Kloudville CPQ podcast
Summary:
This podcast covers CPQ related trends in the telco market. Martina and Per explain why having a solid CPQ foundation is crucial for any modern company in the B2B/telco space, and Per explains how Kloudville’s unique product can help others with their CPQ needs.
Transcript:
M is Martina Kurth
P is Per Borgklint
P: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Kloudville podcast. So, today we have the honour of having Martina Kurth from Telco Republic with us, and we’re going to talk CPQ and trends behind it, and what is needed going forward, so thank you very much for coming Martina and please introduce yourself.
M: Thank you Per, we are Telco Republic, we are a new analyst firm on the horizon basically of the large endless firm landscape. So we are covering telco services, telco analyst services really from a more innovative innovation and disruption perspective. We are focused mainly on telecommunications primarily on OSS and BSS, we are a global firm and we are advising C-level on the service provider as well as the supplier side. And this topic CPQ is one of our key competence areas where we work on a daily basis with a number of larger and smaller players around the world.
P: That’s fantastic and it’s great to have you here to help us thrive through this area on the wild CPQ market. Maybe we should start with a little bit of a market background, maybe I should give my perspective first. I think that CPQ has risen up on the horizon very quickly and that is driven by the need of a higher degree of automation and flexibility than we’ve seen in the past and also a more focused business towards B2B space within the operators. Would you agree with that?
M: Yes, yes absolutely, I mean there is a huge demand for more flexible quotation pricing configuration simply because there is a wider ecosystem, and services are becoming more complex they are composite they include components also of external partners, so for service providers to embrace the external innovations in their product offerings, CPQ is a very central component in the OSS/BSS architecture and there is simply a need, clients expect to have much faster time to market, so whether that is on the B2B side or whether it’s on the B2B2E side. So, it’s really about complex product bundles, time to market, it’s about embracing the ecosystems and the flexibility, the integration, capabilities with existing systems.
P: That’s very true and in Kloudville we have concluded that already now our design of the solutions, so we embrace the reduced effort for meeting the requirements and it gives shorter planning and a very rapid design phase that accurately can generate detailed quotes based on customer specific requirements in a very very short period of time. And it also gives you the flexibility to update, track, and monitor these changes. This agility of course is a competitive advantage, because if you are meeting a customer in the market, if you can rapidly respond to an RFP/RFQ or an offer request that has generated a quote in minutes or maybe an hour or whatever depending on the complexity, it’s of course very very positive, versus the traditional way which can take days, weeks, or even longer depending on the complexity and the different cooperation that needs to happen in the operator. Here you get one single unified view, with a high degree of agility and significantly reduced complexity. I believe that this is a part of the digitalization journey that we are going to see going forward.
M: So, what are the key benefits of CPQ for the telco providers then, in business outcome terms?
P: If you start from the customer side, which I think is the most important, it is to meet on the customer expectations and in this case meeting customer expectations means responding rapidly, quickly, and correctly, on their requests. If it’s an offer, or if it’s an RFP/RFQ, if there is complexity with multi locations, if there is a combination of internal and external assets in combination with uploading etc . There is a need to, in a very rapid flexible way, be able to create these offers. And these are the real benefits, you’re going to be able to push offers to the marketplace in a very short period of time and of course, speed is a part of closing and is a competitive advantage. Secondly, it creates efficiencies, and efficiency is also a competitive advantage as you will be able to spend more time with more customers, or with a customer, instead of spending more time in the office preparing for meeting the customer. I think these are some of the key components.
M: Absolutely, but then also, very important, it is actually also a tool to drive new revenue streams. I mean, you are able to embrace ecosystems, also external innovation partners, you are able to offer more competitive offerings with a faster time to market, and that allows for more diversification of sales models, business models, which is a very important point for Telcos today because it’s all about finding new sources of revenues and CPQ supports that.
