In the run-up to DTW23 - Ignite, Ariana Lynn, Principal Analyst at The Fast Mode spoke to Lalita Tadikonda, SVP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Evergent on the company's plans for the event, as well as her predictions for the telecoms industry, specifically in the BSS space.
Ariana: What are you looking forward to most at the event? Does Evergent have any exciting activities planned?
Lalita: We’re thrilled with the opportunity to participate on this worldwide platform, which offers such incredible planned agenda touchpoints and industry leaders. Given this ‘perfect storm’ of people, places and things all coming together, we anticipate a wealth of fresh innovations and market-defining messaging. It shouldn’t be surprising that the information presented at the conference can be expected to extend beyond traditional telco connectivity to encompass areas including IoT, digital services, and the dynamic evolution of services offered by emerging ecosystem partners.
As a company, we at Evergent are excited to showcase our BSS capabilities and flexible monetization around new digital services including 5G IoT. Most critically for this particular program, we’re highly anticipating the live demo, as part of the Platforms and Partners track, of our Billing Hub Catalyst project. We've collaborated for months with etisalat, i2i Systems, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Telecom Egypt, Botswana Telecommunications Corporation, Verizon and Wavelo with an ultimate goal of simplifying settlements between partners and CSPs, and can’t wait to demonstrate the results.
Ariana: What emerging trends and technologies will you expect to power digital transformation in the telco space in the next year?
Lalita: Nobody in our space today should be surprised at the fresh potential of business models arising in healthcare, manufacturing, e-commerce and OTT. These and so many more sectors will increasingly demand an agile and versatile BSS system that can deliver various subscription models, enhancing the overall ability of telcos to deliver improved customer service.
Traditional telco voice and data revenue streams are shrinking due to competition, technological innovation and commoditization. In response, providers are trying to find alternate sources of revenue and that’s what is pointing them toward the partnership route. Whether derived from streaming service providers, IoT, insurance or other enterprises, these team-ups offer an opportunity for increased relevance in today’s economy. The goal for telcos is to ‘move up the tech stack’ beyond the domain of Internet service providers to become a centralized marketplace providing a whole host of additional services.
The advent of 5G has made this scenario a reality with use cases able to accommodate all those OTT and other value-added services requiring higher bandwidth.
When it comes to 5G, telcos don’t want to ‘miss the boat’ like they did with 4G. Offering value-added services is just one of the ways they can continue to remain ahead of the curve and the competition.
Ariana: What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI), specifically generative AI? Where is it heading?
Lalita: Everywhere you turn today and whatever the industry, it seems the topic of conversation inevitably turns toward AI, its long-term impact and potential influence, both good and bad. At Evergent, we have been using AI before talking about AI became trendy. We’ve put AI to work within our portfolio of solutions for a variety of critical services including churn deflection, intelligent payment retries, personalized offer management and more for the ultimate benefit of our customers’ user experience, growth and revenue opportunities.
Generative AI is one specific model within the overall AI space that has more to do with images, text and other communication formats. Some examples of this include ChatGPT and Bard (Google's Generative AI).
The question of where this is heading opens up a whole realm of possibilities. As mentioned above, we spend quite a bit of time inwardly examining the long-range influence such evolving innovations will have within our space, but one can’t help considering the wider view effect. Just a few of the possibilities offering incredible impact include:
- Health Industry for precision and accurate diagnosis and treatment-related decision-making.
- Cultivation and farming for better crop projections and yielding
- Weather forecasting and other areas
Lalita is responsible for scaling the business through partnerships in the Evergent ecosystem. A career spanning more than two decades of software industry experience has featured a variety of responsibilities and organizations, including sales & marketing, GTM strategy, R&D and operational management. Prior to her time at Evergent, Lalita led the Technology Alliances functions at Nokia, a group she built from the ground up into a thriving ecosystem of partners generating significant revenue for the company. Before Nokia, she was at Oracle where she held several leadership roles across Alliances and Product Development.
