If we consider Shopify to be the gold standard for simplicity and democratization of e-commerce, Broadband technology represents the polar opposite. Legacy Broadband infrastructure is plagued with inflexible billing systems, disjointed customer experiences, and silos of data. Friction between business and marketing teams and the capabilities of existing systems is an age-old story that boils down to cost, time, and resource constraints.
This then begs the question: how can Broadband providers reconcile competitive pressures and consumer expectations with the very real digital transformation barriers they face today? A "Shopifying" approach is required to untie the hands of Broadband leaders. Doing so will permit the trading of antiquated tech stacks for a single, unified digital platform that is built for billing flexibility, innovative offers, and seamless customer experience.
Your systems are how old?
Traditionally, the barriers to entry for the broadband industry have been hefty. As a result, it’s allowed year after year of the same big players who create their own private ecosystems with clunky hardware and proprietary systems. This effectively built a monopoly and boxed out smaller players.
Later on, large vendors began selling hardware at steep prices to whomever could afford it, but their ecosystems never developed into an open universal platform. These vendors also never made much effort to simplify the process and improve customer experiences.
Eventually, Open RAN acknowledged the need for a universal system, but it only focused on cellular technology, addressing a fraction of the total market. To this day, there are community broadband networks, fixed wireless networks, rural networks, and private networks that need to be addressed. We need to level the playing field and foster competition, while building network infrastructure and technology to connect people, places, and things.
Transforming monopolies into turnkey solutions
To address this inequality of resources, companies have entered the broadband market with complete, turnkey platforms. Anyone should be able to monetize networks without starting from scratch and by leveraging cloud technology and turnkey tools and solutions, you eliminate the need for big hardware spends and clunky software patches. When combined, this creates a true end-to-end customer experience that can scale and evolve with industry trends and market opportunities.
This "Shopify" effect is about simplifying the entire experience with a "one-stop-shop" for all technical components, promoting innovation through a lower investment threshold and total cost of ownership.
We need to level the playing field and foster competition, build network infrastructure and technology to connect people and things. Monetizing networks allows companies to be more agile, innovative and flexible with different bundles. Once you’ve monetized the network, the ability to launch a service on top of that, a service you can sell becomes possible.
There are solutions available today, such as CRMs like Salesforce, turnkey invoice solutions/ models, however, they are all point solutions and don’t offer an end-to-end experience that covers all personas – the end-customer (either a customer or enterprise), your agent (sales or support people), your key stakeholders (accounting, product, marketing, finance). Everyone needs their own tools to create their journey and must not be overlooked.
What does the playing field look like after "Shopifying" the networks?
More competition and more innovation:
When we simplify the technology landscape, more broadband companies can capitalize on new opportunities for growth, such as product bundles, value-added services, and innovative pricing plans. Companies have the ability to enter new verticals like the Internet of Things (IoT), co-existing with private networks, creating flanker brands. Consumers expect choice, and the way to meet their needs is through democratizing the industry and simplifying our infrastructure.
A one-stop-shop:
While there are software solutions available for just about every problem you can imagine, they don’t offer an end-to-end experience that covers all customer types. A more scalable solution takes the shape of a holistic and “turnkey” platform for end-users, agents, and stakeholders. Duct-taping multiple solutions together can work in the short-term, but almost always increases long-term costs and won’t offer a smooth and unified experience.
A universal platform allows everyone to prosper:
There’s a good reason why car manufacturers often use the same parts as their competitors. Simply put, it’s more economical for everyone involved to specialize in a certain area while collaboratively than it is to go it alone. That’s why connectivity platforms need to allow plug-and-play functions and sell more than just the basic offering. While Shopify may have its preferred vendors, it quickly became a market leader by working with multiple providers and encouraging innovation and competition through its marketplace of add-ons.
Sparking the digital transformation journey for broadband
This "Shopifying" digital transformation journey requires buy-in and support from players at multiple levels to achieve a simplified end-to-end customer experience. Just like how the cable industry has adapted to digital content delivery through varying degrees of cooperation with other industry leaders, Broadband needs to do the same in order to prosper and innovate for the future.
