Webinar: The Future of Telecoms in Africa

[Applause] [Applause] welcome to the future of telecoms in Africa where Community culture and Innovation unite join us for an exclusive webinar featuring insights from industry leaders about the Innovations transforming the Telecom industry learn how delaying Telecom networks enhances monetization and improves service quality across Africa discover how intelligent analytics deliver a total experience and drive incremental revenue for African telecoms build strong loyalty and retention strategies to Foster Community relationships and Boost customer retention tap into new revenue streams with cuttingedge strategies for apis connectivities and intelligent applications enhance customer experience through direct personalized messaging tailored to local communities learn how to create Innovative platform strategies that resonate with African cultures and drive Revenue revolutionize your approach to AI powered Network monetization and Telecom innovation in Africa join us for this must attend webinar in the ever evolving world of telecommunications data is King but amidst the chaos of fragmented information telecom companies struggle to deliver seamless experiences amidst their search they discover profile of one a revolutionary solution designed to unify Telecom operations streamline processes and deliver personalized experiences with profile of one in hand telecom companies embark on an implementation Journey teams collaborate tirelessly to integrate the solution laying the foundation for a unified future as profile of one takes root a transformation sweeps through the Telecom landscape fragmented data gives way to unified insights and fragmented experiences evolve into seamless Journeys peering into the future Telecom leaders see a world transformed by profile of one unified data fuels Innovation and personalized experiences red Define connectivity experience the power of one with profile of one where fragmented data meets unified Solutions and every interaction [Music] counts good morning everyone good afterno afternoon uh to all our attendees uh welcome to an exciting webinar that we've prepared for you uh on unleashing the power of AI based data monetization uh today's session is packed with valuable insights and dynamic discussions and here's what you can expect uh we start off with an introduction uh of our topic and its relevance uh in today's world uh especially in the context of Africa uh you get to meet the speakers you see where they come from what they're doing a quick introduction of our esteemed panel uh we will Deep dive into the discussions where we'll explore specific areas related to Data Network apis monetization and much more uh given their various perspectives and experiences of course the goal is to Foster an engaging and conversational atmosphere that offers actionable insights and Sparks innovative ideas uh we will quickly get into a Q&A uh session post that so you can while the sessions are going on uh put your questions in the chat or um or mention them as questions we'll try to either answer them live after the session or or some of the if it's directed to a specific panelist they'll try to answer it on the chat uh and then we'll have a quick Roundup of a summary and and close the session so I hope uh you enjoy yourself and uh participate as much as possible so welcome everyone uh to an exciting and transformative conversation about uh mtn's data monetization strategy in Africa picture this an African Rich an Africa Rich continent in vibrant cultures and diverse communities and boundless creativity uh it's on the brink of a data Revolution right now with over a billion people um and close to 60% of them being under the age of 25 uh and a rapidly growing internet demand and penetration rate right uh the opportunities for datadriven Innovation are absolutely staggering for Africa it's one of the only continents in the world where you can expect double- digit growth in terms of economic demand so today we'll explore how MTN is not just tapping into this vast reservoir of data but turning it into a gold mine of opportunities that can uplift communities Drive economic growth and inspire a new wave of technological advancements imagine harnessing data to improve health care access for Millions empowering small businesses with digital tools and connecting people in the most remotest areas of the world so get ready to dive into this discussion uh that marries both tradition with technology uh where the rhythms of Africa meet the pulse of data analytics and where the future of Africa is being shaped uh with the power of information uh we will uncover how data and is the new oil and how Africa is poised to become the richest well in the world welcome to this revolution where every bite of data brings us closer to a brighter and more connected future for all I'd like to start by introducing our panelists so we have with us Tanya lupulu uh she's a general manager for online T sales and on online billers for MTM group we have uh pad Randa who's a CEO of techn tree corporation uh we have Enzo scarcella who is the chief consumer officer for MTN group we're also joined by Ali monzo who's a CEO of MTN South Sudan and purushotam Dakar uh who is the group GM it strategy and architecture for MTN group so let's get into the discussion um so Enzo let's let's start with you um how can we actually start harnessing intelligent data analytics to deliver uh this total experience that everyone is talking about and and drive incremental Revenue so banka thanks firstly thanks for the question I mean obviously you know telco's the Advent of the use of data to enhance commercial value has been a journey in Telos for a while right um I'd say it's probably the last 15 to 20 years we've been looking at that and we've called that customer value management I think everybody's familiar with CVM but that has largely been you know almost Excel based where we'd go for segments of in an 8 by8 Matrix and using maybe five to 10 variables more recently 15 to 20 variables and that's we've been successful with that as Telos right we get Revenue lifts of around about 3% on Total Service revenue on that and that's quite healthy but what we are seeing is with the power of artificial intelligence in analytics is the ability to process infinitely more data and infinitely more complex data and to be able to shape offers to smaller and smaller segments right so I'll kind of paint a picture for you so if a few years ago we were using 20 variables we starting to develop a a machine learning a a machine with AI capability a recommendation engine that today will'll use over 2,000 variables and those are largely Telco variables it's before we even get into the digital space that'll explode so all of a sudden we've gone from 20 to 2,000 that's a factor of 100 what that means is that your segments go almost from 64 segments to ultimately and I I was smiling at your video because you ultimately go to a segment of one the only thing that limits us now is the product catalog right because the product catalog cannot be a product of one although I know joty will tell me that in her past life she's launched products to a segment of one but I think you know if you think about what is the vision and the Panacea it's saying being able to harness so consumers today consume you know we come from a world of voice and data right um now there's voice data geolocation video and it's kyc everything that happens on the internet that's all there to say what does Consumer Behavior look like and that's become infinitely more more complex so so I'd say that that's that's kind of the journey we're on it's CVM 1.0 was really kind of basic cross and upsell CVM 2.0 we started to put some machine learning models in place we expanded to probably 20 variables now we're going to CVM 3.0 where we're saying we're not only using OSS data BSS data we also going to start using Digital Data you know yeah and that then means you're going from this to this and then going from 64 segments to segment of one so that's a it's a an exciting Journey so so just just to kind of um double click on something that you said right you said when you it's going to explode when it goes to Digital Services so I have I have two questions right one is um how exactly I mean what is your strategy to actually start extending this monetization um in both in terms of your you know AI strategy um platform right uh to to start extending it into Digital Services um and and the second one is like if I was a digital service company I would want to know what your business model is so just like you have wholesale Arrangements on connectivity with maybe some mvnos Etc are you going to start having data Arrangements between mean yourselves aggregators marketplaces maybe service providers where you can start importing their data models into your models and then start creating more intelligence around it so um could you shed some light on that yeah I mean I I I think that's uh I mean you you you're kind of going on a path we're probably closer to the beginning than the end there right but let me let me get back to where we where we'd use this um on on on on CVM so what's I'll I'll talk first kind of the way we think of the architecture the architecture says whatever data we can Harvest let us Harvest that within our own environment right let's put it into one place in MTN we call that one place Eva right named after the the the the mother of of of of mankind right so so all of the data sits there what the AI models then sit is an intelligence layer on top of that today we call that nbx so EV nbx there and then really the recommendation engine is there and you through a series of apis expose those to multiple channels so what you have is Omni Channel offers across infinite products because all of the product information the BSS information there so I think you get that picture right now yeah so once you what you pointing to then you say okay if you harvesting as much data as you can how do you re reciprocate that by sharing this data and so that's we've got a business called chosis and that's ultimately chosis does right chosis says uh we've got more data than what we know to than what until now we actually didn't know what to do with all of this data I think we're getting smarter now right but chosis is saying we've got behavioral data on voice and we've got geolocation data we have got I'm right and we can create apis that we can share with the world for people in the development space to use our data anonymized data for all the Privacy people on the call anonymized data that then can be used to develop products and services that can serve a different audience so you know and I think that that relationship of firstly anonymizing data and then sharing data that rep reciprocity I think is the way of the future so open API architectures reciprocity of data and then large amounts of data being being um harnessed and targeted at at at segments of one is is is is roughly the way I I try to create a vision of the future for for all of the people on the core or the way mtn's thinking there may be smarter ways but that's the way I think about it the way mtn's thinking about it no I think I think it's U it's really interesting and I think it's a good point to bring in Padma because all the things that you mentioned right in terms of uh creating choisis it's a part of you know your delayering strategy it's one of your uh you know unicorn ideas uh in in MTN and um of course standardization is important so um you know Padma you know do you have a comment on on what what kind of strategies is it delayering or or whatever it is for for monetization how can we help create that platform uh to to actually start monetizing across verticals improve efficiency service quality not just for MTN and their telom customers but also uh you know enabling an ecosystem of Enterprises to gain uh you know from from these uh you know I would say Network or ecosystem effects of the data uh you're on mute Padma thank you thank you prianka good evening everyone welcome to the audience um your question is highly relevant and very very pertinent to what's happening in the industry today and it was really exciting to listen to Enzo speaking about CVM 3.0 and Beyond and how we're going to integrate data to create that Singularity of vision um I I would say that uh MTN is transforming at break neck Pace compared to many other customers that I'm serving and it's really a delight to be a partner uh with you guys um what I would say is that the delayering of of Telco itself has mostly happened a decade ago into the info netco serco by many csps in different geographies to attract Capital valuation and take their business asset to better performance but today's challenge for csps Is that they're facing headwinds with static to low great growth in Revenue in the last few years and also a telecom Market disruption with many new service entrance that are entering the space and there's increasing competition from multiple directions so there is also a compelling industry shift towards the moving away from the traditional vertical aggregation in and integration to more a delayered strategy for growth uh this would really reflect upon how well uh you know in in the early 2000s the csps created the serco netco departure from the infr to Pro provide more customer focused operations and customer experience and marketing Le Service delivery capability uh challenging the Ott players and also to enter into you know industry specific offerings through mvnos whereas the netco optimize the network infrastructure it in simple terms this transformation is huge in terms of how one has to critically examine how to optimize and and Foster profitable growth while transforming the business into these kinds of delayered Concepts and leverage the capabilities of each other between the serco and the netco so I I really believe when you look at the csps today the real ask in the business is to move away from selling pure technology to selling value for example you know a simple example today any CSP is well equipped to sell a 5G infrastructure to an airport but can they even dream of selling an endtoend improved user experience at the airport and that from business conceptualization to cash that is the need of the hour that is the call to action of our csps our customers today to unleash this power of the digital capability even Enzos talked about how they're bringing you know all of these platforms together and to imagine a world where there is seamless interaction high levels of personalization and optimization in terms of transformation and that's really what uh you know is being asked of the csps to move away from verticalization to turn disruption into digital delight and I think the the the race is on and to create in intrinsic value in the space is what most of the uh csps as aspiring to do with you know with AI through data disruption and many other uh types of strategies uh to improve um their whole business value proposition so um if you look at you know some of the concepts that I'm speaking about many of these concepts are not new it is really how you drive the standardization of