Using AI-powered platforms to create competitive advantages and transform customer experiences for MVNOs
The global MVNO market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 6.62% from between now and 2032. These CAGR projections are even higher for the continent of Africa at 6.75% and 7.80% for South Africa by 2029.
What does this mean for organisations in Africa looking to move into the MVNO space?
It’s crucial to act sooner than later, launch fast, and adapt to the market trends as quickly as possible.
Mark Prudhoe, Business Lead SaaS connectX, Amdocs, suggested the best way to do this is to embrace innovation, using emerging technologies like AI as an advantage.
MVNOs’ target audiences demand a customer experience that offers genuine value, quality, and convenience. Combining existing customer data with AI tools can enable MVNOs to craft personalised experiences that will attract and retain customers at scale.
AI can also provide MVNOs with key advantages in speed, agility, and efficiency, helping to overcome the time pressure to get to market as competition intensifies.
Understanding the power of data in the age of AI
For organisations looking to succeed as an MVNO, data is incredibly valuable.
For existing brands entering the MVNO space, perhaps from retail or finance, existing customer data can be used to analyse audience trends, behaviours, and preferences. This helps to design a compelling, tailored value proposition and create a personalised customer experience.
And as MVNOs grow, customer data can be analysed to optimise and refine the offering, helping to reach more customers and also improve customer retention.
Using AI to automate customer data analytics takes these capabilities much further, as AI can analyse vast data sets at scale in an instant, and identify trends humans may not be able to recognise.
For businesses just starting out as an MVNO without large volumes of data, AI can also help with high-quality synthetic data to fill that gap.
Mark said, “AI can unlock the full value of customer data, network data, interaction data, and product data. This enables MVNOs to gain more actionable customer insights, predict customer behaviour and preferences, optimise network performance and resource allocation, and spot new market opportunities.”
Ultimately, this allows MVNOs to understand the market and their customers better, and make more intelligent decisions across all aspects of the business.
Leveraging the scalability and agility of AI
We discussed earlier in the report how agility is one of an MVNO’s key success factors. AI is an enabler of business agility, both in operational efficiencies and rapid time-to-market.
Mark suggested MVNOs must look to adopt technology that can scale and adapt easily to changing market conditions.
He said, “AI-powered solutions offer cloud-native platforms that can scale on-demand and flexible architectures that allow for rapid deployment of new services. There’s also the obvious benefit of process automation.”
“But another key benefit is using the machine learning technology for continuous improvement and optimisation of your systems.”
Not only does continuous improvement ensure services and connectivity are maintained, it also enhances the customer experience and therefore strengthens customer loyalty.
Plan a clear strategic roadmap first and foremost
When adopting and implementing AI to take advantage of these opportunities, it’s crucial to have a clear strategic roadmap in place before anything else. There’s a great deal of risk involved, after all, so it must be carefully considered and protected investment.
“A successful AI strategy requires a clear roadmap aligned with business objectives,” said Mark. “In my experience, MVNOs looking to leverage AI should start by identifying key business challenges that AI can help solve. You can then prioritise your AI initiatives based on their feasibility and the potential impact they can have.”
It’s also wise to form strategic partnerships with trustworthy AI solution providers, as the technology is complex and difficult to implement effectively at scale. This is especially true for businesses entering the MVNO space from different industries like retail or finance.
“Finally, you should continuously test, monitor, and evaluate everything you do,” said Mark. “You need to always be refining your AI roadmap based on data.”
Work with AI-specific vendors and partners for the best results
Building on the previous point about forming strategic partnerships with AI solution providers, Mark suggested that taking on the challenge of building bespoke, proprietary AI systems would be too much when also trying to establish a brand in the MVNO market.
AI is a great enabler, but the technology is highly complex. MVNOs have significant challenges to navigate already. Any organisations looking to leverage AI would benefit from working with partners for support.
Mark said, “Rather than building AI solutions from scratch, MVNOs can leverage platforms in the market that are purpose-built to help. There are pre-built AI models and algorithms tailored for telecoms, with no-code or low-code interfaces for easy customisation. You can gain rapid deployment and time-to-value, and they’ll also be regularly updated for you with new features and improvements.”
This allows MVNOs to focus on the core business and top priorities of acquiring and retaining customers with excellent service and experiences.
The benefits of AI for MVNOs
To summarise, Mark highlighted some of the transformational benefits AI can deliver to an MVNO business:
Enhanced decision making
Streamlined set-up and implementation
Accelerated deployment of new services
More efficient tenant and support management
Personalised customer interactions
Optimised service delivery
Predictive analytics
Reduced costs.
Could AI be an MVNO’s secret weapon?
AI can empower MVNOs to compete in the current telecom landscape, and it will be a significant driver of growth as we head into an increasingly-digitised future. This applies to operational efficiencies, enhanced strategic decision making, and innovations with services and customer experiences.
Those that can embrace AI fastest may give themselves the shortest route to success in the MVNO market, as AI could allow them to outpace less forward-thinking competitors.