It’s a well-known fact that bundling holds great advantages for telcos and content providers. For telcos, they can leverage the value that OTT platforms like video streaming services bring to raise customer loyalty.
In a world of free call and text messaging apps, telcos around the world continue to struggle to capture revenue from their core services such as calls and text messaging. Offering more value is a key strategy instead of undercutting prices of phone plans to retain customers, which puts immense pressure on telco earnings.
One hurdle that telcos have to overcome to offer bundles is the existing software infrastructure. Multiple legacy business and operation support systems have been designed to support traditional services, which may have been updated with various customizations over the years, making them extremely complex. This can easily cause hiccups in bundling that fails to meet customer expectations or reward their loyalty.
The key for telcos to maximise their bundling strategy lie in the application programming interface (API). APIs are valuable tools that enables telcos to use their huge amount of data to push out new services at scale in a highly efficient and secure method. A robust and well-designed APIs makes it easier for telcos to on-board applications onto their platform, while still maintaining the legacy system’s integrity.
Telcos have one chance do it right, because they will not likely have the chance to do it over! After all, brand reputation, service quality, data security and more are all at stake in this decision. So telcos need to ensure that they get it perfect in the first time so that there will not be bugs, glitches, or backend issues to trouble staff and customers later.
Here’s where the crunch comes in – would it be better for telcos to build the API in-house or outsource the project to a specialist company? Which option will be able to ensure the quality and security needed to make the bundling strategy a success?
Telcos need to make an informed decision as there will be significant investments of time and money either way. Most of all, the quality of the API will determine how much value it brings to the brand, and ultimately the bottom line.
Apigate has strong relationship with telcos in the ASEAN region and have enabled multiple beneficial partnerships. From our extensive experience, here are the pros and cons that telcos should consider when deciding on whether you should develop your own API or to outsource to a service provider when bundling third-party services.
Benefits of In-house Development
Developing APIs internal can make intra-organizational access to different data systems more streamlined, which in turn could potentially results in faster and simpler development of new bundles.
There are also savings to be realised in terms of development costs and effort, as well as lower QA testing requirements.
Benefits of Outsourcing
By outsourcing, telcos can use their in-house human resources more efficiently to focus on more pressing tasks and issues of the business. Telcos only need to invest in the app development itself, and the vendor development team takes full responsibility to manage the project and address any challenges that arise.
By hiring experts, telcos can easily overcome siloed thinking. An API partner’s extensive experience, understand deep understanding of market trends, and independent view of an existing infrastructure gives telcos a neutral and objective evaluation and solutions that works best for the telco, merchants and customers.
As specialists, API partners has the vast experience to scrutinise scalability, security and integration issues and offer solutions. There is much less risk of missed strikes due to trial and error.
Apigate is a reputable provider to Telco Operators and Digital Merchants for reach, acquisition and monetisation. Our API solution enables Digital Merchants, OTTs and Telco Operators to co-create offerings that offer great value to end users, while allowing them to focus on growing and retaining their respective customer base.
Talk to us about our ready-to-go Bundling Models through our robust API platform that offers new possibilities for co-marketing, which ultimately lowers the cost of reaching, acquiring and maintaining customers.
