2023 Telecommunications Industry Outlook

In this article, Natalia Komleva, Chief Executive Officer of Nexign, reveals top four predictions for the global telecom industry in 2023.

Business continuity planning

In a highly uncertain environment, companies primarily focus on maintaining operational stability and increasing business resilience to external factors. All possible incidents and crisis response measures are regularly updated. The backup lists of suppliers are being expanded to eliminate the risks of supply interruptions, such as the sudden disruption of business contacts or supply chains. In general, companies tend to review their business continuity strategies and design development plans with all possible risk scenarios in mind.

Modernizing business processes and simplifying architecture

Dozens of siloed systems significantly reduce the efficiency of business processes, and multilayered architecture complicates the use and support of the entire infrastructure. Therefore, another major challenge for telecom operators is the need for internal digital transformation. It includes transferring legacy systems to modern converged platforms and optimizing the entire product line and customer service. Companies will focus on harmonizing their IT perimeter to achieve better overall system management, improve service delivery, and reduce time to market. In our opinion, microservice architecture, cloud-native solutions, and open-source components and technologies will be in demand due to this transformation.

Rationalizing costs and focusing on quick-win projects

Today, most long-term investments are suspended because of macroeconomic instability and limited access to capital at reasonable rates. Companies become less interested in breakthrough innovations requiring significant investments and having no successful monetization cases. The focus has shifted to technologies that contribute to business value or solve specific problems and have predictable short-term benefits. Cost optimization and risk minimization are coming to the fore, and companies are focusing mainly on short-term projects that bring faster results.

Transforming organizational culture

This year companies have been actively working on advancing employee engagement, providing the necessary support, and responding to critical events on time. Speaking honestly and openly about the difficulties associated with external factors and market uncertainty becomes crucial for improving the employer-employee relationship. Therefore, we expect that companies will continue increasing flexibility, transparency, and adaptability of the organizational culture in the upcoming year. In addition, overall cost optimization requires businesses to train new employees and engage them in the company’s activities more quickly. Hence, special attention will be paid to strategies and resources required for comfortable onboarding and employee performance assessment. Achieving these goals will be possible due to coordinated activities between different departments and modern HR tech tools, such as solutions for digital employee experience and intranet portals that are currently in demand on the market.