Why SD WAN is a Growth Area for Telecom Operators, RSPs and OTT Players

 Why SD-WAN is becoming a battleground for Wholesalers, Telecom Operators, RSPs and OTT Players

Source: Gartner

Australian Economy Update - FY 2022

 Australian Economy Update - FY 2022

Cash Rate at 1.85% in Aug and Inflation 6.1%

The housing sector is weakening with steep ring IR, 1st home buyers from the last 2 years will struggle and fixed mortgage holders will have their mortgages finished in the next 12 months.  

Rising Inflation is a key issue across the globe for the Reserve Bank, with a risk of recession and stagflation

Read - Why Inflation is Rising

What is Stagflation

Source: CBA FY22 Results

Telecom State of Play and Growth Areas - 2022

Telecom State of Play and Growth Areas - 2022 

For background on Why Telcoms are struggling please read my POV in 2012 - Why Telcos are Endangered Species

Weekend Reading

 My predictions on Macro Economic View of Australia FY23

How Humans and AI are Collaborating 

The B2B Lead Gen Stumbling Blocks and How to Overcome Them

Given the complex nature of B2B lead generation, it goes without saying that there are plenty of stumbling blocks that can hinder lead gen efforts. With this in mind, we’re diving into the common pain points marketers experience when filling the funnel while offering solutions that lead to better marketing results.
1. Marketing Without a Cohesive Lead Generation Strategy 

2. Marketers are Focusing on Lead Quantity Instead of Quality 

3. There are Gaps in Content Marketing Efforts 

4. Content Marketing Isn’t Aligned with the B2B Buyer Journey 

5. Marketing Efforts Aren’t Consistently Optimised 

B2B buyers Transparency make Vendor Purchase Easier

Research has shown that nearly two-thirds (65%) of B2B buyers felt vendors placed more emphasis on selling than they did on listening to their needs. Because of this, buyers are turning to other non-vendor-controlled sources such as user reviews, free trials and product demos to investigate the cons before making a purchase. To get ahead of this, vendors should be more forthcoming and listen to what their buyers are telling them. By highlighting their weaknesses, they may actually start to make more sales.

What is your customer's Unique Value Story

Supercharging the executive summary 

The most important part of any sales proposal is, of course, the executive summary. It’s likely to be read by stakeholders with the significant decision or approval authority who won’t go into all the detail. And some of those stakeholders may not have been involved in the previous discussions. Some may even be questioning “why do we need to do this at all?”
This is where an executive summary that deals with your customer’s three critical questions: why change, why you and why now? can be such a powerful selling tool. Summarising the customer’s unique value story in your executive summary not only promotes your organisation, it also promotes the need for change and reinforces the benefits of urgent action.

Why Telecom Services, Goods, Cost of Living is Expensive in Australia

In a country like Australia, most industry verticals follow 3 or 4 pillar models like Banking (CBA, NAB, ANZ, Westpac), Retail (Coles, Woolies, Aldi), or Mining (BHP, RioTinto, Fortescue) Telecom Industry is heading towards a 4 pillar model. Since most industry verticals are in oligopoly, products & services are priced as status quo or skimmed, and economical pricing is missing in most cases, resulting in higher prices for consumers & higher cost of living. Besides, key players are opting for decentralization to grow and find new revenue streams.

 

 

Australian Economic Outlook - FY 23

 Australian Economic Outlook - FY 23

Australian Economic Outlook - FY 22 (Feb Update) - 

The Future of Cloud - 2022

In 2022

Cloud Benefits, Risks, Controls and Mistakes to Avoid

 

Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in Media Ecosystem

Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in Media Ecosystem 

• Appier 
• GumGum 
• Sizmek by Amazon 
• IBM Watson 
• Dstillery 
• Invoca 
• Influential 
• Quantcast 
• Heuritech 
• NetBase Quid 

More details here

Weekend Reading

 

Ten Rebranding Do’s And Don’ts 

• Do re-imagine your business beyond the logo. 
• Do gain support from the C-suite. 
• Do get internal as well as external insights. 
•  Do keep it real. Do bring in all key stakeholders. 
• Do leverage the opportunity to drive broader change. 
•  Do over communicate. 
•  Do keep it aligned. 
• Do make sure your people can deliver. 
•  Do find the right partner. 

  What’s in Today’s MarTech Toolkit? 

Close to two-thirds (64%) of all the marketers surveyed are currently using artificial intelligence (AI). A full 60% say they have a fully defined AI strategy. This year, the leading use case for those marketers using AI is to drive next best actions, followed by personalizing the overall customer journey and automating customer interactions. 

 How to Win over a Team of Experts Try these three strategies: 1. Look inward to the team. Your success will depend on your ability to build interdependence and cooperation among team members. Focus on the team itself and see whether you can find ways to improve communication, interaction, and debate. Aim to create a group whose members learn to rely on each other and are less dependent on you to be involved in every decision. 

