Research Shows Enterprises Hungry for Commercial Digital Services With Consumer-Style Buying Experience
Despite High Enterprise Demand, Digital and Communications Service Providers are Missing an Opportunity to Engage Business Customers and Monetise All They Can
HELSINKI, Finland—07 April 2015—Comptel Corporation (NASDAQ OMX Helsinki: CTL1V) has released the results of a new study, conducted by ICT Intuition and Coleman Parkes Research, showing strong demand among enterprises for new connected digital services – but also a serious gap in operators’ ability to satisfy those demands.
The “Enterprise Multi-Client Study” surveyed more than 1,000 global business leaders to better understand what they want from their digital and communications service providers. The survey revealed that 81 percent of respondents are currently using connected digital services to improve productivity, generate revenue or reduce costs. A further 71 percent are looking to bundle connected digital services into the products they sell – and 95 percent of those would like to partner with a digital or communications service provider to do so.
Yet, only 14 percent of enterprises are purchasing connected digital services primarily from operators. Businesses’ top concerns when considering buying digital services were security (61 percent), cost (58 percent), service quality (54 percent) and easily accessible support (39 percent). Nearly a third (29 percent) said ease of ordering and purchasing was a top decision-making factor.
Clearly, digital and communications service providers must up their game when it comes to the features, quality and ease of use of their connected digital services if they are to tap into enterprise demand and take a larger share of the market.
“If operators want to profit from enterprises’ current hunger for digital services, they must offer a better buying experience with simple platforms, through which business customers can get relevant recommendations and quickly search for and purchase services,” said Juhani Hintikka, president and CEO, Comptel. “This creates an experience similar to the app stores consumers already enjoy. Implementing cloud-generation, intelligent technological and automated operational capabilities is key to enabling this. We at Comptel focus on these to enable enterprise sales transformation.”
The report also sheds light on how businesses would like to purchase digital services. For example, the top two ways enterprises would like to implement connected devices, applications and M2M or IoT services is through a connected platform with application development help (39 percent) or with a turnkey service (27 percent). This contrasts with 23 percent who want to handle everything in-house. Enterprises are, therefore, seeking minimal upfront development and instead favouring managed and turnkey options.
A majority of enterprises can be characterized as “Cloud Generation” customers, showing interest in purchasing critical applications and functions “as a service” (aaS), including infrastructure (75 percent) and business insight and data analytics (73 percent). Only 2 percent of enterprises are NOT considering as-a-service (aaS) options. Cloud apps and services have found a permanent place in the enterprise shopping list.
The survey findings are included in Comptel’s new book, Operation Nexterday, in a chapter by Nancee Ruzicka, president, ICT Intuition.
Ruzicka noted, “Digital and communications service providers can help enterprises address operational challenges and create efficiency using connectivity. But offering a data centre and a network connection isn’t enough. To satisfy today’s enterprises, operators must offer a menu of managed and pre-integrated solution options that deliver real services, not just bandwidth.”
Resources
- Meet Comptel at TM Forum Live! taking place 1-4 June, 2015 in Nice, France. To arrange a meeting at the show, please contact Comptel at [email protected].
- Connect with Comptel on its blog and on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.
About Comptel Corporation
Life is about digital moments. Comptel perfects these by transforming how you serve, meet and respond to the needs of “Generation Cloud” customers.
Our solutions allow you to innovate rich communications services instantly, master the orchestration of service and order flows, capture data-in-motion and refine your decision-making. We apply intelligence to reduce friction in your business.
Comptel has enabled the delivery of digital and communications services to more than 1 billion people. Every day, we care for more than 20% of all mobile usage data. Nearly 300 service providers across 90 countries have trusted us to perfect customers’ digital moments.
For more information, visit www.comptel.com.
Further Information
Ari Vänttinen
Comptel Corporation
Chief Marketing Officer
+358 9 7001131
[email protected]
March Communications
Beth Brenner / Doug Flora
+1 617 960 9875
[email protected]