3 vital questions telco operations leaders need to ask in 2023

With recession and inflation being key themes of 2023, the average business needs to ensure that revenue is grown, costs streamlined, and inefficiencies reduced. 

In order to tackle inefficiencies and suboptimal processes, you first need to find them. That means posing tough questions across the full sweep of your operations, from the top of the sales pipeline to your digital transformation plans.

Here are some key questions telco operations leaders need to ask. 

When are we recognizing revenue?

Revenue is the building block of all businesses. Different organizations have different methods for recognizing revenue, especially when multiple products and services are being offered to customers at discounts or bundles, leading to complexities. 

If your business receives payment before the completed provision of your deliverables, there is still potential for something to go wrong…a project deadline being missed, a component not being available, or a service being out of order. In these cases, money may have been received, but revenue cannot be recognized. 

To this extent, revenue recognition is a function of your transformation department: businesses need to be confident that their deployments for customers happen on time, and without complications.

Having a complete picture of cash flow and revenue allows for valuable insights and better decision making.

How do we maximize value in our pipeline?

Executives are under more pressure than ever to understand the pulse of their business - and at the heart of that is the pipeline. 1 in 3 sales managers rank optimizing sales process as a top management priority.

27% say that a long sales cycle is one of the biggest barriers to sales effectiveness, with studies showing that it takes an average of 4 months for a prospect to go down the entire sales pipeline. 

Having access to centralized insights allows for high-level decision-making. Harnessing the power of technology allows operations teams to streamline pipelines, gain full visibility across stages and close deals faster. 

How do we justify investment in digital transformation?

With 89% of companies putting digital-first strategies into play, operations leaders need to be proactive about digital transformation or risk getting digitally disrupted. 

As a means of transforming processes, digitally transformative technologies have evolved from a nice-to-have capability to a must-have. Having an architecture that is constantly keeping up with changes in demands future proofs an organization.

44% of survey respondents cited improving employee productivity/performance is the main driver for digital transformation. With businesses around the world expected to spend $2.8 trillion on transformation efforts, telco operations leaders need to assess if the drivers and benefits of transformation are worth the cost.