the platform to make it scalable to make it data driven to have a level of standardization and I would say MTN has been foremost in influencing standardization across its op course even in the digital transformation journey I would say they are the forerunners and I you know we've been partnering with them to drive this standardization and the TM Forum apis the real world apis we've implemented along with them the order compliances that we have followed are all allowing them to unlock this value of improving the service quality uh going forward and as you said Priyanka if data is the new oil by unlocking the intelligence in the data the csps can be the new shakes in town and I really believe a lot depends on their AI strategy and their data monetization strategy one is I would say AI powered personalization is a must and having the data pipelines to collect data aggregate data to create the algorithms to build out increase sales capabilities reduced churn capabilities and so on and so forth with targeted off offerings the second would be the area of predictive analysis uh whether it is to harness AI to drive predictive capability on customer churn or network failures and proactive retention strategies to improve customer loyalty and enhance uh Customer Loyalty by understanding customer Behavior the third area in terms of data strength is in operational efficiencies with automation Implement AI automation tools streamline processes uh optimize Resources with co-piloting type capabilities on the platform and boost overall operational efficiencies and cost savings um and finally I would say uh you know you touched upon this on Partner ecosystem and playing in the adjacent markets it when you leverage the csp's customer data capability it's a horizontal capability and then when you combine that with verticalized partner ecosystem capability in adjacent markets like ealth or education or connected cars or uh connected digital experiences in gaming Etc you start to drive new value and new experiences and new opportunities for uh monetizing growth and retaining customers the opportunities are endless the key is to know how to combine them for different markets how to bring the whole strategy together in terms of go to market campaigns Etc um and partnering with ecosystem players and also the organizational capability to lead the change in terms of business transformation and transformation of customer experiences in the process so that's what I would say um I think I think that's uh that's really um it's really strategic uh is what you're trying to say it's not just a technical advancement it's a strategic move for operators to get into this space and uh I um I think I would want to kind of before I get into the value probably invite puru you know to uh to kind of expose uh what is mtn's AI strategy right and and and how are you looking at uh data monetization uh today and I think that's going to kind of set the context for the rest of the discussions which are really going to start talking about uh the value that that MTN is driving today uh right across digital touch points loyalty Etc so okay uh thanks Panka for the question and um thanks Padma for setting the tone I'm just teing off from uh the key you know the appics that you build on the delayering of the Telco uh I think uh at this moment is the opportune time that we are talking about Ai and monetization and I believe that in the overall value chain of a Telco we are playing in multiple areas Enzo did touch upon on the data part so besides data we are talking about the apps for monetization as well as the connectivity so it's full value chain including the the infrastructure where we are playing I think from our standpoint the way we see um the AI playing out um we have um I mean in terms of the the data uh across Africa we are sitting about on like 300 million subscriber based amount of data that we have generated we are using that data from a monetized perspective both from a private and Public Partnerships we are looking at both geolocation geospatial data from a Mobility perspective you know like what exactly we can in cach and that's where there's a lot of things that comes into the place when we talk about Beyond advertising you know when we talk about adenes Padma did touch upon the the healthcare part we also talking about the mining industry as well as you know some of the other things that we are doing from an enterplay side now besides that I think the next uh key opportunity that we look at is uh because of the um you know um the amount of data that we have some of the things that we talk about um um sorry just one second um some of the things that we um talk about from a monetization point of view when it comes to storage infrastructure data sere aspect uh that is another area that we can play on um and because uh the regulations in Africa is very um it's not very stringent is very Loosely defined I think it gives us an opportunity like how do we uh play on the data sovereignty side and you know like also from infrastructure side if you want to give Sovereign also on the connectivity side I think um not everybody um has access to know you know to the super compute power secondly the energy and the you know like the kind of cooling kind of requirements that is required so this is where we have an opportunity to partner with hyperscalers to give localized kind of you know um like a GPU service etc for our Enterprises to so that is broadly I mean the areas where we see playing um and and this is a very evolving space you know like today um people have been talking about large language model so we are definitely working in that space with our partnership with Microsoft we're also looking at how we can offer AI at the edge you know like I mean that's that's a very interesting use case as coming in and Enzo did touch upon some of the parameters before I think today we are also seeing that do we really need um those many parameters like in billions or trillions to specifically solve a use case and this is where we bringing the localization flavor with a limited number of parameters what is the kind of innovation we can bring in let's say localize for a markets like let's a West Africa Market or a southeast Asia Market when it comes to customer experience when it comes to um you know language specific needs or when we say hyper personalization how can we inject into that I think those are the insights that we are bringing in in collaboration and you know interjecting with technology to basically give value to our customers and also keeping um um um you know um being prudent about the cost I think the best thing that we have been doing is we are innovating with very uh prudent control on the cost and capital allocation that we doing I mean we're not saying that we are spending a lot of money for the sake of spending money and we need to have the best of breeding you know Tech to deliver this so that's where we have been very Innovative about it um and um and that's I mean we are looking it holistically I mean we are looking at uh adopting responsi we being very transparent we are keeping the regulat regulations in mind we're also saying that what actually works for Africa and that's how we are evolving yeah yeah and I think that's super strategic because I I I think uh MTN has been an innovator not just for Africa but is an example for Innovation for the world because there are many people uh across the world in other markets as well that are under the same pressures for cost same pressures for access to information um and for example like The Innovation that MTN did on the prepaid side you literally created prepaid and took it to the World um and I think there's a huge opportunity here if you're successful in terms of your data strategy uh you know for for a lot of other um uh Emerging Markets to benefit on how you actually Implement it's it's not really about what because what is like uh there's so much potential uh but really if if MTN is successful I think they can be not just successful for Africa but a lot of parts of the world can learn from from what's happening at mdn yeah thank you thank you so much um and uh I think now this is a good point to uh invite ali monzo uh thank you so much for for um for being with us today and uh we want to kind of understand U so now we're talking about uh we've got a platform we've got a strategy in place we're looking at the infra we're looking at the serveco uh you know bringing them together for the African market now now we're talking about the value now and Padma mentioned as well it's not just about delivering technology it's also about delivering value right uh to to Enterprises and and and customers so how can you actually build like a powerful uh retention loyalty program that delivers value uh strengthens relationships and boosts uh you know customer retention uh thank you Priyanka and panelist of setting the tone and I want to welcome the audience as well and thank you for the question but but before we go uh into the how it's extremely important to talk about the why when we unlock the why it will be easy for us to understand the how right now in our Market the cost of acquiring a new customer in our industry is becoming extremely high due to uh several factor I mean marketing expenditure promotional offer and in some cases in some Market we need to subsidize devices and provide attractive packages to entice customer to switch provider and uh and and oftenly our Market are saturated as well our the mobile penetration in some of the market Mark are more than 100% so meaning that most potential customer already have a provider in place so make it more challenging and expensive to lure them away from their uh initial provider but and also new customer often do not yield the desired return immediately they will give you a lower arpo compared to the existing customer or the old customer on the network so the initial cost associated with acquisition mean that it take time for this customer to become profitable on on on your network or on your system and they may also be less loyal the new customer are less Loyal by almost 60% from existing customer and more likely to switch to another provider if they find a better deal and that's the reality and and in our market right now we are not competing we as a as a as a technology provider we are not competing with the with the the like of airel or orange we are competing with everyone we are competing on the value share we need the customer to use that $1 that he or she has in her pocket or his pocket to spend on our product so our competition or our competitor are not uh necessarily a technology service provider uh like us so as a result we are increasingly focusing on customer loyalty and ration strategy this will help us to Foster stickiness uh and uh it will aim to reduce chain rates and enhance uh the lifetime value of our existing customer and also which is extremely important for us to give back to our customer one of our core pillar as an MTN is to give back to our customer uh and to give back as well uh to our uh communities and and once you give back to customer you will be creating an emotional stickiness with the brand and the emotional stickiness it's more powerful than anything else yeah so you will move away from a transactional uh method to an emotional stickness with the brand so in Nell you are absolutely right we must focus on creating value for our customer and they need to feel that they are getting appreciated uh for the value that they are adding for that service provider or for us as an MTN uh and also Enzo and Padma has touched directly or indirectly on how we can achieve that maybe quickly from my side for sure personalized the reward and recognition is extremely key we need to utilize the AI machine learning to analyze customer behavior and preferences offer them a personalized reward that are relevant in meanful to each customer so customer demand a lot customer need these days are are are different and you need to to go uh from uh from the mcro segment to the segment of one and I think Enzo touched on the segment of one leveraging on AI in machine learning and how we can use the thousand of the data point that you that we have from a different source and when we talk about Source here we are not talking about the traditional source that are sitting or the structured source that are sitting within our ecosystem we talk about digital Source the social media Source this information has to be combined has to be ingested has to be crunched sliced diced and then we can dve a meaningful Insight that can help us to offer the segment of one mean a unique offer for every single customer so we have thousand of data points we know at what time you wake up pranka we know what you do when you wake up we know where you go we know what you eat we know what milk you like if you are using mobile money we know what pizza you like we know to which hospital you go Which medicine do you buy if you are using mobile money every single products in our business give us an additional data points so imagine the the volume of data that we have on you for sure uh data protection come into play uh and now with the AI I think we should have AI data protection uh Canada recently in March Actually March this year they have upgraded their data protection and they introduced what they called Ida artificial intelligence data protection so uh so we need to introduce flexible loyalty program uh that will allow customer to accumulate points uh accumulate and redeem award anywhere not to limit customer to do the Redemption from the ecosystem or from the service provider but anywhere especially using the mobile money ecosystem that we have that we have built over the years and we are pioneering in Mobile money uh as well for the last 14 15 years in Africa and you you rightly said Africa is exporting The Innovation to the world uh we are the Silicon Valley of mobile money and we are the Silicon Valley and we have a big potential to be the Silicon Valley of AI in machine learning in Africa in the world so uh and also an additional point when it come to to to loyalty and and and refinancing the customer I think Padma has touched on that point is to enhancing or to enhance customer experience uh we need to leverage on the AI and Implement AI driven customer service solution uh some of them now into play like the chatboard virtual assistant to provide in real time support and improve customer satisfaction uh but from my perspective you know prianka always say the the best call center in the world is the call center without agent like mean either you don't have problem you don't need a call center which is impossible or either we are using a machine learning to predict the customer complain and provide a solution uh proactively uh to ensure a seamless and enjoyable experience for the customer so there's no need for the customer uh to call your call center so by focusing on on this strategy uh we are not only creating a value for our customer but also build a stronger more loyal relationship with our customer uh and as I said our mission is not only to take but also to give back yeah uh and this is uh our approach thank you priyan