innovation. It's not just about keeping up; it's about being at the forefront of the rapidly evolving industry.
How Reach can help
At Reach, we recognize the hurdles faced by CSPs in launching new plans, managing services, streamlining billing processes and more because it is a journey we have personally undertaken.
Having launched our own MVNO, we encountered all the complexities that arise with introducing new plans and billing processes. And this very journey laid the foundation to creating a robust platform that is flexible and future-ready. Here is how we have helped some of our CSP customers:
Rapid (and efficient) mobile plan launches
Our customers often approached us with the challenge of launching new plans efficiently. The process used to be a complex journey, consuming months of effort and significant resources. However, with Reach, CSPs can seamlessly create a new plan, set prices, and deploy it in under 48 hours – a swift, efficient, and cost-effective solution to a once cumbersome process.
Simplified billing management
Unlike legacy systems that require complex integrations for billing, Reach employs a modular approach. This means you can easily pick and configure billing components without the usual intricate connections to tax systems, mobile plans, or payment gateways. The result? A faster implementation without the usual hassles.
Smart analytics for informed decision-making
Our customers struggled with delivering personalized experiences and services even though they were sitting on a goldmine of customer data – customer needs, preferences, habits and more. But the limitations of legacy systems prevented many of them from turning this data into actionable customer insights. With Reach, our customers were able to leverage smart analytics, User Tracking Mechanisms (UTMs), easy-to-integrate referral programs, and comprehensive analytics to make informed decisions that kept the customer at the center.
Conclusion
We get it – the thought of overhauling your entire system may seem daunting. But modernization doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul (especially not without testing it out first)! Picture this – your legacy mobile service has managed to penetrate 60% of your potential customer base. Now instead of upgrading your entire service, with Reach you can easily launch a cutting-edge digital service that appeals to your untapped customer base (say, the remaining 40%). Now, this digital service not only is customer-centric, flexible, and future-ready, but it is also cheaper!
What’s more? You get comprehensive insights into your customer helping you deliver personalized experiences and services that they love. All this, without any disruption to your legacy system. Once you experience the positive impact of this approach on your revenue, ARPU, and your margins, you can migrate the rest of your customer base also to your new digital service with minimal disruptions.