Our CEO, Eynav (Navi) Azarya, have just finished his roadshow in Asia at the Amdocs APAC summit in Singapore. Amdocs hosted 200 telecom & media executives from all the top communications providers in Asia for a two days conference, discussing the CSP of the future and how to embrace the digital revolution to drive better experiences for its customers.
I had the pleasure of meeting leaders from Globe, Maxis, True, Telkomsel, Jcom, Singtel, Kyivstar, Korea Telcom amongst others, and it was fascinating to see how the Asian market is leading with innovation, experience and out of the box thinking!
The Era of “Fast Everything
While experience matter most, and CSP need to invest in new digital platforms, there is also a challenge of eroding profits, as there is a massive revenue reduction in voice, text and now in data plans. The balancing act of innovation vs. cost is going to be the main challenge for all telecoms in the next few years. Welcome to the lucrative world of communication.
Dror Kalush, the president of APAC, opened the conference introducing the top 50 customers across 20 counties Amdocs operates in. He took us back to the 13th century, learning how navigation started and shared his strategies to help telecom navigate the uncharted water of the native digital consumers.
Dror announced the era of “Fast everything and how we all want to create, consume services and share, faster than ever.
The Telecom of Tomorrow
Anthony Goonetilleke, president of Amdocs Technology, went on stage explaining his vision of the Telecom of Tomorrow Where data isnt used only to personalized consumer offerings, but also to drive content creation by the studios. Seems that Amdocs invests significant efforts in R&D, as well as on its ecosystems of partners, such as Panorama, to drive this vision.
When talking about innovation, Analytics is always the core of it; It is fabulous to partner with a company who treasure data insights and puts it in the center of its strategy. Daphne Gottschalk, heads innovation at Amdocs presented how to create a mindset of innovation and gave us the toolset to set up such culture. Darcy Antonellis, who joined Amdocs from the acquisition of Vubiquity, discussed the newly formed business of Media in Amdocs. It was great to see the appetite Telecom had for her offering, as the two worlds are now colliding into one and forming the Nextgen conglomerates like the ATT & Time Warner merger
.
The King Isnt Dead- Content Is Still a Top Priority
Gary Miles, CMO of Amdocs, hosted the DoxShow on stage. Hosting Ernest Cu, the CEO of Globe, and Swee Lin Liew, the COO of Astro, who shared their view on the convergence of Telecom and Media. It seems that Content is king again, but monetization isnt trivial. Hence the focus is on a new creation, reach & engagement. Understanding the viewership data is the key strategy for the content lifecycle, and there again, insights are in the center. We, at Panorama, empower top players in understanding viewership data, driving insights from the studio, to the delivery platform and down to the consumers.
Powerful and Engaging Customers
As we mentioned earlier, todays customer is looking for a better experience, looking to break his limits rather than looking for a better product. Joe Carilo, senior adviser, creative marketing multimedia business at Globe, said, we dont sell phones, we sell what you can do with phones which is an approach every CSP should take.
The top digital trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) are going to be in the core of the consumption by the digital native citizens. We will spend more time in immersive and contextual platforms, we will settle for nothing less than fully personalized services, and we want it fast, faster, and fastest. Welcome to the digital economy where data is the essence of life.
Last, how can I close this blog without mentioning the magnificent mentalist Lior Suchard, who amazed the audience with his magic, mind reading and overall fun spirit? I read his mind guessing we both were born in the same city in Israel, called Haifa. (actually, I read it in Wikipedia, but still 
)