no thank you so much monzo and I think uh you know what you kind of touched upon is so important because um you know the truth is that AI is probably better at being empathetic than humans are just because there's too much information too many customers too many channels to talk on so um if if we had a chance of being uh an empathetic uh society and economy I think the fastest way to get there is going to be through data and it's amazing that MTN which is like um you know like Padma said the shakes of of the new data economy right is is spearheading this and I think it's going to be really exciting for Digital Services um and and partners to to be able to work with mt and get onboarded onto your platform whether it's through chenois or mobile money or ioba um you know and and start participating and contributing uh to that data econ that that MTN is trying to actually create you know and and of course building that loyalty and emotional connection with the customers is is is obviously at the heart of it so thank you so much for sharing your your insights Monza I think it was kind of spot on very good thank you uh uh Tanya uh if if uh you know you work across digital touch points right and and uh it's so important like Monza mentioned right to connect emotionally with customers across different types of channels so how is MTN today looking at personalization across channels uh whether it's for direct messaging or for building those uh long long-term um well multiple long-term relationships simultaneously hi brianka thank you for the for the question but you know let me start by saying that while listening to all this very interesting discussion what is very clear is that from an empan perspective we have a a very unique advantage in Paving the way in Ai and the reason why is that you know firstly the telecoms industry has the biggest volumes but also the widest range of data to apply AI on um and now if you add on top the fact that NTN can enhance this data with around 70 million mobile users mobile money users that I that Ali now mentioned and the fact that we have been as an organization consistently over time investing into the right AI Technologies like big data deep machine learning I think you know we we are in a very good position of leading you know the game in AI now back to your question you know on personalization of communication and why this is really important and I'm I'll told you in the beginning I'm wearing my sales hat so by effectively personalizing our communication channels we can improve customer satisfaction which leads to increased engagement then we drive higher conversion rates which ultimately is leading to a more effective monetization ation and I think you know at the end of the day this is what every single business is thriving for um and the reason why I was talking earlier you know about data is because if we really understand artificial intelligence at each core it is really about creating Smart Systems that can analyze vast amounts of data learn from it and then make informed decisions so the journey for personalization I think you know actually begins with data and by collecting them from various touch points such as you know browsing Behavior purchase history social media interactions um customer feedback AI can really help us in build comprehensive customer profiles and so touched a bit around it Al as well the right profiling of the customer is actually the foundation for personalized communication and AI alone you know the technology alone is not enough we need the right quality of data at the right place um one of the most powerful applications that we use in MTN you know uh from from AI in personalization is Predictive Analytics and we use algorithms that can analyze historical data to predict future behaviors and preferences and if you think about it you know this enables us to get in front of our customers with what they may need even before the actual need arises in their head it's it's it's really amazing it's really amazing what we have the power to do another exciting application um of AI now Ali was mentioning mentioning about it and I'm really passionate about chatbots and virtual assistance you know it's really the future I'm managing call centers and the head of T sales we have over 1,000 call center agents the amount of manual operations behind it you know really raises the need of how do we need to get leaner and more efficient on how we run these processes how do we interact with our customers and you know this AI driven tool they provide instant personalized assistance 247 they don't take holidays they don't have W weekends they are 247 at the service of of our customers whether it is you know to ask to answer frequently asked questions you know guide users when they're having a difficulty through a purchasing process or even you know getting ahead of the need as we said by suggesting you know product that actually um reply and respond to the needs of the customers they are there at the service of our customers to increase the engagement and increase loyalty back to Alish Point what's also important is that unlike humans this chatbots and the virtual assistants actually learn from every single interaction they become more effective over time um and you know from from an MN perspective what we try to do we can even train this AI assistant you know through NLP the natural language processing so that they understand better and more accurately the customer inquiries you know and excluding all these nuances about you know language accents you know background noises so they can really be trained in excluding all these disadvantages in a in a in a humanik conversation and really be to the point um what's even more impressing is that we can apply you know there are specific models that we can apply um around the sentiment analysis so we identify the emotional state of the customer and then we tailor the responses accordingly um you know I'm in the call sentence very very often if you hear for instance you know how frustrated how emotional a customer can get for a billing query and rightfully so 100% rightfully so H we can train with specific models you know our virtual assistants and our chatbots to pick this kind of emotional frustration and respond in a different manner you know more ently more empathetically and you know this thrives I think the whole personalization in the communication in a whole different level you feel understood you feel valued you feel support it and this is what at the end of the day you know thrives the experience the loyalty and then you know increased sales that speaks to our own kpi as an objective um as a business um also what I say very very often to my teams is that you know there's no better time to sell to a customer than the moment that you have a happy customer absolutely so the moment that yes the moment that you have been able to proactively help support resolve a problem that the customer has you are at the best point that you can ever be in achieving a successful sale and AI is actually revolutionizing the way we support the customers by making the customer service proactive rather than reactive for instance you know we with AI models we can analyze the patents in the customer interactions to understand and identify potential issue before it even escalates for me you know this this is really you know mindblowing capabilities that we have yeah to another level right for for MTN absolutely totally totally and what we strive with you know within MTN South Africa is to keep consistent in the way that we communicate with our customers across all channels sometimes you know we treat differently the the customer when it comes to a digital touch point or differently when they walk into a store and they have to wait 35 minutes to be to be serviced or when they are on a call with one of our customer care agents what is very important and I think you know this is really what adds the the extra chairing on top of the cake is that we keep consistent in this personalized kind of interaction with the customer the only Channel approach is key um uh in order you know to take this again you know to take the game into you know a different level um Al also did mention that through Ai and through all this information and data that we have we actually know more than anybody else about what you do and how you do it more than your wife more than your husband so what is very very important is that we we ensure that you know we have the customers feeling trust confidence that their data are not being used in a way that will expose them but only will be used in a way to add Val and to make their lives easier soan you know in conclusion and um you know I think we can talk for hours about about artificial intelligence and how it can actually contribute but I think you know at the end of the day it's very obious it's a game changer in personalizing the customer Communications you know and enhancing our user experience and by leveraging all these capabilities we can as organiz as an organization understand our customers better predict their needs and deliver their lord experiences that actually resonate that resonate because what we do so far traditionally you know we have generic messages generic interactions generic product offerings do they necessarily resonate to each specific individual not really so I think you know it's the only way forwards as as we are standing right now it can help us you know boost the customer satisfaction and loyalty but also drive you know our business in a constant sustainable growth and keep us ahead of the game in this very competitive world I mean I think it's um you know it's it's definitely such an important moment uh you know for for MTN and operators around the world and I like what um what you said uh you know that emotional connection is so important to resonate with and I think Ali monzer also mentioned uh you know operators know know everything but it's also it's it's more about being relevant in a way that you're giving back so I think MTN had a flagship loyalty program called senu right uh in in Uganda it brought MTN into the number one NPS score uh by providing personalized relevant loyalty by aggregating Partners Beyond Telco and uh creating those personalized uh experiences right for for consumers across the world so um I think everything that you said is so appropriate and it's um it's it's quite inspiring actually to see MTN uh leading the way especially from Africa where there is uh so much potential uh for for uh you know growth in the market uh and it's unharnessed like I'll give you an example uh like you mentioned right the dialects are are different across different groups um this this was also a problem in India you know where um you know there are like 10,000 dialects or something like that across the the Indian subcontinent and uh there's a dialect called um Rajasthani and and haranvi now uh traditionally uh they could never directly do business with each other because they speak a different language and a different dialect even if they're connected uh even if there's connectivity even if there's you know all these different types of channels to communicate today with the local llms or localized llms now they can directly do business with each other without any of these middlemen or or middle women uh you know in in place and um uh it's it's a whole unharnessed economy that has never existed before so we're hitting a new wave of of uh the ability to transact and do business with each other and I think um you know the delayered approach uh that MTN has taken with all its Little Unicorns um you know ioba Momo uh now choisis and of course the data monetization strategy is going to actually uh unlock a lot of business and economy that has so far um not been extracted U and this is all virtual this is all ethereal and and it's still unharnessed potential so uh thank you so much Tanya for sharing your insights I think uh it resonated really well with the topic and and it was very eye openening uh and inspiring to hear what MTN is doing in in the African Market thank you thank you so much for your time so so Padma um you know just to kind of bring it together a little bit um how can uh operators with their Partners like techn tree create that uh T Telco Masterpiece right platform strategy so that can uh Drive Innovation at the same time be standardized and create that uh groundbreaking uh Network effect that uh Enzo um is is gunning for you know in terms of you know the future of that data monetization strategy your own um it was such an exhilarating experience listening to pururu listening to monzer listening to Tanya listening to Enzo I mean I'm I'm just um enjoying this session um incredibly and you know just to the point that Tanya made and and Monza made before I answer your question about that killer strategy um for the for the perfect platform I just want to say one thing in in techn tree with our sense of fabric one of the things that we really strive is a positive emotional quotient that in every relationship in every transaction uh you want to get that emotional Cent to be positive and every everything that Monza talked about and everything that t talked about with the power of data uh to drive that positive interaction at the end of every customer interaction is is really key to you know a very very successful strategy now now uh clearly you know it's not um you know you talked about that per perfect partnership that perfect uh platform strategy to create and drive Innovation it's a journey it's not any one trick um it's not uh you know a one trick that's going to um address uh the requirement it's a long journey and uh you know I'm a very very proud partner of MTN in that the vision for this journey started I would say in the early 2010s when um you know I have to say um that management and many of the people here today uh are familiar with it I mean my interactions with ji and and and her team was all about standardization across op course and driving standardization on the platform having common sources of uh technology across the board and leveraging that capability between geographies to unify information to unify access to information uh Enzo talked about the segment of one these are all very key tenants uh to driving Innovation so um I mean there are several several strategies to consider on how to craft a perfect platform strategy that will simplify your you know a common experience across the CSP the customer the partners and the employees in a very agile and yet scalable way so that business Innovation can happen very quickly and that it can create groundbreaking new products and services uh the first of course I mean we've talked a lot about this today is put customer at the heart of your the strategy everything that you do live breathe are for the customer customers aren't just some mathematical number you know of 350 million subscribers or something they are the heartbeat of the business they you to to utilize data analytics to decode their desires and preferences and their pain points and then to tailor offerings and create very quick you know microservices and and uh Journeys that fulfill their need um through multiple you