MasterStream Blog

From service infrastructure to the way brokers quote prices to their customers, digital transformation is touching every part of the telecom industry. As the calendar year changes, the disruption taking place on multiple fronts is going to affect both day-to-day telecom business operations, and the services and performance your customers expect.

As 2021 unfolds, here’s a look at the most significant changes taking place in telecom—and how it might affect carriers, solutions providers, and telecom brokers.

Geographic market areas are always in flux. Customers are moving in and out, and the needs of those customers continue to evolve based on their telecom usage and needs.

Location-based intelligence offers one of the most accurate, up-to-date sources of information related to the telecom behaviors of your target audience. As you plan an entry into a new market, this information should be a key component of your efforts to build a go-to-market strategy and market your brand to these prospects.

Here are some of the biggest contributions location-based intelligence can make to your go-to-market strategy.

As telecom quoting processes embrace more software-driven solutions, telecom businesses face greater pressure to transform their operations and keep pace with the industry’s evolution.

Automation and algorithm-based CPQ (configure, price, quote) processes are key to creating the efficiencies needed to accelerate these services. If you aren’t automating the aggregation of your suppliers, then you’re creating a manual process—which increases your quote intervals and causes you to miss out on more opportunities.

When businesses delay digital transformation, they end up creating more challenges in the future. Don’t let this happen to your telecom business—invest in solutions that keep pace with your competition.

Most telecom businesses view an effective partner portal as a tool to streamline the configure-price-quote (CPQ) process. But the connectivity of this portal also plays a significant role in determining how efficiently your sales teams can generate leads, deliver fast quotes, and close deals to grow your business.

Here’s a look at the benefits that come with adopting a connected telecom partner portal for your business.

When prospects are looking for a new telecom provider, availability matters. Poor availability will lead to service disruptions and dysfunction that increase downtime for the customer, grind workflows to a halt, and quickly turn your customers against your business.

Resellers must keep availability in mind when choosing the best services to provide their customers, but telecom network availability can be complex, and it may vary even in different floors of the same building. Effective CPQ (configure, price, quote) processes leverage analytics and a solutions-based approach to connect customers to the right telecom provider. 

Here are some of the factors that need to be considered in this process.

Most telecom businesses understand the value of implementing a quoting tool that streamlines or eliminates time-consuming manual processes, while also offering features that improve both the speed and quality of configured quotes being delivered to current and prospective customers.

If you’re in the market for a quoting tool that can modernize your quoting process, your business might be considering in-house development of a proprietary solution. While this may offer some attractive advantages on the service, it can also create limitations that you aren’t as likely to face with an outsourced quoting tool.

Here are some of the ways an outsourced telecom quoting tool can out-perform any potential in-house alternative.

Digital transformation in the telecom industry has set a pace that many providers struggle to match. The rise of fiber, broadband, 4G, and now 5G LTE, along with fixed wireless and copper networks, has caused enterprise data consumption to explode in recent years. The same is true for managed and cloud-based business applications.

The blurred lines between phone, cable TV, and internet consumption have further increased the demands placed on telecom services. As streaming has increased, so have the number of cloud-based services used by consumers on a daily basis.

Managing this increased data volume requires new data intelligence tools and strategies for telecom services. Here’s a look at some of the innovative solutions that will help you improve data management, and deliver improved quality of service, to your customers.

Whether you’re a telecom carrier, broker, or reseller, the challenge of converting customers is the same: Stocking and converting your sales pipeline is often a time-consuming and inefficient process.  

Telecom sales automation gives you the tools you need to build and maintain momentum for your company’s growth, optimizing your engagement strategy to achieve a higher prospect-to-customer rate for those sales efforts. 

Here are the 8 proven methods by which telecom sales automation helps enhance customer acquisition rates.

Distributing telecom products and services through the agent channel comes with a wide array of challenges. As options have become more complex, some Channel Chiefs have chosen to deploy a Concierge (white glove) approach to supporting and enabling their channel partners.  This approach typically involves a Channel Manager or other resource to personally process quotes and provide support for the agent. The strategy has been successfully deployed in many diverse use cases with varying degrees of success.  Let’s take a look at the model.

For the majority of businesses, the desire to handle lead to cash workflow processes in as few systems as possible has a strong attraction.  Most organize their processes around a strong CRM and compliment that with an integration to their order/provisioning/billing system.  There are several complex services that pull businesses into more systems, but one such service is quoting.