Simplifying the complex: Why enterprises need to rip off the Band-Aid

The world of telecommunications technology is a complex place. As the landscape and environment for which it was designed continues to evolve, the rate of change is rapidly increasing, leaving the old-world ways flailing in the dust.

Enterprises have historically been dragged along the winding path to digital transformation and often get locked into agreements that bind them to legacy systems. These deals shackle businesses to providers that won’t bundle offerings between the different IT systems, and they won’t allow you to scale.

For IT specialists, CIOs, or any business leader hoping to grow and scale, the dread of being in the driver’s seat of any kind of network transformation has led to an unfortunate state of inertia. Because change is hard. Change is painful. And sometimes, the immediate benefits of change aren’t always apparent.

Yet, as challenger telcos are picking up the mantle and actually challenging the status quo, more and more businesses are realising that these old world ways are no longer sustainable. The benefits of the new world - flexibility, empowerment, and scalable bandwidth - are too glaring to ignore.

The time has come for these enterprises to rip off the Band-Aid and transform.

Complexity used to be baked into the business model

In the early days, when businesses were implementing telecommunications technologies, they were built with complex architecture to support bespoke developments embedded into business management systems.

They were designed to support customised CRM systems or custom-built applications written in-house that were so deeply integrated, businesses were completely dependent on them for day-to-day business operations.

So, complexity suited their needs well.

The challenge of moving from that world of complexity to a world of simplicity was, and still is, an intimidating prospect.

All the fear and anxiety that came with that journey has led to a general feeling of dread when it comes to unpicking those dependencies.

Fresh skin in the game - the new world of the challenger telco

Although challenger telcos - those newer, smaller providers in the market - have not yet built up the customer base (or the balance sheets) of the incumbents, they do have the benefit of bypassing their inherited 'technology debt’. They can move and respond faster, and fully leverage the current digital environment.

These challengers (or ‘telco-teens’, if you like) have been built foundationally differently simply because they’re young. Like our Gen Z peers, they’re digitally native and have a digital-first mindset.

For us challenger telcos, this fundamentally different approach translates in both the way we service our customers and the way we operate.

Ripping off the Band-Aid

Many would argue the environment is still complex. And to some degree, they’re not wrong.

There's no denying that renewing your contract for another year is by far the easier option. Making these kinds of big changes means you need to think about continuity of services, migration of data sets, outages, and downtime.

But nothing worth anything great comes easily.

In the new world of NBN access, cloud applications, and as-a-service models, what you need from your telco has evolved. And the relationship with your service provider has radically changed.

Challenger brands still provide the same access to all your different services, and the same level of embedded resilience and redundancy. But, in this new world, businesses don’t need to design and build digital-first infrastructure because it exists already.

Any sophisticated business in today’s internet-based SaaS environment will already be using the best-in-breed, cloud resident service providers with all the necessary integration built in.  

These service and network infrastructure providers are responsible for network capacity, flexibility, resilience and speed.

As one example, Superloop is underpinned by our independent, owned and operated fibre and fixed wireless network that connects hundreds of strategic sites across the Asia Pacific region. Yes, it is complex and infrastructure heavy, but our digital-first mindset means our business is built around flexible self-service and automation.

That investment in infrastructure and hands-off IT management empowers businesses to layer their networks with self-selected cloud and managed services, managed voice and security, all the different access types and product types existing natively within our central automation product, Superloop Connect.

No pain, no gain

Making that decision to transform any organisation needs to be strategic, and it's not one to be taken lightly.

Digital transformation sets up any business to take advantage of faster implementation speed, improved lifecycle costs, scalability, and the benefits of continuous upgrades to systems and processes.

Time to take a deep breath, rip off the Band-Aid, and remove the complexity of yesteryears. The long term gains will by far outweigh the short term pain.