know information channels through which you understand what they require is is an is an art and a science and I'm proud to say that we have strived in the last decade along with Mt and to create platforms that enable this kind of capability with low code no no code orchestration and uh microservices enabled St uh architectures which are Oda compliant and the apis are real world apis that are TM Forum compliant what it does is it brings scalability and flexibility in terms of how you can adapt to changing market conditions technology is a means to a business end and if it doesn't serve the bit business business then the technology is useless so we have really really strived very hard to understand you know the business requirements and adapt the technology to be highly flexible and and scalable the other big issue in a in in a in a community like a a telecom operator both in the netco and serco is integration capabilities Innovation thrives in in their business in terms of how they are able to integrate people process application s and devices to create that secret source for Success therefore a successful platform strategy has to have seamless integration seamless And Timely integration to other systems other operating systems other CRM systems other thirdparty applications to bring meaningful information together very quickly rapidly and service the customer I think it was Tanya who said you know connectivity is more important than any thing in terms of of the value that we place for connectivity and customers get extremely frustrated if they lose connectivity or they are represented wrongly or whatever uh you know situation they get into one of the early tenants and foundational uh processes that csps have embarked you know right from the days of network standardization Network infrastructure standardization with ss7 Etc is adherance to standards and I keep repeating it I think that has been the one single source of success the other area is the regulatory conformance The Regulators have been hard on csps in terms of kyc in terms of how data is protected so today when we are exploring opportunities to use that data in a meaningful way and provide much greater um type of customer interactions the Regulatory Compliance and governance and security around data is in the DNA of the CSP and I feel they are far better suited to ensure that trust and responsible use of uh information uh today and they're well equipped to bring that level of data governance of course data driven driven decision making is important we talked a lot about how embedded AI data analytics insights uh co-piloting generative type of uh capabilities with um with Bots Etc are very important in terms of introducing time to Market bringing business focused and focused outcomes and more important importantly to be able to integrate trust and responsible ways of serving the customer the other area I would say is a product Le mindset and this is a transformation this is an internal transformation for a Telco to become more product Le thinking where automation can streamline processes whether it's order to cash cach to uh you know completing successfully a provisioning capability or troubleshooting uh an issue on the network all of these things require repeatability scalability and performance and therefore Auto using automated tools in the platform strategy wherever possible becomes very important but beyond all of that you know there are certain other important organizational elements people and practice elements that we have to look at in terms of this journey and there I think it's investing in good talent attracting and acquiring top talent across the world building an organization that's capable of delivering this kind of innovation and digital training continuous learning commitment to uh employ employee retraining and retraining with strong LMS capabilities are important and then an innovation culture in the company where we plan for Innovation we plan for business process alignment for the Innovation it's part of the business goals and we handsomely reward organizational Innovation organic and organizational Innovation uh within the company I just want to say one thing finally in my humble observation you know I have worked in technology for several years I've had we have Global customers around the world but um one of the observation is that strong business MTN um has a very strong and has been a very very important digital partner over a couple of decades for us and they have led the digital revolution in the African market and I've watched it happen and unfold in front of my eyes and what I truly believe including what we take away from this experience combined experience as a partner with MTN is that what is good for MTN is good for Africa and today I'm proud to say what's good for Africa is good for the world and and I'm proud to be part of creating that change and making that transformation happen thank you thank you so much Padma um we have a few questions um uh from the audience so probably U uh Enzo or puru would you would you like to take up uh some of them uh one is on the partnership strategy um you know does MTN plan uh to have some kind of partnership strategy probably Enzo you you want to address that yeah I mean I think you know as I said earlier prianka we closer to the beginning than the end I think this partnership was unveiled at Mobile World Congress this year we've been in conversation with the people leading the partnership we've also been in conversation with other Telos building or consortia building large language models so I can't commit and say yes we're going to join this Consortium but we're in uh we're in conversations and we're in conversations with other consort I don't know if puru has anything to add to that um no I I fully supported Enzo I mean to add on to what you have added it's uh we we are exploring the Align um you know the alliances as well as which along with the SKT and the likes uh besides that we are also working with the TM Forum G MAA to say that how this um uh Consortium moves forward um plus the Strategic partnership that we are working with like beyond the microsofts and the Google so and as well as you know the some of the startups that we are working in Africa like Founders Factory Etc we're bringing the outside in uh references as well as Innovations to within MTN so that's how we are progressing on this and and puru maybe you just want to take on the next question as well and maybe Enzo you can add to it uh the question is about bias um how do you kind of restrict that how do you ensure it's not discriminatory um you know for customer groups um isn't the human component critical if not more expensive I think two separate questions one is on bias and trust and the other one is on the cost aspect of it so yeah yeah I think uh see it's a very valid question I mean I can give you examples in terms of the pilot that we started around 18 months back in era when we u based on this open air partnership with Microsoft I think uh that was a learning process both for MTN as well as Microsoft where uh the early models they had a lot of biases hallucinations Etc in terms of how models were trained and uh and and the way we have done is definitely there's a lot of human interventions involved uh we uh influence in terms of the policies that have to be implemented that was something that was built into the framework by Microsoft but also uh what has happened in the last 18 to 20 months is the responsible AI framework the transparency Etc I think prianka you did mention before about the Ri so this is something that most of the Telos are um proposing and endorsing and this is something that we have been pushing for just to say that you know like from a brand impact as well as you know from a customer experience perspective these things are taken into control so we have come a long way uh with Ms as well as um how the models are uh implemented inflence and you know what exactly we are it's no more like more like a black box you know like what it was initially so so the human element is definitely there even today you know like we say that AI generated responses are not to be trusted 100% so what we have actually done is we have evolved our models our knowledge base and the kind of use cases we are doing we have been very particular in terms of prioritizing our use cases to say that you know the accuracy levels are high and we also tuned the models to address that okay and I think Enzo you you can add to that as well no I I want to speak about something different if you if you'd give me firstly I want to thank Padma for what she said and I completely agree with her on the technology back end about standardization scaling and product manage M and being product Le but I think that's from technology out right I think from a Telco point to view and we've had largely a technology conversation today we've also got to go and Tanya touched on the customer is the ability for these artificial intelligence Technologies to help us better serve from the customer back into the Telco and create better more personalized experiences because I think it's going to be LED from technology out but experience LED uh from the customer's point of view so personalized experiences enhanced experiences but mostly what Telos have failed to deliver are frictionless experiences and I think the more we understand of the customer the more productive we become the more we can deliver frictionless experiences so that's what excites me is how do we serve the customer better and create less hassle and less friction in their world and I think this creates the the opportunity but I think we have to adhere to the disciplines and the principles that Padma spoke about earlier otherwise we won't get the benefit of scale and the ability to deliver this so it's like intent based product Le approach exactly and and uh supported by the discipline of like you said of of Standards right so that that becomes uh you know quite quite important as well it's almost like marketing-led product development maybe in in in in some in some cases consumer consumer consumer absolutely absolutely absolutely right perfect I uh I think sir P do you have any comments um Ali Monza do you have any comments Tanya any any final comments just like Enzo everybody can come online and maybe we can just do a round of what you thought and and close the session yeah sure but why don't you go ahead and yeah thank you prianka and thank you for the entire MTN team today um it was an exhilarating um very compelling set of discussions that happened intellectually stimulating at the same time setting the setting the pace for what need what's to come making it really really exciting in terms of the new universe we are entering um with AI and uh large amounts of data that that we can consume and bring a sing Singularity to purpose in every Journey at the same time um you know know a lot about uh the information that goes behind the scenes to create that singular experience so I completely and uh uniquely enjoyed this experience it was a great distraction for me from my daily um everyday work uh meetings and so on it's it's a pleasure to work with all of you and serve you and and have a mind share and mind space today with all of you thank you thank you very much Ali do you want to add anything just to summarize your impressions of of the session so far yeah yeah sure I mean thank you first for having me on this uh panel and I hope that the audience has enjoyed the discussion just uh one point on the AI topic AI is not a buzz AI is not an internet bubble if you are following now the the discussion in the stock market and Nvidia bubble everyone is comparing AI with the internet bubble in the 1990s where everyone was having a website he will go to the stock market and open an IPO AI is a reality AI is not an internet bubble and AI is not just the future it's our present realities and AI is going to transform our industry and redefining our customer experience so let us continue to innovate uh and lead the way with with techn Tre as a as a as a platinium partner for MTN in shaping a smarter uh more uh connected world thank you so much and uh T you know what about you uh any summary points for the session thanks pranka just again you know from my side thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to be in this panel I hope you know our audience um find found it interesting you know they took some food for thought for later on during the weekend around AI um thanks to techn Tre you know that is triggering us into these kind of discussions that further only it triggers more action more thought and more you know better execution and how we're doing things and understanding for me what what's important because in this panel you know the discussion came from people from different kind of functions within MTN and it's very important to see you know how all these different functions which sometimes different a bit kind of different you know lowlevel kpis and objectives can actually get together and form the value chain that will deliver the overall you know strategy and the overall vision of of the organization I think it's very important thank you very much and puru um last but not least and I think you can close the session yeah thanks Padma Priyanka and techn I think it was a a very valuable webinar as well as it comes at a very opportune time and as Monza said that you know everybody is U uh trying to get hold of the train of Nvidia as well as you know the future opportunities from Ai and AI is actually becoming a reality you know like people have started realizing that the value is being unlocked and the tangible value that is being created you know like not just um you know it's more of a busz word um I think we touched upon some of the key topics best practices you know we spoke about delayering open Digital architecture and so we we I mean thanks to you as well as your product stack and a platform we have a Oda stack readily available we have the apis available we infusing with AI at the core so we have all the ingredients you know to make this successful um story and and we we already come a long way and it's now all about you know uh taking it to the next stage thank you thank you and thank you to the thank you so much for your kind words um and uh of course techn Tre enjoys this partnership uh know for over 20 20 plus years I suppose thank you so much for the participants a lot of you are from MTN U it's great that you could be a part of it and and join us um please wait for the next session hopefully it's soon uh thank you so much have a great weekend take care thank you AI Bye by