Exercise: Identify a decision you believe the team can make (it should not be a decision regarding a crisis situation). Use team meetings to work on the decision. Solicit input from everyone without allowing debate on the ideas. Summarize what you have heard from the team. Redirect the team to focus on the core areas, then encourage debate. 

 2. Look outward to the organization. Seek ways to resolve the team’s problems with the broader organization. Examples include things as simple as securing a budget, getting top-management backing for a project, or winning the cooperation of another department. 

Exercise: For a current team challenge, list the people you know in the organization who could provide any of the following: additional information or perspective that could help the team or shift its perspective; access to individuals who could support the team by doing small tasks, or people who would like to be involved in solving the problem; and bridges to other groups or stakeholders. Then use your network to tap those resources. 

 3. Look to build team members’ reputations. Although this strategy doesn’t specifically address a pain point, it still shows employees that you have their backs and are interested in their career development. Help team members expand their networks and their perspectives. With a broader network, a team member can more easily address his or her pain point and bring new perspectives to the team’s challenges.
Exercise: For each team member, list two to three people who would value knowing of that individual’s experience, perspective, and capabilities. Use your connections to set up one meeting for each employee. Coach the individual on how to best manage that meeting. Check on the impact the team member had.

Strategis for Mananging Digital Transformation

The goal, according to a recent PCW report, is to get beyond titles and delve into attitudes and behaviours. That’s the approach that leads to more relevant communication, rewards, performance and development, the report reads.

Selling Better, Faster using Real-Time Sales Education

SAAS Companies Growth Valuation “Not all software is created equal. Software businesses that don’t have a short term path to FCF (call it <2 years) have gotten wacked in the public markets. But, just like pre-2015 when the market assumed software wouldn’t turn profitable, the same thing is happening now. With a longer term horizon we’ll see many software companies turn profitable. The important task is finding the businesses that can turn profitable, while maintaining attractive top line growth. That “holy grail” combo will be a smaller percentage of software businesses – ones growing >20-30%, with FCF (free cash flow) margins >20-30%, with annual revenue >$1B. Final thought - what gets me so excited currently is that we’re seeing companies still in hyper growth mode, at a scale of ~$1B ARR+, hit mature FCF margins. Crowdstrike (>60% growth, ~30% FCF margins), Datadog (>80% growth, ~30% FCF margins), Snowflake (>80% growth, ~20% FCF margins), ZScaler (>60% growth, ~20% FCF margins), and ZoomInfo (~60% growth and >30% FCF margins) all have incredibly impressive profiles. 

Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples

How to Influence your Buyers for Cloud App Modernisation

How to Influence your Buyers for Cloud Application Modernisation

Cloud Offerings for Application Modernisation

Buyers Persona Mapping with Cloud Offerings for Application Modernisation to execute the Sales Strategy 

Persona Mapping from - Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus

Eight Steps for Every CFO to Apply in Recession

 Eight Steps for Every CFO to Apply in Recession

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• Prioritisation - Make a prioritised list of the trade-offs in your budget with a reason for why.
• Cloud - Accelerate movement to the cloud, while paying attention to shifting pricing strategies from software providers as prices rise.
• Business Process - Radically challenge workflows and processes to make them faster, simpler, and more agile for the long-term.
• Leverage and Cost Arbitrage -  Fundamentally rethink the way your company leverages humans (locations, hours, part vs full time, in-house vs outsource).
• Digital Talent - Clarify your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) so you are positioned to attract and retain the right digital talent. Aggressively source key digital talent that will shake loose and help accelerate your digital plan
• Digital Investment Roadmap - Develop a future vision of the customer and employee to accelerate the right digital investments for 2025.
• Automation - Invest in predictive and autonomous digital projects that will make the organization faster and leaner.
• Measure and Focus - Narrow the metrics you use to measure and manage digital initiatives to the few that align with outcomes.

Source  Gartner, BCG, Mckinsey, HBR

Why Cloud - Reality vs Perception, Impact on IT

 Why Cloud is in Demand

Cloud - Reality vs Perception

Impact on IT

Pricing Strategy - Mistakes to Avoid

 

Telecom Cloud Evolution, Use Cases and Infrastructure Market

• Telecom Cloud has evolved from an early infrastructure offering to a solution-centric and to being an aggregator. 
• Telecoms are struggling to get ROI in this domain while the sector is still growing by 30-35% YoY. 
• Players Like AWS, MSFT, Google, Dell (EMC/Vmware), IBM and others are not letting Telecoms to play in this space. Besides Telecoms with so many customer-centric assets are struggling to refine their operating model to take advantage of the cloud to diversify and increase revenue.

 

Telecom Cloud (Distributed) Use Cases 

Cloud Infrastructure Services Market - 2022

Why Cloud

Cloud Sales Roadblock