P: Yes, I totally agree and I think that with continuous product and service innovation that is happening and so telecom operators require agility to meet both from a competitive edge, but also taking the innovation to the market in a very seamless way. It is also important if you look at a customer lifecycle management as well as the product life management as you can be more accurate in your offer and offer maintenance, which means that you should be able to reduce churn. And by doing that, keep the lifetime with the customer longer. And, with current lifecycle management tools, within the CPQ, you are also able to actually deliver a very very efficient way of managing your product and offerings, giving you that innovation flexibility to the market and the agility that that gives is a competitive advantage.
M: Absolutely, so but why are existing solutions inadequate to meet the needs of telco providers today?
P: So, to a very large extent, they are still CMA and manual. They are patching information together from different system solutions: internal, external, and requires manual work to create one unified offering. It is also time-consuming to find out the information, get the right settings, etc. and if you can digitalize this, then in the next stage, of course this gives you the opportunity to even have the customer configure and receive the quote themselves over time, depending on what kind of level of flexibility you are going to allow the external world to participate in with your internal system support. But I think all in all, telecom companies need to explore strategies to maximize their revenues, maximize their efficiencies of their organization structures, reduce losses and improve time to revenue, so if you can have a CPQ and you can close these faster of course time to revenue is reduced and that improves cash flow and if you can do that with less resources or you can do more deals with the same resources you are getting a significantly improved business model.
M: Exactly, that’s right, so what capabilities do CPQ vcndors have to have to actually address these innovation needs of telco providers? What are the relative differentiators of those providers that stand out?
P: Yeah, I believe that, first. very simple and rapid integration to other existing systems and solutions, managing customer information like product catalogs, and also CRM systems, billing systems is one benefit. But there is also having the ability to actually combine those products in the CPQ, so that the CPQ has the ability to upload these products and solutions both internal and external, meaning managing partners, meaning managing customers, meaning managing offer creation, contract management, all of these things should be an integral part of a CPQ system. And this attracts customers, and it also makes it possible to far more rapidly deploy offers in the marketplace. And that creates value, and very timely rapid response on requests. So I think that the components needs to be user interfaces, preferred both internal and external, needs to be some AI source in there that helps the sales guys, there needs to be a wide variety of internal and external assets that should be possible to combine the in flexibility that the market demands and it should have a future proof architecture, meaning that it can live with innovation and transformation in the surrounding systems and environment.
M: And I would add also much more robust quotation and proposal management. So, the flexibility and the speed simply to close new innovative deals for telcos is kind of a must to compete in today’s digital economy. So CPQ takes central stage really there, it’s kind of a key investment which provides competitive differentiation for telcos around the world and as you mentioned analytics, generative AI will also play an important role in this process to make CPQ even more efficient and leverage the capabilities of the telco, in revenue terms.
P: And of course, there is one thing that needs to be mentioned as well, and this is that you get one single point of information, and that means that you have one truth and you have a higher degree of quality in the information and that is a crucial benefit and that gives you the possibility to maintain customer records, product pricing and sales activities in one unified approach, and I think that that in itself is a crucial component. And having the possibility to actually follow up the track and know that the information that has been handed over is quality assured as you have one single source of information and one single system is a key to maintain good customer relationships. But also be able to change and adjust as you go without having any impact on that quality because it’s being kept consistent within the system.
M: Exactly, and that’s why it is important to work with a vendor that really understands telco specific processes. So, I’ve been advising telcos around the world for over 10 years in this particular area and we’ve seen quite a few projects failing simply because typical vendors don’t understand really telco specific requirements and processes. That’s also a key differentiator, so it’s important to work with someone like Kloudville on such a strategic technology initiative. But, speaking about Kloudville how does Kloudville CPQ 360 differ from other solutions in the market? What are its major advantages?