[Applause] [Applause] welcome to the future of telecoms in Africa where Community culture and Innovation unite join us for an exclusive webinar featuring insights from industry leaders about the Innovations transforming the Telecom industry learn how delaying Telecom networks enhances monetization and improves service quality across Africa discover how intelligent analytics deliver a total experience and drive incremental revenue for African telecoms build strong loyalty and retention strategies to Foster Community relationships and Boost customer retention tap into new revenue streams with cuttingedge strategies for apis connectivities and intelligent applications enhance customer experience through direct personalized messaging tailored to local communities learn how to create Innovative platform strategies that resonate with African cultures and drive Revenue revolutionize your approach to AI powered Network monetization and Telecom innovation in Africa join us for this must attend webinar in the ever evolving world of telecommunications data is King but amidst the chaos of fragmented information telecom companies struggle to deliver seamless experiences amidst their search they discover profile of one a revolutionary solution designed to unify Telecom operations streamline processes and deliver personalized experiences with profile of one in hand telecom companies embark on an implementation Journey teams collaborate tirelessly to integrate the solution laying the foundation for a unified future as profile of one takes root a transformation sweeps through the Telecom landscape fragmented data gives way to unified insights and fragmented experiences evolve into seamless Journeys peering into the future Telecom leaders see a world transformed by profile of one unified data fuels Innovation and personalized experiences red Define connectivity experience the power of one with profile of one where fragmented data meets unified Solutions and every interaction [Music] counts good morning everyone good afterno afternoon uh to all our attendees uh welcome to an exciting webinar that we&#39;ve prepared for you uh on unleashing the power of AI based data monetization uh today&#39;s session is packed with valuable insights and dynamic discussions and here&#39;s what you can expect uh we start off with an introduction uh of our topic and its relevance uh in today&#39;s world uh especially in the context of Africa uh you get to meet the speakers you see where they come from what they&#39;re doing a quick introduction of our esteemed panel uh we will Deep dive into the discussions where we&#39;ll explore specific areas related to Data Network apis monetization and much more uh given their various perspectives and experiences of course the goal is to Foster an engaging and conversational atmosphere that offers actionable insights and Sparks innovative ideas uh we will quickly get into a Q&amp;A uh session post that so you can while the sessions are going on uh put your questions in the chat or um or mention them as questions we&#39;ll try to either answer them live after the session or or some of the if it&#39;s directed to a specific panelist they&#39;ll try to answer it on the chat uh and then we&#39;ll have a quick Roundup of a summary and and close the session so I hope uh you enjoy yourself and uh participate as much as possible so welcome everyone uh to an exciting and transformative conversation about uh mtn&#39;s data monetization strategy in Africa picture this an African Rich an Africa Rich continent in vibrant cultures and diverse communities and boundless creativity uh it&#39;s on the brink of a data Revolution right now with over a billion people um and close to 60% of them being under the age of 25 uh and a rapidly growing internet demand and penetration rate right uh the opportunities for datadriven Innovation are absolutely staggering for Africa it&#39;s one of the only continents in the world where you can expect double- digit growth in terms of economic demand so today we&#39;ll explore how MTN is not just tapping into this vast reservoir of data but turning it into a gold mine of opportunities that can uplift communities Drive economic growth and inspire a new wave of technological advancements imagine harnessing data to improve health care access for Millions empowering small businesses with digital tools and connecting people in the most remotest areas of the world so get ready to dive into this discussion uh that marries both tradition with technology uh where the rhythms of Africa meet the pulse of data analytics and where the future of Africa is being shaped uh with the power of information uh we will uncover how data and is the new oil and how Africa is poised to become the richest well in the world welcome to this revolution where every bite of data brings us closer to a brighter and more connected future for all I&#39;d like to start by introducing our panelists so we have with us Tanya lupulu uh she&#39;s a general manager for online T sales and on online billers for MTM group we have uh pad Randa who&#39;s a CEO of techn tree corporation uh we have Enzo scarcella who is the chief consumer officer for MTN group we&#39;re also joined by Ali monzo who&#39;s a CEO of MTN South Sudan and purushotam Dakar uh who is the group GM it strategy and architecture for MTN group so let&#39;s get into the discussion um so Enzo let&#39;s let&#39;s start with you um how can we actually start harnessing intelligent data analytics to deliver uh this total experience that everyone is talking about and and drive incremental Revenue so banka thanks firstly thanks for the question I mean obviously you know telco&#39;s the Advent of the use of data to enhance commercial value has been a journey in Telos for a while right um I&#39;d say it&#39;s probably the last 15 to 20 years we&#39;ve been looking at that and we&#39;ve called that customer value management I think everybody&#39;s familiar with CVM but that has largely been you know almost Excel based where we&#39;d go for segments of in an 8 by8 Matrix and using maybe five to 10 variables more recently 15 to 20 variables and that&#39;s we&#39;ve been successful with that as Telos right we get Revenue lifts of around about 3% on Total Service revenue on that and that&#39;s quite healthy but what we are seeing is with the power of artificial intelligence in analytics is the ability to process infinitely more data and infinitely more complex data and to be able to shape offers to smaller and smaller segments right so I&#39;ll kind of paint a picture for you so if a few years ago we were using 20 variables we starting to develop a a machine learning a a machine with AI capability a recommendation engine that today will&#39;ll use over 2,000 variables and those are largely Telco variables it&#39;s before we even get into the digital space that&#39;ll explode so all of a sudden we&#39;ve gone from 20 to 2,000 that&#39;s a factor of 100 what that means is that your segments go almost from 64 segments to ultimately and I I was smiling at your video because you ultimately go to a segment of one the only thing that limits us now is the product catalog right because the product catalog cannot be a product of one although I know joty will tell me that in her past life she&#39;s launched products to a segment of one but I think you know if you think about what is the vision and the Panacea it&#39;s saying being able to harness so consumers today consume you know we come from a world of voice and data right um now there&#39;s voice data geolocation video and it&#39;s kyc everything that happens on the internet that&#39;s all there to say what does Consumer Behavior look like and that&#39;s become infinitely more more complex so so I&#39;d say that that&#39;s that&#39;s kind of the journey we&#39;re on it&#39;s CVM 1.0 was really kind of basic cross and upsell CVM 2.0 we started to put some machine learning models in place we expanded to probably 20 variables now we&#39;re going to CVM 3.0 where we&#39;re saying we&#39;re not only using OSS data BSS data we also going to start using Digital Data you know yeah and that then means you&#39;re going from this to this and then going from 64 segments to segment of one so that&#39;s a it&#39;s a an exciting Journey so so just just to kind of um double click on something that you said right you said when you it&#39;s going to explode when it goes to Digital Services so I have I have two questions right one is um how exactly I mean what is your strategy to actually start extending this monetization um in both in terms of your you know AI strategy um platform right uh to to start extending it into Digital Services um and and the second one is like if I was a digital service company I would want to know what your business model is so just like you have wholesale Arrangements on connectivity with maybe some mvnos Etc are you going to start having data Arrangements between mean yourselves aggregators marketplaces maybe service providers where you can start importing their data models into your models and then start creating more intelligence around it so um could you shed some light on that yeah I mean I I I think that&#39;s uh I mean you you you&#39;re kind of going on a path we&#39;re probably closer to the beginning than the end there right but let me let me get back to where we where we&#39;d use this um on on on on CVM so what&#39;s I&#39;ll I&#39;ll talk first kind of the way we think of the architecture the architecture says whatever data we can Harvest let us Harvest that within our own environment right let&#39;s put it into one place in MTN we call that one place Eva right named after the the the the mother of of of of mankind right so so all of the data sits there what the AI models then sit is an intelligence layer on top of that today we call that nbx so EV nbx there and then really the recommendation engine is there and you through a series of apis expose those to multiple channels so what you have is Omni Channel offers across infinite products because all of the product information the BSS information there so I think you get that picture right now yeah so once you what you pointing to then you say okay if you harvesting as much data as you can how do you re reciprocate that by sharing this data and so that&#39;s we&#39;ve got a business called chosis and that&#39;s ultimately chosis does right chosis says uh we&#39;ve got more data than what we know to than what until now we actually didn&#39;t know what to do with all of this data I think we&#39;re getting smarter now right but chosis is saying we&#39;ve got behavioral data on voice and we&#39;ve got geolocation data we have got I&#39;m right and we can create apis that we can share with the world for people in the development space to use our data anonymized data for all the Privacy people on the call anonymized data that then can be used to develop products and services that can serve a different audience so you know and I think that that relationship of firstly anonymizing data and then sharing data that rep reciprocity I think is the way of the future so open API architectures reciprocity of data and then large amounts of data being being um harnessed and targeted at at at segments of one is is is is roughly the way I I try to create a vision of the future for for all of the people on the core or the way mtn&#39;s thinking there may be smarter ways but that&#39;s the way I think about it the way mtn&#39;s thinking about it no I think I think it&#39;s U it&#39;s really interesting and I think it&#39;s a good point to bring in Padma because all the things that you mentioned right in terms of uh creating choisis it&#39;s a part of you know your delayering strategy it&#39;s one of your uh you know unicorn ideas uh in in MTN and um of course standardization is important so um you know Padma you know do you have a comment on on what what kind of strategies is it delayering or or whatever it is for for monetization how can we help create that platform uh to to actually start monetizing across verticals improve efficiency service quality not just for MTN and their telom customers but also uh you know enabling an ecosystem of Enterprises to gain uh you know from from these uh you know I would say Network or ecosystem effects of the data uh you&#39;re on mute Padma thank you thank you prianka good evening everyone welcome to the audience um your question is highly relevant and very very pertinent to what&#39;s happening in the industry today and it was really exciting to listen to Enzo speaking about CVM 3.0 and Beyond and how we&#39;re going to integrate data to create that Singularity of vision um I I would say that uh MTN is transforming at break neck Pace compared to many other customers that I&#39;m serving and it&#39;s really a delight to be a partner uh with you guys um what I would say is that the delayering of of Telco itself has mostly happened a decade ago into the info netco serco by many csps in different geographies to attract Capital valuation and take their business asset to better performance but today&#39;s challenge for csps Is that they&#39;re facing headwinds with static to low great growth in Revenue in the last few years and also a telecom Market disruption with many new service entrance that are entering the space and there&#39;s increasing competition from multiple directions so there is also a compelling industry shift towards the moving away from the traditional vertical aggregation in and integration to more a delayered strategy for growth uh this would really reflect upon how well uh you know in in the early 2000s the csps created the serco netco departure from the infr to Pro provide more customer focused operations and customer experience and marketing Le Service delivery capability uh challenging the Ott players and also to enter into you know industry specific offerings through mvnos whereas the netco optimize the network infrastructure it in simple terms this transformation is huge in terms of how one has to critically examine how to optimize and and Foster profitable growth while transforming the business into these kinds of delayered Concepts and leverage the capabilities of each other between the serco and the netco so I I really believe when you look at the csps today the real ask in the business is to move away from selling pure technology to selling value for example you know a simple example today any CSP is well equipped to sell a 5G infrastructure to an airport but can they even dream of selling an endtoend improved user experience at the airport and that from business conceptualization to cash that is the need of the hour that is the call to action of our csps our customers today to unleash this power of the digital capability even Enzos talked about how they&#39;re bringing you know all of these platforms together and to imagine a world where there is seamless interaction high levels of personalization and optimization in terms of transformation and that&#39;s really what uh you know is being asked of the csps to move away from verticalization to turn disruption into digital delight and I think the the the race is on and to create in intrinsic value in the space is what most of the uh csps as aspiring to do with you know with AI through data disruption and many other uh types of strategies uh to improve um their whole business value proposition so um if you look at you know some of the concepts that I&#39;m speaking about many of these concepts are not new it is really how you drive the standardization of the platform to make it scalable to make it data driven to have a level of standardization and I would say MTN has been foremost in influencing standardization across its op course even in the digital transformation journey