CSG's CEO goes for growth as transformation accelerates
As he comes to the end of his first year as CEO of CSG, Brian Shepherd caught up with TM Forum’s Inform to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing communications services providers, as well as CSG’s progress as he aims at double the size of the company in the the next few years.
13 Dec 2021
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CSG's CEO goes for growth as transformation accelerates
When Brian Shepherd took over as CEO of CSG at the beginning of 2021, he set out to make it a leader in the BSS market. With a pedigree that includes executive roles at Amdocs and TeleTech, Shepherd spent his first few months in the role acquiring Tango Telecom, a real-time policy control and messaging platform company; the customer journey orchestration and analytics specialist, Kitewheel; and Digit Systems, which provides configure, price and quote (CPQ) and order management solutions. And he did all this while pursuing internal organic growth. As he comes to the end of his first year as CEO, Shepherd caught up with TM Forum’s Inform to discuss CSG’s progress and the challenges for customers in the telecoms industry.
It's been a busy 11 months for you. Can you share where you are investing, and how CSG is evolving to meet the fast-changing needs of the telecoms industry?
The industry has been talking for a long time about becoming much more agile and improving customer experience at a much faster rate. What we now see is actions matching words in a way that we didn't see maybe four or five years ago.
There is pressure on global communications service providers (CSPs) to transform at a faster rate as they look at how they monetize and drive new revenue sources from this huge investment in 5G. They’re trying to simplify their business processes and their technology stacks, and it is core to their strategic competitive advantage.
It's leading a lot of global CSPs to buy off-the-shelf, proven products and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms that can make them more flexible, more cost-effective, and easier to do business with. And that's where CSG is seeing a lot of market traction.
So, we’ve been combining internal investment in our technology platforms with partnerships and acquisitions to bring more value to our customers.
Six or seven years ago, we invested in out-of-the-box capabilities to make it easier for our customers to convert to a new technology platform that has more agility and reduces the risk of moving to future-ready applications. We’ve expanded our partnerships and are tapping into a global ecosystem rather than just relying on what we build. By doing that, we've accelerated the platforms and the technology we can deploy for global CSPs.
Another big area that CSG is focused on is the enterprise B2B space. It’s one of the fastest-growing areas of telecoms, but it's also one of the most complex. It tends to have a lot more complexity around SLAs, activation and provisioning, and pricing.
As opportunities emerge from the enterprise sector as ecosystems evolve, what is CSG’s M&A strategy? How have your acquisitions this year impacted your portfolio, and what will this mean for your customers?
CSPs want to deliver a more flexible and cost-effective solution to their enterprise customers, and they are using cloud-based SaaS and analytics capabilities to gain real-time intelligence and increase the efficiency of their customer services. They also want the flexibility and the cost-effectiveness to try out new services.
What makes cost-effective experimentation possible are simpler business processes, more agile technology, and a plug and play microservices approach. Enabling more of that experimentation with enterprise services and partnerships is a cornerstone of how CSG brings value to global CSPs. Our acquisitions each help in different ways.
Whatever a telco’s strategy is, we will get more real-time charging coming off the network. That's why we acquired Tango Telecom: to combine policy with real-time charging to enable monetization, whether through a consumer, IoT or enterprise channel.
The DGIT platform, a TM Forum award-winner, takes a microservices approach to configure price quotes, CPQ, and order management for the enterprise. And Kitewheel provides customer journey orchestration and analytics so that telcos can improve and accelerate sales and amplify lead generation.
We’re working with telcos in a number of ways. For MTN in South Africa, we run the enterprise billing and all the revenue management to help them drive faster growth and improve profitability.
Another big trend is that of global CSPs creating marketplaces where they offer a wide range of ICT services and telecoms capabilities to customers through their network and through their partner channel. We announced an initiative with Axiata Group in the Asia-Pacific to do exactly that, with some of the work being done within TM Forum.
But we're still in the very early days of marketplaces. There’s a lot of experimentation of new services and new offers by CSPs to see what sticks and where they get growth and traction and to see where they can invest more and accelerate.
What do you think of the rate of 5G growth?
The holy grail is this giant revenue monetization coming from 5G, and the industry is still waiting on that. It will be several years before we see massive returns coming from 5G. It isn't going to magically change overnight. It's part of an evolution.
But I also think 5G will monetize at a much faster rate than IoT because there is so much broad applicability. Over time, IoT will become a major revenue driver. Devices are becoming connected already, and that creates new opportunities to bring new value-added use cases to all the verticals that our industry supports, but you're in a five-to-10-year window.
In January, you appointed CSG's first-ever Chief Diversity and Social Responsibility officer, Channing Jones, and your CMCO, Liz Bauer, joined TM Forum's Diversity & Inclusion Council. Can you tell us about CSG's ambitions and programs to help create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive future?
We operate in over 70 countries globally and can make a difference in people's lives and the communities we serve. We brought in Channing Jones to help hold us accountable for that.+
But it's my and the rest of the senior leadership team’s job to prove that we're a company where it doesn't matter where you're born, what your gender is, or what your ethnicity is. CSG is a place for you if you want to make a difference in this industry, to the customers we serve, and to the communities we operate in.
This is not just a question of the right thing to do. The best performers in the industry and the fastest-growing companies will be the ones that have the best culture, the best talent and the most diversity.
It’s also what our customers want in the global telecom space. They are demanding to see that rich diversity in CSG teams and for us to truly reflect the world we operate within.
What are CSG’s plans for 2022?
