Author: Rob Pritchard

Small Business Saturday – An Opportunity for UK Telcos

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

  • Held on the first Saturday in December, ‘Small Business Saturday’ in the UK encourages small businesses to promote themselves and attract customer attention.
  • Following Black Friday offers, UK telcos should use this event to target SMBs and SOHOs – acquiring customers is more profitable than slashing margins.

Having started in the US in 2010, ‘Small Business Saturday’ has found its way to the UK and celebrated its 12th anniversary this side of the Atlantic on December 7, 2024 – an estimated GBP669 million was spent on Small Business Saturday in the UK in 2023.

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Colt Research Finds UK at Bottom Of Long-Term Sustainability Leaderboard

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

  • Colt research finds UK CIOs behind the curve on having a multi-year plan to minimize their companies’ environmental impact, despite 71% of CIOs having this responsibility.
  • There has been a broad softening of sustainability targets, but service providers lead the way in facilitating reduced emissions, even despite the impact of AI.

Colt Technology Services has conducted a study as part of its annual ‘Digital Infrastructure Report,’ surveying 1,500 CIOs across 10 countries worldwide. Surprisingly, the survey found that only 18% of UK businesses that responded ‘have a multi-year plan to minimize their environmental impact.’ Leading countries were the Netherlands (42%) and Hong Kong (41%).

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SMBs Are Part of the AI Boom – Show Me the Telco Money?

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

  • Research from Verizon Business and opinion from Deutsche Telekom highlight the growing importance and transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the SMB segment.
  • The challenge is how to convert this demand into money when SMBs have become the focus of telco growth in enterprise revenues.

AI is for hyperscalers, data centers, large corporates, and geeky consumers. Right? Wrong. Research from Verizon Business has found that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the US are rapidly adopting AI. Verizon’s annual State of Small Business Survey found that the proportion of SMBs using AI has more than doubled in the past year (39% from 14% in 2023, with a further 35% considering using AI), as awareness and accessibility to AI in business applications has grown. The leading sectors adopting AI are largely the entertainment, hospitality, and accommodation verticals, which also tend to dominate much of the SMB market. The main use cases for adoption of AI cover marketing/social media, data analysis, and customer service – which makes sense as this has been largely the early adopter case across most markets to date.

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Vodafone Delivers Marketing Innovation With V-Hub

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• V-Hub offers a range of online advice help from digital experts to help SMBs and SOHOs make the most of technology to optimize their businesses.

• Vodafone’s V-Hub is proving popular with small business customers and has helped improve its Net Promoter Score by 18 points, providing extra customer lifetime value.

Vodafone’s update on progress with its V-Hub business customer portal was very positive and should be seen as a rare telco success story when targeting the market for smaller business customers. For example, across the countries where V-Hub has been rolled out, Vodafone Business has seen an average NPS (Net Promoter Score) improvement of 18 points since launch.

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Vodafone’s Microsoft 365 Copilot Rollout

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Vodafone’s multi-country rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot yielded quantifiable results in terms of productivity and efficiency.

• Eventually, generative AI (genAI) will not just deliver productivity improvements but corporate efficiencies – i.e., lower employee numbers.

Vodafone has extended its strategic agreement with Microsoft to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot AI to up to 68,000 Vodafone employees across several countries. The goal is to further improve productivity, innovation, and digital efficiency. By freeing up time normally spent on monotonous tasks, employees will be allowed to focus on more varied and interesting work, enhancing services, and supporting Vodafone’s 350 million customers worldwide.

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Small Businesses Buy Differently to Corporates

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• With 47% of small businesses using WhatsApp, telecoms service providers can become disintermediated from their customers as anything other than a connectivity provider.

• Service providers must understand the complex nature of the market and target value-added solutions selectively to meet changing needs of small businesses as they evolve.

Small businesses are the focus of many telecoms service providers for growth as the corporate, MNC, and public sector markets suffer from hyper-competition and as solutions providers keep winning managed services contracts. The problem is that the dynamics, needs, and go-to-market strategies are not the same for small businesses as for corporates. Most importantly, small businesses are tending less and less to see the traditional portfolios of carriers as relevant to their needs.

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UK Business Bodies Call for Automatic Compensation for Broadband Outages

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Leading UK business associations have asked Ofcom to establish an automatic compensation scheme for companies affected by broadband outages as connectivity is lifeblood of modern enterprise.

• Major broadband providers have backup options and enhanced service levels available, which they use in part to justify the premium they charge to business customers.

Leading British business associations have called on UK regulator Ofcom to establish an automatic compensation scheme for enterprises affected by broadband outages.

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Telcos Recognizing Indirect Sales Partners for their Contributions

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Most service providers hold annual awards events to celebrate successes and thank their indirect channel partners.

• Although ostensibly glamorous and occasionally boisterous, they play a crucial role in cementing key relationships with this vital group of sales partners.

Vodafone Business recently “recognized the invaluable contributions made by its UK sales partners through the Indirect Partner Awards 2024.” This line could be repeated by almost every major telco as they rely on third parties playing a key role as a means of maximizing their addressable market and optimizing their go-to-market strategies. These indirect partners help telcos meet the wide and varying needs of target enterprise customers of all sizes.

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B2B Advertising Campaigns Underline Importance of SMB Market

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• BT, Orange, and Vodafone have launched significant multi-channel advertising campaigns targeted at the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market, underlining its importance to future growth.

• They all emphasize the evolving role of the service provider beyond connectivity, with a focus on security and digital business-enabling solutions that characterize the future of enterprise.

Traditionally, telecom companies have focused mass media advertising campaigns on the consumer market. But now major European service providers are advertising to target the enterprise market, focusing on smaller businesses (e.g., SMBs). This reflects both their strategic shift toward SMBs as offering the best potential for revenue growth, and that their portfolios of technology solutions have become far more relevant in running businesses of all sizes – the market has moved beyond connectivity.

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Vodafone Business Germany’s Sustainability Tool Underlines Urgency Of EU Regulation Compliance

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Vodafone Business Germany’s partnership with Envoria offers CSRD-compliant ESG reporting for enterprises as service providers continue to shift toward offering technology-enabled business solutions.

• Growing range of ESG reporting portals being made available to enterprises from telecoms services providers to meet evolving legislation and customer demand.

Vodafone Business Germany has teamed with Envoria, a sustainability reporting specialist, to help its customers meet the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting requirements of the European Union Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This requires sustainability reporting by large companies and listed SMBs. Some non-EU companies also must report if they generate over EUR150 million in the European Union market. The companies must apply the rules for the first time in the 2024 financial year for reports published in 2025.

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