I would say they are the forerunners and I you know we&#39;ve been partnering with them to drive this standardization and the TM Forum apis the real world apis we&#39;ve implemented along with them the order compliances that we have followed are all allowing them to unlock this value of improving the service quality uh going forward and as you said Priyanka if data is the new oil by unlocking the intelligence in the data the csps can be the new shakes in town and I really believe a lot depends on their AI strategy and their data monetization strategy one is I would say AI powered personalization is a must and having the data pipelines to collect data aggregate data to create the algorithms to build out increase sales capabilities reduced churn capabilities and so on and so forth with targeted off offerings the second would be the area of predictive analysis uh whether it is to harness AI to drive predictive capability on customer churn or network failures and proactive retention strategies to improve customer loyalty and enhance uh Customer Loyalty by understanding customer Behavior the third area in terms of data strength is in operational efficiencies with automation Implement AI automation tools streamline processes uh optimize Resources with co-piloting type capabilities on the platform and boost overall operational efficiencies and cost savings um and finally I would say uh you know you touched upon this on Partner ecosystem and playing in the adjacent markets it when you leverage the csp&#39;s customer data capability it&#39;s a horizontal capability and then when you combine that with verticalized partner ecosystem capability in adjacent markets like ealth or education or connected cars or uh connected digital experiences in gaming Etc you start to drive new value and new experiences and new opportunities for uh monetizing growth and retaining customers the opportunities are endless the key is to know how to combine them for different markets how to bring the whole strategy together in terms of go to market campaigns Etc um and partnering with ecosystem players and also the organizational capability to lead the change in terms of business transformation and transformation of customer experiences in the process so that&#39;s what I would say um I think I think that&#39;s uh that&#39;s really um it&#39;s really strategic uh is what you&#39;re trying to say it&#39;s not just a technical advancement it&#39;s a strategic move for operators to get into this space and uh I um I think I would want to kind of before I get into the value probably invite puru you know to uh to kind of expose uh what is mtn&#39;s AI strategy right and and and how are you looking at uh data monetization uh today and I think that&#39;s going to kind of set the context for the rest of the discussions which are really going to start talking about uh the value that that MTN is driving today uh right across digital touch points loyalty Etc so okay uh thanks Panka for the question and um thanks Padma for setting the tone I&#39;m just teing off from uh the key you know the appics that you build on the delayering of the Telco uh I think uh at this moment is the opportune time that we are talking about Ai and monetization and I believe that in the overall value chain of a Telco we are playing in multiple areas Enzo did touch upon on the data part so besides data we are talking about the apps for monetization as well as the connectivity so it&#39;s full value chain including the the infrastructure where we are playing I think from our standpoint the way we see um the AI playing out um we have um I mean in terms of the the data uh across Africa we are sitting about on like 300 million subscriber based amount of data that we have generated we are using that data from a monetized perspective both from a private and Public Partnerships we are looking at both geolocation geospatial data from a Mobility perspective you know like what exactly we can in cach and that&#39;s where there&#39;s a lot of things that comes into the place when we talk about Beyond advertising you know when we talk about adenes Padma did touch upon the the healthcare part we also talking about the mining industry as well as you know some of the other things that we are doing from an enterplay side now besides that I think the next uh key opportunity that we look at is uh because of the um you know um the amount of data that we have some of the things that we talk about um um sorry just one second um some of the things that we um talk about from a monetization point of view when it comes to storage infrastructure data sere aspect uh that is another area that we can play on um and because uh the regulations in Africa is very um it&#39;s not very stringent is very Loosely defined I think it gives us an opportunity like how do we uh play on the data sovereignty side and you know like also from infrastructure side if you want to give Sovereign also on the connectivity side I think um not everybody um has access to know you know to the super compute power secondly the energy and the you know like the kind of cooling kind of requirements that is required so this is where we have an opportunity to partner with hyperscalers to give localized kind of you know um like a GPU service etc for our Enterprises to so that is broadly I mean the areas where we see playing um and and this is a very evolving space you know like today um people have been talking about large language model so we are definitely working in that space with our partnership with Microsoft we&#39;re also looking at how we can offer AI at the edge you know like I mean that&#39;s that&#39;s a very interesting use case as coming in and Enzo did touch upon some of the parameters before I think today we are also seeing that do we really need um those many parameters like in billions or trillions to specifically solve a use case and this is where we bringing the localization flavor with a limited number of parameters what is the kind of innovation we can bring in let&#39;s say localize for a markets like let&#39;s a West Africa Market or a southeast Asia Market when it comes to customer experience when it comes to um you know language specific needs or when we say hyper personalization how can we inject into that I think those are the insights that we are bringing in in collaboration and you know interjecting with technology to basically give value to our customers and also keeping um um um you know um being prudent about the cost I think the best thing that we have been doing is we are innovating with very uh prudent control on the cost and capital allocation that we doing I mean we&#39;re not saying that we are spending a lot of money for the sake of spending money and we need to have the best of breeding you know Tech to deliver this so that&#39;s where we have been very Innovative about it um and um and that&#39;s I mean we are looking it holistically I mean we are looking at uh adopting responsi we being very transparent we are keeping the regulat regulations in mind we&#39;re also saying that what actually works for Africa and that&#39;s how we are evolving yeah yeah and I think that&#39;s super strategic because I I I think uh MTN has been an innovator not just for Africa but is an example for Innovation for the world because there are many people uh across the world in other markets as well that are under the same pressures for cost same pressures for access to information um and for example like The Innovation that MTN did on the prepaid side you literally created prepaid and took it to the World um and I think there&#39;s a huge opportunity here if you&#39;re successful in terms of your data strategy uh you know for for a lot of other um uh Emerging Markets to benefit on how you actually Implement it&#39;s it&#39;s not really about what because what is like uh there&#39;s so much potential uh but really if if MTN is successful I think they can be not just successful for Africa but a lot of parts of the world can learn from from what&#39;s happening at mdn yeah thank you thank you so much um and uh I think now this is a good point to uh invite ali monzo uh thank you so much for for um for being with us today and uh we want to kind of understand U so now we&#39;re talking about uh we&#39;ve got a platform we&#39;ve got a strategy in place we&#39;re looking at the infra we&#39;re looking at the serveco uh you know bringing them together for the African market now now we&#39;re talking about the value now and Padma mentioned as well it&#39;s not just about delivering technology it&#39;s also about delivering value right uh to to Enterprises and and and customers so how can you actually build like a powerful uh retention loyalty program that delivers value uh strengthens relationships and boosts uh you know customer retention uh thank you Priyanka and panelist of setting the tone and I want to welcome the audience as well and thank you for the question but but before we go uh into the how it&#39;s extremely important to talk about the why when we unlock the why it will be easy for us to understand the how right now in our Market the cost of acquiring a new customer in our industry is becoming extremely high due to uh several factor I mean marketing expenditure promotional offer and in some cases in some Market we need to subsidize devices and provide attractive packages to entice customer to switch provider and uh and and oftenly our Market are saturated as well our the mobile penetration in some of the market Mark are more than 100% so meaning that most potential customer already have a provider in place so make it more challenging and expensive to lure them away from their uh initial provider but and also new customer often do not yield the desired return immediately they will give you a lower arpo compared to the existing customer or the old customer on the network so the initial cost associated with acquisition mean that it take time for this customer to become profitable on on on your network or on your system and they may also be less loyal the new customer are less Loyal by almost 60% from existing customer and more likely to switch to another provider if they find a better deal and that&#39;s the reality and and in our market right now we are not competing we as a as a as a technology provider we are not competing with the with the the like of airel or orange we are competing with everyone we are competing on the value share we need the customer to use that $1 that he or she has in her pocket or his pocket to spend on our product so our competition or our competitor are not uh necessarily a technology service provider uh like us so as a result we are increasingly focusing on customer loyalty and ration strategy this will help us to Foster stickiness uh and uh it will aim to reduce chain rates and enhance uh the lifetime value of our existing customer and also which is extremely important for us to give back to our customer one of our core pillar as an MTN is to give back to our customer uh and to give back as well uh to our uh communities and and once you give back to customer you will be creating an emotional stickiness with the brand and the emotional stickiness it&#39;s more powerful than anything else yeah so you will move away from a transactional uh method to an emotional stickness with the brand so in Nell you are absolutely right we must focus on creating value for our customer and they need to feel that they are getting appreciated uh for the value that they are adding for that service provider or for us as an MTN uh and also Enzo and Padma has touched directly or indirectly on how we can achieve that maybe quickly from my side for sure personalized the reward and recognition is extremely key we need to utilize the AI machine learning to analyze customer behavior and preferences offer them a personalized reward that are relevant in meanful to each customer so customer demand a lot customer need these days are are are different and you need to to go uh from uh from the mcro segment to the segment of one and I think Enzo touched on the segment of one leveraging on AI in machine learning and how we can use the thousand of the data point that you that we have from a different source and when we talk about Source here we are not talking about the traditional source that are sitting or the structured source that are sitting within our ecosystem we talk about digital Source the social media Source this information has to be combined has to be ingested has to be crunched sliced diced and then we can dve a meaningful Insight that can help us to offer the segment of one mean a unique offer for every single customer so we have thousand of data points we know at what time you wake up pranka we know what you do when you wake up we know where you go we know what you eat we know what milk you like if you are using mobile money we know what pizza you like we know to which hospital you go Which medicine do you buy if you are using mobile money every single products in our business give us an additional data points so imagine the the volume of data that we have on you for sure uh data protection come into play uh and now with the AI I think we should have AI data protection uh Canada recently in March Actually March this year they have upgraded their data protection and they introduced what they called Ida artificial intelligence data protection so uh so we need to introduce flexible loyalty program uh that will allow customer to accumulate points uh accumulate and redeem award anywhere not to limit customer to do the Redemption from the ecosystem or from the service provider but anywhere especially using the mobile money ecosystem that we have that we have built over the years and we are pioneering in Mobile money uh as well for the last 14 15 years in Africa and you you rightly said Africa is exporting The Innovation to the world uh we are the Silicon Valley of mobile money and we are the Silicon Valley and we have a big potential to be the Silicon Valley of AI in machine learning in Africa in the world so uh and also an additional point when it come to to to loyalty and and and refinancing the customer I think Padma has touched on that point is to enhancing or to enhance customer experience uh we need to leverage on the AI and Implement AI driven customer service solution uh some of them now into play like the chatboard virtual assistant to provide in real time support and improve customer satisfaction uh but from my perspective you know prianka always say the the best call center in the world is the call center without agent like mean either you don&#39;t have problem you don&#39;t need a call center which is impossible or either we are using a machine learning to predict the customer complain and provide a solution uh proactively uh to ensure a seamless and enjoyable experience for the customer so there&#39;s no need for the customer uh to call your call center so by focusing on on this strategy uh we are not only creating a value for our customer but also build a stronger more loyal relationship with our customer uh and as I said our mission is not only to take but also to give back yeah uh and this is uh our approach thank you priyan no thank you so much monzo