Viewpoint
Digitalization and intelligence have emerged as the most significant opportunities in the next decade and have opened up new market potential and created growth engines during the transformation of the carriers.
"In 10 years, we can upgrade from "digitization" to "intelligent digitalization" based on technologies such as 5.5G, 10GE home broadband, AI, cloud computing, big data, digital twin, and super automation," says Peng Song, President, Carrier BG Marketing and Solution Sales, Huawei, during his address at the Win-Win Conference.
Several countries are already recognizing the importance of digitalization and intelligence. For instance, China listed industry intelligence as an important development direction in its 14th Five-Year Plan and vision for 2035. Further, European Union has also predicted that 75% of enterprises will adopt cloud computing, big data, and AI services by 2030.
Transformation For Intelligent Digitalization at Three Layers
Peng Song elaborated on how the carriers can accelerate the transformation of intelligent digitalization at three layers. This will help them create three key values of revenue increase, experience improvement and improvement in quality and efficiency.
"The first layer is intelligent digitalization of services. Intelligent digitalization will profoundly change the value creation process. In the future, carriers will switch from offering connectivity services to offering differentiated experience-based services, data services, and industry digitalization services. A close business loop between ecosystem, platform, and network will be formed, accelerating the growth of the second curve," says Peng Song.
The second layer is that of intelligent digitalization of Operations and Maintenance (O&M). Carriers will need to transform the O&M system in line with new industries to amplify, reinforce, and multiply the value of human resources and assets, thus leading to improved productivity. In simple terms, the intelligent digital transformation of O&M systems refers to the transition of the O&M systems from being network-centric to becoming user journey-centric. This allows carriers to connect products, services, platforms, and networks to maximize data value. This is crucial and will help the carriers to make better-informed decisions based on data.
"The third layer is that of intelligent digitalization of infrastructure. Carriers’ networks will transform from traditional networks to highly secure, green, intelligent, and ubiquitous networks. By integrating multiple types of resources such as computing and connectivity resources, networks are more intelligent, clouds are more diversified, data flow is more efficient, and intelligent applications are more extensive," explains Peng Song.
Peng Song, President, Carrier BG Marketing and Solution Sales, Huawei
How do we carry out the three-layer intelligent digital transformation?
Huawei proposed intelligent digital transformation strategy in 2016 to help carriers digitally transform themselves by breaking IT data silos. It was designed to support carriers in setting up corporate-level transformation initiatives to strengthen the intelligent process of marketing, sales and delivery through digitalization to gain a competitive edge.
"Based on Huawei’s transformation practices, intelligent digital transformation cannot be achieved overnight. Instead, we need to select key scenarios based on pain points, create values in one point and gradually extend it to wider areas. This requires systematic transformation driven by the management team," says Peng Song.
Peng Song shared the example of intelligent digital marketing. "We started with solution design to improve efficiency as tens of thousands of sales personnel around the world relied on manual operations. Through product digitalization and capability atomization, solution design capabilities were later supported by the Three Cloud platform to facilitate modular solution design," says Peng Song.
The project enabled the intelligent digital capabilities of the entire marketing process, which allowed them to deliver a digitalized user experience to the customers. "During the pandemic, over 90 cloud-based exhibition halls were quickly launched on Three Cloud. By 2021, 50,000 sessions of exchanges with key customers were supported. Each month, 33,000 people performed daily operations on Three Cloud," explained Song.
The transformation of the marketing recorded three key stages. The first stage was "changing the work mode" to improve operational efficiency and user experience. The second stage was "changing the decision-making model", where the translation from product value to customer business value was maximized via cross-department decision-making driven by converged data to cover three key scenarios: landscape, profitability, and go-to-market.
The third and last stage was "enabling capability improvement of partners", where internal capabilities were used to enable the industry. The Three Cloud Channel Partner Store helped carriers to digitalize marketing in eight industries of the B2B market, improving the efficiency of customer solution design by 15%.
Huawei’s Five Dimensions and Five Levels Assessment Model
Huawei leveraged its experience of enabling the transformation of more than 100 operators to come up with the Five Dimensions and Five Levels assessment model for the maturity of O&M intelligent digital transformation. The model assesses intelligent digital transformation in five dimensions: transformation strategy, value measurement, process optimization, data/platform/network, and organization and talent, at five maturity levels from L1 to L5.
"Using the closed-loop iterative evolution method of scenario selection, capability assessment, capability construction, capability verification, and capability re-evaluation, it helps operators clearly understand their current status in the transformation journey, select the transformation path, and continuously guide the transformation process," explained Peng Song.
Huawei continues to cooperate with TM Forum, GSMA, ETSI, 3GPP, and other standards and industry organizations on intelligent digital transformation, resulting in white papers, and multiple industry awards with operator partners.
At the same time, Huawei has created a global "Digital Intelligent Transformation DigiVerse Center" which summarizes high-value scenarios in the actual transformation process and allows customers to connect to more than a dozen sample sites on the cloud for immersive dialogues with more than 300 experts and scenario-based experiences.
Intelligent digital transformation is a structural and systematic transition targeting business value. It is a journey and not a destination demanding continuous effort to enable operators to create new business value along different paths: whether it is improving quality and efficiency through automation and intelligence, maximizing the value of integrated data for organizations, improving customer satisfaction through precision marketing and lean operations, or bringing richer personal and enterprise services.