We're on a $2 billion and beyond growth strategy and working to double the size of our company in the next few years. That's going to mean market share gains, that's going to mean providing telecoms operators all around the world with proven SaaS platforms that are more flexible, more microservices-based, and deliver more value.
It’s all also going to mean additional acquisitions and partnerships and CSG becoming the ecosystem provider to global CSPs.
As a collective community, the industry has the opportunity to do even more to use our connectivity to help with financial inclusion in Africa and Southeast Asia. There are opportunities for more global telecoms operators to become FinTech and financial service providers and disintermediate other industries in the marketplace.
The industry has been talking for a long time about becoming much more agile and improving customer experience at a much faster rate. What we now see is actions matching words in a way that we didn't see maybe four or five years ago.
There is pressure on global communications service providers (CSPs) to transform at a faster rate as they look at how they monetize and drive new revenue sources from this huge investment in 5G. They’re trying to simplify their business processes and their technology stacks, and it is core to their strategic competitive advantage.
It's leading a lot of global CSPs to buy off-the-shelf, proven products and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms that can make them more flexible, more cost-effective, and easier to do business with. And that's where CSG is seeing a lot of market traction.
So, we’ve been combining internal investment in our technology platforms with partnerships and acquisitions to bring more value to our customers.
Six or seven years ago, we invested in out-of-the-box capabilities to make it easier for our customers to convert to a new technology platform that has more agility and reduces the risk of moving to future-ready applications. We’ve expanded our partnerships and are tapping into a global ecosystem rather than just relying on what we build. By doing that, we've accelerated the platforms and the technology we can deploy for global CSPs.
Another big area that CSG is focused on is the enterprise B2B space. It’s one of the fastest-growing areas of telecoms, but it's also one of the most complex. It tends to have a lot more complexity around SLAs, activation and provisioning, and pricing.
As opportunities emerge from the enterprise sector as ecosystems evolve, what is CSG’s M&A strategy? How have your acquisitions this year impacted your portfolio, and what will this mean for your customers?
CSPs want to deliver a more flexible and cost-effective solution to their enterprise customers, and they are using cloud-based SaaS and analytics capabilities to gain real-time intelligence and increase the efficiency of their customer services. They also want the flexibility and the cost-effectiveness to try out new services.
What makes cost-effective experimentation possible are simpler business processes, more agile technology, and a plug and play microservices approach. Enabling more of that experimentation with enterprise services and partnerships is a cornerstone of how CSG brings value to global CSPs. Our acquisitions each help in different ways.
Whatever a telco’s strategy is, we will get more real-time charging coming off the network. That's why we acquired Tango Telecom: to combine policy with real-time charging to enable monetization, whether through a consumer, IoT or enterprise channel.
The DGIT platform, a TM Forum award-winner, takes a microservices approach to configure price quotes, CPQ, and order management for the enterprise. And Kitewheel provides customer journey orchestration and analytics so that telcos can improve and accelerate sales and amplify lead generation.
We’re working with telcos in a number of ways. For MTN in South Africa, we run the enterprise billing and all the revenue management to help them drive faster growth and improve profitability.
Another big trend is that of global CSPs creating marketplaces where they offer a wide range of ICT services and telecoms capabilities to customers through their network and through their partner channel. We announced an initiative with Axiata Group in the Asia-Pacific to do exactly that, with some of the work being done within TM Forum.
But we're still in the very early days of marketplaces. There’s a lot of experimentation of new services and new offers by CSPs to see what sticks and where they get growth and traction and to see where they can invest more and accelerate.
What do you think of the rate of 5G growth?
The holy grail is this giant revenue monetization coming from 5G, and the industry is still waiting on that. It will be several years before we see massive returns coming from 5G. It isn't going to magically change overnight. It's part of an evolution.
But I also think 5G will monetize at a much faster rate than IoT because there is so much broad applicability. Over time, IoT will become a major revenue driver. Devices are becoming connected already, and that creates new opportunities to bring new value-added use cases to all the verticals that our industry supports, but you're in a five-to-10-year window.
In January, you appointed CSG's first-ever Chief Diversity and Social Responsibility officer, Channing Jones, and your CMCO, Liz Bauer, joined TM Forum's Diversity & Inclusion Council. Can you tell us about CSG's ambitions and programs to help create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive future?
We operate in over 70 countries globally and can make a difference in people's lives and the communities we serve. We brought in Channing Jones to help hold us accountable for that.+
But it's my and the rest of the senior leadership team’s job to prove that we're a company where it doesn't matter where you're born, what your gender is, or what your ethnicity is. CSG is a place for you if you want to make a difference in this industry, to the customers we serve, and to the communities we operate in.
This is not just a question of the right thing to do. The best performers in the industry and the fastest-growing companies will be the ones that have the best culture, the best talent and the most diversity.
It’s also what our customers want in the global telecom space. They are demanding to see that rich diversity in CSG teams and for us to truly reflect the world we operate within.
What are CSG’s plans for 2022?
We're on a $2 billion and beyond growth strategy and working to double the size of our company in the next few years. That's going to mean market share gains, that's going to mean providing telecoms operators all around the world with proven SaaS platforms that are more flexible, more microservices-based, and deliver more value.
It’s all also going to mean additional acquisitions and partnerships and CSG becoming the ecosystem provider to global CSPs.
As a collective community, the industry has the opportunity to do even more to use our connectivity to help with financial inclusion in Africa and Southeast Asia. There are opportunities for more global telecoms operators to become FinTech and financial service providers and disintermediate other industries in the marketplace.