and I think uh you know what you kind of touched upon is so important because um you know the truth is that AI is probably better at being empathetic than humans are just because there&#39;s too much information too many customers too many channels to talk on so um if if we had a chance of being uh an empathetic uh society and economy I think the fastest way to get there is going to be through data and it&#39;s amazing that MTN which is like um you know like Padma said the shakes of of the new data economy right is is spearheading this and I think it&#39;s going to be really exciting for Digital Services um and and partners to to be able to work with mt and get onboarded onto your platform whether it&#39;s through chenois or mobile money or ioba um you know and and start participating and contributing uh to that data econ that that MTN is trying to actually create you know and and of course building that loyalty and emotional connection with the customers is is is obviously at the heart of it so thank you so much for sharing your your insights Monza I think it was kind of spot on very good thank you uh uh Tanya uh if if uh you know you work across digital touch points right and and uh it&#39;s so important like Monza mentioned right to connect emotionally with customers across different types of channels so how is MTN today looking at personalization across channels uh whether it&#39;s for direct messaging or for building those uh long long-term um well multiple long-term relationships simultaneously hi brianka thank you for the for the question but you know let me start by saying that while listening to all this very interesting discussion what is very clear is that from an empan perspective we have a a very unique advantage in Paving the way in Ai and the reason why is that you know firstly the telecoms industry has the biggest volumes but also the widest range of data to apply AI on um and now if you add on top the fact that NTN can enhance this data with around 70 million mobile users mobile money users that I that Ali now mentioned and the fact that we have been as an organization consistently over time investing into the right AI Technologies like big data deep machine learning I think you know we we are in a very good position of leading you know the game in AI now back to your question you know on personalization of communication and why this is really important and I&#39;m I&#39;ll told you in the beginning I&#39;m wearing my sales hat so by effectively personalizing our communication channels we can improve customer satisfaction which leads to increased engagement then we drive higher conversion rates which ultimately is leading to a more effective monetization ation and I think you know at the end of the day this is what every single business is thriving for um and the reason why I was talking earlier you know about data is because if we really understand artificial intelligence at each core it is really about creating Smart Systems that can analyze vast amounts of data learn from it and then make informed decisions so the journey for personalization I think you know actually begins with data and by collecting them from various touch points such as you know browsing Behavior purchase history social media interactions um customer feedback AI can really help us in build comprehensive customer profiles and so touched a bit around it Al as well the right profiling of the customer is actually the foundation for personalized communication and AI alone you know the technology alone is not enough we need the right quality of data at the right place um one of the most powerful applications that we use in MTN you know uh from from AI in personalization is Predictive Analytics and we use algorithms that can analyze historical data to predict future behaviors and preferences and if you think about it you know this enables us to get in front of our customers with what they may need even before the actual need arises in their head it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s really amazing it&#39;s really amazing what we have the power to do another exciting application um of AI now Ali was mentioning mentioning about it and I&#39;m really passionate about chatbots and virtual assistance you know it&#39;s really the future I&#39;m managing call centers and the head of T sales we have over 1,000 call center agents the amount of manual operations behind it you know really raises the need of how do we need to get leaner and more efficient on how we run these processes how do we interact with our customers and you know this AI driven tool they provide instant personalized assistance 247 they don&#39;t take holidays they don&#39;t have W weekends they are 247 at the service of of our customers whether it is you know to ask to answer frequently asked questions you know guide users when they&#39;re having a difficulty through a purchasing process or even you know getting ahead of the need as we said by suggesting you know product that actually um reply and respond to the needs of the customers they are there at the service of our customers to increase the engagement and increase loyalty back to Alish Point what&#39;s also important is that unlike humans this chatbots and the virtual assistants actually learn from every single interaction they become more effective over time um and you know from from an MN perspective what we try to do we can even train this AI assistant you know through NLP the natural language processing so that they understand better and more accurately the customer inquiries you know and excluding all these nuances about you know language accents you know background noises so they can really be trained in excluding all these disadvantages in a in a in a humanik conversation and really be to the point um what&#39;s even more impressing is that we can apply you know there are specific models that we can apply um around the sentiment analysis so we identify the emotional state of the customer and then we tailor the responses accordingly um you know I&#39;m in the call sentence very very often if you hear for instance you know how frustrated how emotional a customer can get for a billing query and rightfully so 100% rightfully so H we can train with specific models you know our virtual assistants and our chatbots to pick this kind of emotional frustration and respond in a different manner you know more ently more empathetically and you know this thrives I think the whole personalization in the communication in a whole different level you feel understood you feel valued you feel support it and this is what at the end of the day you know thrives the experience the loyalty and then you know increased sales that speaks to our own kpi as an objective um as a business um also what I say very very often to my teams is that you know there&#39;s no better time to sell to a customer than the moment that you have a happy customer absolutely so the moment that yes the moment that you have been able to proactively help support resolve a problem that the customer has you are at the best point that you can ever be in achieving a successful sale and AI is actually revolutionizing the way we support the customers by making the customer service proactive rather than reactive for instance you know we with AI models we can analyze the patents in the customer interactions to understand and identify potential issue before it even escalates for me you know this this is really you know mindblowing capabilities that we have yeah to another level right for for MTN absolutely totally totally and what we strive with you know within MTN South Africa is to keep consistent in the way that we communicate with our customers across all channels sometimes you know we treat differently the the customer when it comes to a digital touch point or differently when they walk into a store and they have to wait 35 minutes to be to be serviced or when they are on a call with one of our customer care agents what is very important and I think you know this is really what adds the the extra chairing on top of the cake is that we keep consistent in this personalized kind of interaction with the customer the only Channel approach is key um uh in order you know to take this again you know to take the game into you know a different level um Al also did mention that through Ai and through all this information and data that we have we actually know more than anybody else about what you do and how you do it more than your wife more than your husband so what is very very important is that we we ensure that you know we have the customers feeling trust confidence that their data are not being used in a way that will expose them but only will be used in a way to add Val and to make their lives easier soan you know in conclusion and um you know I think we can talk for hours about about artificial intelligence and how it can actually contribute but I think you know at the end of the day it&#39;s very obious it&#39;s a game changer in personalizing the customer Communications you know and enhancing our user experience and by leveraging all these capabilities we can as organiz as an organization understand our customers better predict their needs and deliver their lord experiences that actually resonate that resonate because what we do so far traditionally you know we have generic messages generic interactions generic product offerings do they necessarily resonate to each specific individual not really so I think you know it&#39;s the only way forwards as as we are standing right now it can help us you know boost the customer satisfaction and loyalty but also drive you know our business in a constant sustainable growth and keep us ahead of the game in this very competitive world I mean I think it&#39;s um you know it&#39;s it&#39;s definitely such an important moment uh you know for for MTN and operators around the world and I like what um what you said uh you know that emotional connection is so important to resonate with and I think Ali monzer also mentioned uh you know operators know know everything but it&#39;s also it&#39;s it&#39;s more about being relevant in a way that you&#39;re giving back so I think MTN had a flagship loyalty program called senu right uh in in Uganda it brought MTN into the number one NPS score uh by providing personalized relevant loyalty by aggregating Partners Beyond Telco and uh creating those personalized uh experiences right for for consumers across the world so um I think everything that you said is so appropriate and it&#39;s um it&#39;s it&#39;s quite inspiring actually to see MTN uh leading the way especially from Africa where there is uh so much potential uh for for uh you know growth in the market uh and it&#39;s unharnessed like I&#39;ll give you an example uh like you mentioned right the dialects are are different across different groups um this this was also a problem in India you know where um you know there are like 10,000 dialects or something like that across the the Indian subcontinent and uh there&#39;s a dialect called um Rajasthani and and haranvi now uh traditionally uh they could never directly do business with each other because they speak a different language and a different dialect even if they&#39;re connected uh even if there&#39;s connectivity even if there&#39;s you know all these different types of channels to communicate today with the local llms or localized llms now they can directly do business with each other without any of these middlemen or or middle women uh you know in in place and um uh it&#39;s it&#39;s a whole unharnessed economy that has never existed before so we&#39;re hitting a new wave of of uh the ability to transact and do business with each other and I think um you know the delayered approach uh that MTN has taken with all its Little Unicorns um you know ioba Momo uh now choisis and of course the data monetization strategy is going to actually uh unlock a lot of business and economy that has so far um not been extracted U and this is all virtual this is all ethereal and and it&#39;s still unharnessed potential so uh thank you so much Tanya for sharing your insights I think uh it resonated really well with the topic and and it was very eye openening uh and inspiring to hear what MTN is doing in in the African Market thank you thank you so much for your time so so Padma um you know just to kind of bring it together a little bit um how can uh operators with their Partners like techn tree create that uh T Telco Masterpiece right platform strategy so that can uh Drive Innovation at the same time be standardized and create that uh groundbreaking uh Network effect that uh Enzo um is is gunning for you know in terms of you know the future of that data monetization strategy your own um it was such an exhilarating experience listening to pururu listening to monzer listening to Tanya listening to Enzo I mean I&#39;m I&#39;m just um enjoying this session um incredibly and you know just to the point that Tanya made and and Monza made before I answer your question about that killer strategy um for the for the perfect platform I just want to say one thing in in techn tree with our sense of fabric one of the things that we really strive is a positive emotional quotient that in every relationship in every transaction uh you want to get that emotional Cent to be positive and every everything that Monza talked about and everything that t talked about with the power of data uh to drive that positive interaction at the end of every customer interaction is is really key to you know a very very successful strategy now now uh clearly you know it&#39;s not um you know you talked about that per perfect partnership that perfect uh platform strategy to create and drive Innovation it&#39;s a journey it&#39;s not any one trick um it&#39;s not uh you know a one trick that&#39;s going to um address uh the requirement it&#39;s a long journey and uh you know I&#39;m a very very proud partner of MTN in that the vision for this journey started I would say in the early 2010s when um you know I have to say um that management and many of the people here today uh are familiar with it I mean my interactions with ji and and and her team was all about standardization across op course and driving standardization on the platform having common sources of uh technology across the board and leveraging that capability between geographies to unify information to unify access to information uh Enzo talked about the segment of one these are all very key tenants uh to driving Innovation so um I mean there are several several strategies to consider on how to craft a perfect platform strategy that will simplify your you know a common experience across the CSP the customer the partners and the employees in a very agile and yet scalable way so that business Innovation can happen very quickly and that it can create groundbreaking new products and services uh the first of course I mean we&#39;ve talked a lot about this today is put customer at the heart of your the strategy everything that you do live breathe are for the customer customers aren&#39;t just some mathematical number you know of 350 million subscribers or something they are the heartbeat of the business they you