The telecoms industry needs to adjust its strategic priorities as disruptive trends reshape the sector.
Customer expectations continue to rise, supply chains remain unstable, and new technology such as 5G is changing how telecoms services are delivered. These developments represent significant challenges for businesses that rely on legacy enterprise management infrastructure and operate on narrow margins within a competitive market.
As costs continue to rise, telecoms companies need to find efficient ways to adapt.
Why and how should telcos businesses evolve?
Ensuring profitable growth has been difficult for the telecoms industry in recent years. The competitive nature of the saturated telecoms market means customer loyalty is hard to earn, and businesses in the sector must be prepared to evolve to maintain demand. This requires exploring innovative models for recurring revenue, from personalised subscriptions to bundling options, and delivering them smoothly and automatically.
Many telcos are under pressure to grow and expand their networks, but this comes with significant operational challenges, including establishing effective and sustainable field service operations at scale and creating a robust supply plan for the network based on accurate demand predictions. Network expansion can also be complicated by global supply chain issues, especially trade barriers around critical components such as semiconductors.
These disruptions make it harder for telecoms companies to deliver services effectively, compounded by the constant movement to update infrastructure. 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) are changing communications and connectivity, but delivering on promises for modernisation against this backdrop can be challenging.
Nevertheless, the telecoms industry needs to innovate to keep pace with technological advancement. With GlobalData estimating that global 5G subscriptions will pass 7 billion by the end of 2029, businesses need to find effective ways of rapidly rolling out different services. At the same time, new infrastructure has to be supported by a knowledgeable workforce. Upskilling employees is yet another priority for the industry, while ensuring the sales department is supported by plan optimisation tools and strategic incentive models is imperative in ensuring further business growth.
Ultimately, the pace of change in the telecoms industry is relentless, and companies need to be able to act with speed and agility to steer an effective course. All of this demands advanced financial modelling capabilities for understanding profitability and cost on a granular level, helping leaders make rapid yet strategic decisions rooted in data – a necessity that one provider in Canada knows all too well.
Tbaytel: using ERP to plan for success
Offering wireless fibre, Internet, TV, landline, and security outreach, Tbaytel is currently the largest independently owned telecommunications provider in Canada. Its wireless network keeps Northern Ontario connected, a 300,000km2 area about the same size as Norway or Poland.
However, in recent years the company had to confront critical financial and operational challenges that were becoming roadblocks to growth.
“One of the biggest pain points was agility,” explains John Blanchette, director of finance at Tbaytel. “Our legacy system made it difficult to innovate. We weren’t able to streamline many processes or leverage our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system properly.
“Unfortunately, we had a lot of data siloes so it was difficult to get a comprehensive view of our operations. We lacked that seamless integration that really slows down decision making and made things far more complex than needed from a workflow perspective.”
With all the other challenges currently affecting telecoms, inefficiencies with their ERP software were the last thing Tbaytel needed. Partnering with SAP and NTT Data, the company decided to modernise its financial and operational systems through cloud ERP.
“We chose the cloud because it provided us with simplification and standardisation,” says Blanchette. “Plus, it allows us to take advantage of new AI technologies coming to market that enable us to better predict customer trends, internal costs, profitability, and so on.”
Indeed, thanks to the rapid iteration approach inherent to cloud ERP, it becomes easy for users like Tbaytel to stay constantly up to date with the latest innovations, whether that’s new ERP functionality and dashboards or AI agents. Leveraging such technology advancements was virtually impossible with the legacy systems that Tbaytel was using before – the upgrade of which was always slow, complex and costly.
However, it was critical that Tbaytel’s financial operations remained compliant during the transition, and SAP’s ability to provide the necessary secure infrastructure was one of the key advantages of choosing them as a partner.
“Ensuring that our data and processes are protected gives us that peace of mind,” says Blanchette. “Plus, we need a partner who can grow with us. Our services continue to expand with fiber and 5G. SAP has that agility and scalability that can adapt to new business needs.
“The transition has been a strategic gamechanger. We’ve embraced innovation and we’re able to drive efficiency, positioning ourselves for continued success in this industry that doesn’t ever stand still.”
AI set to transform business performance in telecoms
By adopting an out-of-the-box ERP from a world-leading provider,, Tbaytel have freed up resources and streamlined their focus on problem areas. However, the business value that can be gained through a cloud-native platform go way beyond financial management and ERP. SAP has recently introduced an end-to-end business suite that could help address many of the telco industry’s ongoing challenges, including motivating and optimising the workforce, mitigating supply chain difficulties, and maximising customer lifetime value.
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with business data and business applications provides the critical backbone to SAP Business Suite, providing real-time data-driven insights that can be used to scale profits, improve resource management, and reduce risk. In particular, a system of AI agents embedded within the new applications can help teams make smarter decisions faster, leveraging integrated data from both SAP and non-SAP sources into a unified layer for transformative outcomes.
As the demand for high-speed connectivity continues to increase, telecoms companies need to stay ahead of the digital curve to gain an edge in a competitive market. To learn more about how the trends and challenges discussed in this article relate to towerco and fiberco businesses specifically, download the free whitepaper below.
