Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology with a broad range of use cases that are transforming industries across the world’s economy. From infrastructure that “self-heals” to radically reimagined customer service and experience, from large-scale hyper-personalization to automatically created marketing messages and images, AI solutions can powerfully augment and sometimes radically outperform most traditional business roles.
According to a report by McKinsey, the top quintile of companies that have taken the McKinsey Analytics Quotient assessment and are AI leaders have experienced a five-year revenue Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) that is 2.1 times higher than that of peers and a total return to shareholders that is 2.5 times larger.
However, despite the many benefits of AI, the telecom industry has yet to fully embrace it. Instead, models are developed once and not enhanced as the business context evolves. AI investments are often not aligned with top-level management priorities, causing AI deployments to stall, investment in technical talent to wither, and the technology to remain immature.
To be competitive and drive growth and revenue, telcos need to embrace large-scale deployment of AI and transition to being AI-native organizations. An AI-native organization views AI as a core competency that powers decision-making across all departments and organizational layers. AI investments are required to enable most C-level priorities, and top executives serve as champions of critical AI initiatives. Data and AI capabilities are managed as products, built for scalability and reusability.
Telcos can take advantage of the increasing accessibility of leading AI technology, the rapid explosion of usable data, and the proven use cases and outcomes of AI-native organizations across industries. However, to answer privacy fears raised by consumers and regulators, telcos must also invest in building digital trust, including actively managing data privacy, having a robust cybersecurity & privacy strategy and a framework to guide ethical deployment of AI.
By embracing AI, telcos can drive revenue protection and growth through personalization, transform the cost structure, enable a frictionless customer experience and achieve personalization at scale. While isolated applications of the technology can help individual departments improve, it’s AI connected holistically at all levels and departments that will be key to protecting core revenue and driving margin growth in even the most difficult of environments.
Read the full McKinsey article ‘The AI-native telco: Radical transformation to thrive in turbulent times’ here. To learn more about our AI-driven products that drive revenues, enhance CX and deliver personalization at scale, click here.
Marking a turning point in the company’s development, Intent HQ, the privacy-first Customer AI Platform optimized for Telcos and their user data, has been included in the Financial Times’ sixth annual list of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, the FT1000.
Utter the words ‘data breach’, and the news spreads just as fast as any 5G network. Over the past 10 years, there have been 300 data breaches involving the theft of 100,000 or more records according to Forbes. And per the World Economic Forum, as of 2019, cyber-attacks are considered among the top five risks to global stability. Sadly, this news isn’t new. But considering that most of the individuals affected by the T-Mobile breach weren’t even existing customers, the headline doesn’t evoke much confidence.
Intent HQ, the AI Customer Analytics Platform, has ranked 387 in this year’s Financial Times 1000 (FT1000) list. Having secured a top 500 spot in 2023, this year has seen Intent HQ rise an additional 85 places in the ranking and one of only 147 companies in this year’s FT1000 to have made the grade for three consecutive years.
There aren’t many other industries staring down a future as uncertain as telcos. A stagnant growth and a global downturn on the horizon, Telcos are struggling to keep customers without having to resort to the obvious, giving more data and voice minutes for a cheaper price.