Nowadays, digital platforms are considered to be one of the crucial aspects of any organization and anyone would pay a chunk of money to ensure they have technology that helps them stay ahead of the competition. Companies such as Google, FaceBook, Ebay and Amazon are the major players in the platform-oriented industry while enabling an ecosystem to co-create and capture value.

That being said, companies in the Telecommunication industry have also transitioned into digital platform models where all organizational practices are realigned and are able to accelerate digital service creation. With co-creating value being an objective of this transition, internal platforms are built to connect infrastructure assets to application development teams and external platforms connect partners to customers.

If we are to discuss the benefit of a digital platform in Telcos; a digital platform opens up a window of opportunity for third parties to put ideas to innovation, build high quality end products and services on the platform and also monetize telco infrastructure. Although this sounds like an easy way out for bigger opportunities and a boost to witness a spike in sales, it has not been an easy journey for Telcos which were not successful in taking a strategic approach.

How can Telcos adapt a successful platform strategy?

According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), the success of a platform strategy is determined by three factors:

Connection: how easily others can plug into the platform to share and transact.

Gravity: how well the platform attracts participants - both producers and consumers.

Flow: how well the platform fosters the exchange and co-creation of value.

HBR also introduces three building blocks to achieve above mentioned goals that help creating successful platforms:

The Toolbox creates connection by making it easy for others to plug into the platform. This infrastructure enables interactions between participants. For example, by purchasing an extensive API management platform, any telco can easily open up their network assets via REST based APIs. Yet, without fostering a powerful service creation community it will be difficult for Telcos to harness its maximum capability; because what is more significant is not merely exposing APIs but making it more easy for all the service creators to create services. For that, Telcos need to possess a platform which offers assistance and guidance via Developer evangelists, frequent hackathons and workshops, Monthly developer meetups, Mentoring sessions etc.

The Magnet creates the pull that attracts participants to the platform with a kind of social gravity. Telcos need to attract both developers and subscribers to create services as well as to consume those services in order to have improved ARPU. Therefore Telcos must be partnered with right platform providers who pay attention to facilitating incentives, reputation systems, and revenue sharing models creating a value added experience for all the engaged parties and enforcing them to engage with the platform more.

The Matchmaker fosters the flow of value by making connections between producers and consumers. Data is at the heart of successful matchmaking that distinguishes platforms from other business models. The Matchmaker captures rich data about platform engagement and leverages that data to facilitate unique connections between service creators and consumers. For example, providing in-depth insights and real time analytics about application usage will help service creators understand the subscriber’s mind and deliver a unique experience for subscribers to fulfill their exact needs.

Investing in your organization’s platform efforts is likely to be one of the most important and key factors which would aid in leading the competition. As such, every enterprise needs to be very vigilant when choosing the right digital partner for their business in order to sustain in the industry and also generate more profit.

As an extensive platform provider, hSenid Mobile revolutionizes the Telco sphere with its Digital capability and extendable Telco platforms, helping Telcos to be pioneers in the face of digital transformation. It’s time for you to pick the correct CPaaS solution!