While these businesses acknowledge the downside of sticking with legacy infrastructure, they are often fearful (and rightly so) of the complexity, cost, and potential disruption that can come with upgrading their existing tech.

This is particularly true for Business Support Systems (BSS). A BSS manages critical revenue-related functions, from billing and revenue management to CRM and order fulfilment, and forms the backbone of how telcos interact with customers.

Telcos are often tentative about a BSS overhaul because they’ve already made significant investments in legacy technology and can’t justify the cost of an upgrade.

Additionally, these systems are such a key component of day-to-day operations, operators are understandably cautious about making changes to something that has traditionally worked well enough and where such a change would introduce significant operational risk.

A BSS upgrade is a significant project, something akin to a bank replacing its entire network of ATMs. It’s a project that touches every part of the business, impacts millions of customers, and requires meticulous planning and execution.

But legacy BSS platforms are typically monolithic, complex and costly to maintain, leaving telcos stuck between the risk of disruption and the need to modernise.

So, how do you know when it’s time to move to a modern BSS?

If your competitors are gaining traction with the frequent launch of new products and you’re losing market share, it might be time to modernise your BSS.

If it takes you months to update your processes in response to market or regulatory changes, and others are moving at a much faster pace, your business support systems need a refresh.

If your customer satisfaction scores are down, if you’re struggling with billing inaccuracies and high maintenance costs, modernising your BSS is the right move.

BSS migration mastery

The dilemma is clear: replacing or upgrading a system is a big step but continuing to rely on increasingly outdated technology threatens innovation, competitiveness and future growth.

For telcos wanting to replace a legacy BSS without the risk, taking a modular or phased approach is the best strategy.

Rather than upgrading everything at the same time, savvy telcos can opt to swap out specific services, whether it’s just a CRM component or invoicing component, maybe the onboarding component and then scale things up at their own pace.

With this approach, old and new systems can run in parallel, with the legacy system continuing to handle live operations, while the new system is tested and validated.

It’s also possible to run a phased customer migration, so that operators can refine processes and resolve issues before affecting their entire customer base.

While there’s no doubt that a BSS upgrade is a big project, the risks of delaying an upgrade far outweigh the challenges of migration. Especially if you migrate in stages.

When adopting a phased approach, operators can modernise with lower risk, and guaranteed continuity of service and enjoy the benefits of modern platforms – from quick product launches and better operational efficiency to improved customer experience.

The African telecommunications sector is dynamic and full of growth opportunities and potential new revenue streams for operators who can respond to market demands quickly.

However, their existing business support systems (BSS), which served them well when telecommunications was primarily voice and text based, is holding them back from keeping up with the digital transformation sweeping through the industry.

Rather than being an enabler, legacy systems are proving to be an anchor.

On the other hand, a modern digital BSS enables telcos of all sizes to move with more agility and to deploy new products and services quicker for increasingly discerning customers.

The problem with legacy BSS

The total cost of ownership of traditional monolithic systems is high, while maintenance complexity means operators need specialised skills which are scarce in many markets.

Beyond this, any telco will understand the inflexibility that vendor lock-in causes. In this environment, implementations or customisations can take inordinately long which is the exact opposite of being able to take advantage of opportunities quickly to attract, or retain, customers.

As we all know, the world is evolving, and so telcos need to be able to integrate with new technologies and digital services, but legacy platforms make this incredibly difficult, never mind often astronomical costs for even minor changes.

A door to the future

Shifting to a modern, digital BSS lifts the anchor holding telcos back. Modern systems come with microservices architecture, cloud-based deployment options, modular implementation capabilities – which is the antithesis of the big, inflexible monolithic legacy systems – and significantly reduced implementation costs.

All this adds up to telcos being able to adapt much quicker to market demand and evolving technology.

A cloud-native architecture enables pay-as-you-grow models. Unlike traditional platforms, smaller telcos don’t need to purchase exorbitantly expensive systems but can rather grow into them as they evolve.

This is an incredibly attractive capability for telcos operating on tight margins and battling for customers who often have more than one sim card from different operators.

Supporting this, a microservices approach allows the type of modular implementation and upgrades that are attractive to telcos wishing to drive their own competitiveness at a more palatable cost, and at a pace that suits them.

Telcos across the continent are constantly seeking to reduce costs, and one way they can do this is by shifting to a digital BSS subscription model which slashes CAPEX.

Another consideration for operators in Africa is time to value. Implementations of monolithic systems can take an inordinately long time, in many cases spanning up to two years, whereas modern digital BSS implementations can be completed within three to six months. It’s an entirely different paradigm.

Value-added services in telecommunications

One of the main reasons, besides cost and agility, that telcos are seeking more modern systems is because of the evolving telecommunications landscape. Value-added services are becoming absolutely essential to attract and retain customers.

Digital platforms with their API-first design enable ecosystem integration with fintechs, content providers and other partners.

Telcos are in a unique position where they already have a subscriber base which is purchasing products and services, and so the ability to leverage this to generate additional revenue streams is non-negotiable for telcos of the present and future.

We already understand that the ability to take new products to the market quicker is a competitive advantage. But it is more than that.

The built-in analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of digital business support systems enables businesses to make data-driven decisions quickly. This ability to respond quickly to emerging trends is what sets apart a digitally savvy business from those still grappling with their digital transformation strategies.

It’s all about the data

There’s little point in talking about the potential of a modern BSS if the business’s data is not up to scratch because any migration of incomplete, or messy, data won’t result in the desired outcome. Data migration is, in many ways, the make-or-break factor in a successful transition to a modern BSS. Put another way, data integrity underpins the success of any technology.

Telcos seeking to take advantage of the power and agility of modern platforms must work with partners that prioritise data and have a methodical approach to ensuring its integrity.

This is because a failure in a data migration can be catastrophic and have implications across various parts of a telco’s business.

A good partner will lead a comprehensive data retrieval, go through rigorous data cleaning and precise field mapping, and then verify data transformation capabilities before carefully and methodically importing the data.

The future is bright

We are likely to see a continued acceleration of BSS modernisation across Africa, as telcos seek systems that will support IoT, 5G and other advanced services.

Much like we see in mobile money and fintechs, telcos in Africa have a real opportunity to catch up to, and even leapfrog, their counterparts in developed markets by skipping traditional, intermediate steps, precisely because of the agility and capabilities that API-led connectivity and cloud-based microservices enable.

It will pull up the anchors for good and allow telcos to sail into brave new waters.