P: One of the things that makes us unique is that we have one unified capability of managing the whole product catalog. We are totally cloud native, so designed and built for being in the cloud. We are very rapid in integration, as we have a very solid API interface, we built connectors to all major providers of surrounding solutions within the CRM billing system space and also in other system spaces. The possibility to seamlessly interact and manage partners within the offering process, the solid contract management process, and also the fact that we have the ability to manage really the most complex things. And here we are unique in the way that we can do we can do major bulk loading, we can do very complex offerings across different technologies and different building blocks within the telcos. We are capable of maintaining and tracking the deliverables in the CPQ system. There is a solid source of information also for having a data warehouse to maintain tracking of progress and receiving reports on sales and sales efficiencies and also on the product side, learning what works, does not work, and having the ability to adjust and manage that process in a very efficient way. So, I think what we are extraordinarily good at is managing a very high degree of complexity.
M: And what about the seamless integration with telecom ecosystems?
P: As I briefly mentioned, there is a tool within Kloudville called Solar which enables you to very simply build an API or create the connectors that is needed for the surrounding systems. On top of that, we already are gold certified. We have the TM forum and connect APIs, we do meet through our existing, already developed adapters pretty much all known relevant systems out there. So, we can manage to talk to any competing system in the CRM space and translate that and understand that and we can ship back that information to the CRM system so that it understands that after we have created and taken our measures, on for example an offer. So that is one thing, the second thing is that very rapid implementation time, given the way it’s designed, given the way we operate in the cloud, given the predefined connectors or adapters and Solar capabilities. It is very quick to set up and get up and running. So, it’s not an SI heavy product, it does not need product development to meet your needs. You can configure pretty much everything out of the system. Its, to a very large extent, an out of the box for all major telco needs and requirements. So, I think that is our main use piece.
M: Excellent, which role will generative AI play in the future in terms of accelerating operational efficiency, drive new revenue streams, and win new customers. Do you have a view on that?
P: The real opportunity that this gives is that you can actually expose the current assets that you have within your business in the telecom operator. And bring them to the market in a seamless way. You will be able to start and create partnerships with external partners and also include those in your offers. You would be more rapid, meaning that you would be able to make offers quickly, and time to revenue will improve significantly. So, overall, it is moving away from what I would describe as an analog or a CMA analog approach to a very digital approach where you can track and trace, but also, have the agility to create, in a way which has been difficult in the past.
M: The key differentiator is really the strong focus on the customer. So, it’s about a really seamless process for quotation pricing, it’s being faster to make new innovative offers and agreeing then getting the agreement and the implementation of the service order in a more dynamic fashion, much faster than before. I guess the impact on the customer experience is also a key differentiator, because everything that is done internally in the telco should be measured by the impact on the customer experience, so how could this business outcome then be measured with tangible KPIs?
P: Well if you start with the customer again, you would be more accurate, you would be more rapid, and you would have a shorter time to revenue, you would be consistent and over the lifetime of the customer you would be able to maintain and provide correct information, without having to do the facts finding journey before going back to the customer. That’s one thing, the second thing is that there is also of course also the possibility to innovate in a more faster space, which means that time to market new products are shorter. And as they are shorter you will be able to get a higher degree of revenue out of new products and take market share based on your innovation in a faster pace. So, a lot of times, business is not only about delivering a certain offer it’s also how quickly you can deliver it and how accurate it is and how quickly you can adjust and actually come back. That is a key for someone to build trust and confidence in your supplier so of course that is a very important element in how you can see, view and develop the relationship with customers.
M: Absolutely.
P: Okay, so I think we have, in a very good way covered CPQ and some of the uniqueness with Kloudville. And I believe that if you’re interested in this space we would love to actually engage and tell you more about our capabilities, possibilities, our architecture and how we could support you in transforming into modern next generation agile telco operators in the B2B space.
M: Please reach out to us.
P: Yes, thank you very much Martina for joining us today, both me and Martina are of course available to chat with and if you are going down the path of taking the next steps to digital future in the B2B space. Reach out, we will be so glad and happy to engage.
M: Thank you Per.
P: Thank you Martina, was a great pleasure as always, and thank you for all of you who have been listening and see you soon again.