to to utilize data analytics to decode their desires and preferences and their pain points and then to tailor offerings and create very quick you know microservices and and uh Journeys that fulfill their need um through multiple you know information channels through which you understand what they require is is an is an art and a science and I&#39;m proud to say that we have strived in the last decade along with Mt and to create platforms that enable this kind of capability with low code no no code orchestration and uh microservices enabled St uh architectures which are Oda compliant and the apis are real world apis that are TM Forum compliant what it does is it brings scalability and flexibility in terms of how you can adapt to changing market conditions technology is a means to a business end and if it doesn&#39;t serve the bit business business then the technology is useless so we have really really strived very hard to understand you know the business requirements and adapt the technology to be highly flexible and and scalable the other big issue in a in in a in a community like a a telecom operator both in the netco and serco is integration capabilities Innovation thrives in in their business in terms of how they are able to integrate people process application s and devices to create that secret source for Success therefore a successful platform strategy has to have seamless integration seamless And Timely integration to other systems other operating systems other CRM systems other thirdparty applications to bring meaningful information together very quickly rapidly and service the customer I think it was Tanya who said you know connectivity is more important than any thing in terms of of the value that we place for connectivity and customers get extremely frustrated if they lose connectivity or they are represented wrongly or whatever uh you know situation they get into one of the early tenants and foundational uh processes that csps have embarked you know right from the days of network standardization Network infrastructure standardization with ss7 Etc is adherance to standards and I keep repeating it I think that has been the one single source of success the other area is the regulatory conformance The Regulators have been hard on csps in terms of kyc in terms of how data is protected so today when we are exploring opportunities to use that data in a meaningful way and provide much greater um type of customer interactions the Regulatory Compliance and governance and security around data is in the DNA of the CSP and I feel they are far better suited to ensure that trust and responsible use of uh information uh today and they&#39;re well equipped to bring that level of data governance of course data driven driven decision making is important we talked a lot about how embedded AI data analytics insights uh co-piloting generative type of uh capabilities with um with Bots Etc are very important in terms of introducing time to Market bringing business focused and focused outcomes and more important importantly to be able to integrate trust and responsible ways of serving the customer the other area I would say is a product Le mindset and this is a transformation this is an internal transformation for a Telco to become more product Le thinking where automation can streamline processes whether it&#39;s order to cash cach to uh you know completing successfully a provisioning capability or troubleshooting uh an issue on the network all of these things require repeatability scalability and performance and therefore Auto using automated tools in the platform strategy wherever possible becomes very important but beyond all of that you know there are certain other important organizational elements people and practice elements that we have to look at in terms of this journey and there I think it&#39;s investing in good talent attracting and acquiring top talent across the world building an organization that&#39;s capable of delivering this kind of innovation and digital training continuous learning commitment to uh employ employee retraining and retraining with strong LMS capabilities are important and then an innovation culture in the company where we plan for Innovation we plan for business process alignment for the Innovation it&#39;s part of the business goals and we handsomely reward organizational Innovation organic and organizational Innovation uh within the company I just want to say one thing finally in my humble observation you know I have worked in technology for several years I&#39;ve had we have Global customers around the world but um one of the observation is that strong business MTN um has a very strong and has been a very very important digital partner over a couple of decades for us and they have led the digital revolution in the African market and I&#39;ve watched it happen and unfold in front of my eyes and what I truly believe including what we take away from this experience combined experience as a partner with MTN is that what is good for MTN is good for Africa and today I&#39;m proud to say what&#39;s good for Africa is good for the world and and I&#39;m proud to be part of creating that change and making that transformation happen thank you thank you so much Padma um we have a few questions um uh from the audience so probably U uh Enzo or puru would you would you like to take up uh some of them uh one is on the partnership strategy um you know does MTN plan uh to have some kind of partnership strategy probably Enzo you you want to address that yeah I mean I think you know as I said earlier prianka we closer to the beginning than the end I think this partnership was unveiled at Mobile World Congress this year we&#39;ve been in conversation with the people leading the partnership we&#39;ve also been in conversation with other Telos building or consortia building large language models so I can&#39;t commit and say yes we&#39;re going to join this Consortium but we&#39;re in uh we&#39;re in conversations and we&#39;re in conversations with other consort I don&#39;t know if puru has anything to add to that um no I I fully supported Enzo I mean to add on to what you have added it&#39;s uh we we are exploring the Align um you know the alliances as well as which along with the SKT and the likes uh besides that we are also working with the TM Forum G MAA to say that how this um uh Consortium moves forward um plus the Strategic partnership that we are working with like beyond the microsofts and the Google so and as well as you know the some of the startups that we are working in Africa like Founders Factory Etc we&#39;re bringing the outside in uh references as well as Innovations to within MTN so that&#39;s how we are progressing on this and and puru maybe you just want to take on the next question as well and maybe Enzo you can add to it uh the question is about bias um how do you kind of restrict that how do you ensure it&#39;s not discriminatory um you know for customer groups um isn&#39;t the human component critical if not more expensive I think two separate questions one is on bias and trust and the other one is on the cost aspect of it so yeah yeah I think uh see it&#39;s a very valid question I mean I can give you examples in terms of the pilot that we started around 18 months back in era when we u based on this open air partnership with Microsoft I think uh that was a learning process both for MTN as well as Microsoft where uh the early models they had a lot of biases hallucinations Etc in terms of how models were trained and uh and and the way we have done is definitely there&#39;s a lot of human interventions involved uh we uh influence in terms of the policies that have to be implemented that was something that was built into the framework by Microsoft but also uh what has happened in the last 18 to 20 months is the responsible AI framework the transparency Etc I think prianka you did mention before about the Ri so this is something that most of the Telos are um proposing and endorsing and this is something that we have been pushing for just to say that you know like from a brand impact as well as you know from a customer experience perspective these things are taken into control so we have come a long way uh with Ms as well as um how the models are uh implemented inflence and you know what exactly we are it&#39;s no more like more like a black box you know like what it was initially so so the human element is definitely there even today you know like we say that AI generated responses are not to be trusted 100% so what we have actually done is we have evolved our models our knowledge base and the kind of use cases we are doing we have been very particular in terms of prioritizing our use cases to say that you know the accuracy levels are high and we also tuned the models to address that okay and I think Enzo you you can add to that as well no I I want to speak about something different if you if you&#39;d give me firstly I want to thank Padma for what she said and I completely agree with her on the technology back end about standardization scaling and product manage M and being product Le but I think that&#39;s from technology out right I think from a Telco point to view and we&#39;ve had largely a technology conversation today we&#39;ve also got to go and Tanya touched on the customer is the ability for these artificial intelligence Technologies to help us better serve from the customer back into the Telco and create better more personalized experiences because I think it&#39;s going to be LED from technology out but experience LED uh from the customer&#39;s point of view so personalized experiences enhanced experiences but mostly what Telos have failed to deliver are frictionless experiences and I think the more we understand of the customer the more productive we become the more we can deliver frictionless experiences so that&#39;s what excites me is how do we serve the customer better and create less hassle and less friction in their world and I think this creates the the opportunity but I think we have to adhere to the disciplines and the principles that Padma spoke about earlier otherwise we won&#39;t get the benefit of scale and the ability to deliver this so it&#39;s like intent based product Le approach exactly and and uh supported by the discipline of like you said of of Standards right so that that becomes uh you know quite quite important as well it&#39;s almost like marketing-led product development maybe in in in in some in some cases consumer consumer consumer absolutely absolutely absolutely right perfect I uh I think sir P do you have any comments um Ali Monza do you have any comments Tanya any any final comments just like Enzo everybody can come online and maybe we can just do a round of what you thought and and close the session yeah sure but why don&#39;t you go ahead and yeah thank you prianka and thank you for the entire MTN team today um it was an exhilarating um very compelling set of discussions that happened intellectually stimulating at the same time setting the setting the pace for what need what&#39;s to come making it really really exciting in terms of the new universe we are entering um with AI and uh large amounts of data that that we can consume and bring a sing Singularity to purpose in every Journey at the same time um you know know a lot about uh the information that goes behind the scenes to create that singular experience so I completely and uh uniquely enjoyed this experience it was a great distraction for me from my daily um everyday work uh meetings and so on it&#39;s it&#39;s a pleasure to work with all of you and serve you and and have a mind share and mind space today with all of you thank you thank you very much Ali do you want to add anything just to summarize your impressions of of the session so far yeah yeah sure I mean thank you first for having me on this uh panel and I hope that the audience has enjoyed the discussion just uh one point on the AI topic AI is not a buzz AI is not an internet bubble if you are following now the the discussion in the stock market and Nvidia bubble everyone is comparing AI with the internet bubble in the 1990s where everyone was having a website he will go to the stock market and open an IPO AI is a reality AI is not an internet bubble and AI is not just the future it&#39;s our present realities and AI is going to transform our industry and redefining our customer experience so let us continue to innovate uh and lead the way with with techn Tre as a as a as a platinium partner for MTN in shaping a smarter uh more uh connected world thank you so much and uh T you know what about you uh any summary points for the session thanks pranka just again you know from my side thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to be in this panel I hope you know our audience um find found it interesting you know they took some food for thought for later on during the weekend around AI um thanks to techn Tre you know that is triggering us into these kind of discussions that further only it triggers more action more thought and more you know better execution and how we&#39;re doing things and understanding for me what what&#39;s important because in this panel you know the discussion came from people from different kind of functions within MTN and it&#39;s very important to see you know how all these different functions which sometimes different a bit kind of different you know lowlevel kpis and objectives can actually get together and form the value chain that will deliver the overall you know strategy and the overall vision of of the organization I think it&#39;s very important thank you very much and puru um last but not least and I think you can close the session yeah thanks Padma Priyanka and techn I think it was a a very valuable webinar as well as it comes at a very opportune time and as Monza said that you know everybody is U uh trying to get hold of the train of Nvidia as well as you know the future opportunities from Ai and AI is actually becoming a reality you know like people have started realizing that the value is being unlocked and the tangible value that is being created you know like not just um you know it&#39;s more of a busz word um I think we touched upon some of the key topics best practices you know we spoke about delayering open Digital architecture and so we we I mean thanks to you as well as your product stack and a platform we have a Oda stack readily available we have the apis available we infusing with AI at the core so we have all the ingredients you know to make this successful um story and and we we already come a long way and it&#39;s now all about you know uh taking it to the next stage thank you thank you and thank you to the thank you so much for your kind words um and uh of course techn Tre enjoys this partnership uh know for over 20 20 plus years I suppose thank you so much for the participants a lot of you are from MTN U it&#39;s great that you could be a part of it and and join us um please wait for the next session hopefully it&#39;s soon uh thank you so much have a great weekend take care thank you AI Bye by

Transcript for:Webinar: The Future of Telecoms in Africa

Transcript for:
Webinar: The Future of Telecoms in Africa