DTWS: How Axiata is capturing the enterprise market
Gopi Kurup, Group Head of Enterprise Business and CEO of Axiata Enterprise at Axiata, outlined his company’s approach to the enterprise market in the different geographies in which it operates during a panel session on growing B2B and B2B2X at TM Forum's Digital Transformation World Series 2021.
13 Oct 2021
DTWS: How Axiata is capturing the enterprise market
Gopi Kurup, Group Head of Enterprise Business and CEO of Axiata Enterprise at Axiata, outlined his company’s approach to the enterprise market across the different geographies in which it operates during a panel session on growing B2B and B2B2X at TM Forum's Digital Transformation World Series 2021.
The Axiata group has identified and is acting on seven key groups, with the company deciding to concentrate its initial efforts in the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME), according to Kurup.
The Axiata group has identified and is acting on seven key groups, with the company deciding to concentrate its initial efforts in the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME), according to Kurup.
SME program launch
Kurup acknowledged that SME means different things in different markets, and covers varied levels of maturity and company sizes ranging from micro to medium, and said the group spent a lot of time identifying the target segments, then holding sessions with potential customers.
He gave the example of Celcom in Malaysia and the service industry. Lockdowns had cut off restauranteurs’ physical access to their client base for months, so Celcom sat down with them and walked them through different solutions.
In this way the operator was able to establish that restauranteurs were interested in enterprise resource planning (ERP), managed Wi-Fi components within their premises, payment gateway mechanisms integrated into their operations, and digitally presented menus. Armed with this market intelligence, Celcom relaunched its SME program with bundles of the value added services the restauranteurs had requested, with new product launches on a monthly cycle.
Flagship product for enterprises
Operators tend to offer many flavors of mobile products involving a lot of customization, which makes the product lifecycle challenging to manage, according to Kurup, who said, “We needed a flagship product…and all our solutions and VAS components could hang off that”.
Dealership focus
In many of Axiata’s markets almost 50% of SMEs are outside the capital city and large commercial areas, making regional outreach is key. For most communication service providers (CSPs), the dealer program is driven by retail so, Kurup said, “We needed to get plugged into that…and take our database through what the solution-selling programs would be like…then introduce a very discipline sales program for them”.
Better get to market
The CSP realized it needed an improved get-to-market (GTM) approach. The pandemic underlined the fact there were two large, distinct groups within the enterprise sector. The first was digital natives who were easier to convert to using solutions. The more regional, traditional SME base required a larger recruitment program, and this is where “a strong interleave with the dealers,” as Kurup put it, paid off. The CSP spent a lot of time working on sales enablement, sales language, and how to explain why solutions were required.
A squad to keep up to speed
Kurup explained, “Because of the requirements to productize quickly, we started to get Agile GTM IT squads spun up quickly to make sure we could keep to that speed of launching products on a monthly basis.”
Management sponsorship
As Axiata is predominantly a mobile and consumer brand, top-down sponsorship was crucial, “especially in the first three to six months, till we got to a steady run rate,” Kurup stated. “That required the enterprise officer, the CTO, and marketing folk sitting together on a regular basis to ensure that we got that attention within the organization to launch those products. And as soon as they were out to market, quick iterative methods to see what was energizing the sales performance; what we could do from a marketing perspective to ensure we got the right traction in that sales component as well as to help alleviate a lot of the blockers or bottlenecks within the organization.”
Enhancing inorganic capabilities
Kurup said, “Enhancing inorganic capabilities is important, whether through acquisition or strong partnerships, to boost the sales capabilities for the solution sets as well as delivery.
A large portion of the solutions came through tie-ins with hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google, and a strong partnership with Telefonica, plus Kurup said, “There was a whole ecosystem of partners in all the markets in which we operate that could bring that capability onboard. That's been a very good complement to us in the solution sales.”
Internal departments were onboarded to Microsoft for security, and to Google for workspace, meaning that, “We were able to quickly develop capabilities to deliver solution sets to our marketplace. That gave us a distinct advantage in comparison to our competitors, where there was a slight or initial gap between the sales and delivery motion of solutions.”
Moving to larger enterprises
Although Axiata’s concerted effort to capture the enterprise solutions market began with SMEs, Kurup said that “using almost the same template and focus, we have started on delivering solutions or standalone ICT components, both for the public sector and large enterprise.
“The sale cycles, of course, are a bit longer, and the size of business is a bit larger and the CSP added a complementary component in the shape of a deal team which works very closely with the sales force,” he added.
Kurup concluded, “The key to what we've learned over the last year or so in launching solutions is to ensure we have a very quick iterative process internally to keep pushing forward on areas where we are having good sales traction, as well as understanding what's not working from a marketing and sales perspective where we've not had good sales traction. But overall, we've been able to reach a good runway business on the solution side and that's been a good learning process for us.”
Watch Gopi's keynote on why a concerted effort is needed to capture the enterprise solutions market.
Kurup acknowledged that SME means different things in different markets, and covers varied levels of maturity and company sizes ranging from micro to medium, and said the group spent a lot of time identifying the target segments, then holding sessions with potential customers.
He gave the example of Celcom in Malaysia and the service industry. Lockdowns had cut off restauranteurs’ physical access to their client base for months, so Celcom sat down with them and walked them through different solutions.
In this way the operator was able to establish that restauranteurs were interested in enterprise resource planning (ERP), managed Wi-Fi components within their premises, payment gateway mechanisms integrated into their operations, and digitally presented menus. Armed with this market intelligence, Celcom relaunched its SME program with bundles of the value added services the restauranteurs had requested, with new product launches on a monthly cycle.
Flagship product for enterprises
Operators tend to offer many flavors of mobile products involving a lot of customization, which makes the product lifecycle challenging to manage, according to Kurup, who said, “We needed a flagship product…and all our solutions and VAS components could hang off that”.
Dealership focus
In many of Axiata’s markets almost 50% of SMEs are outside the capital city and large commercial areas, making regional outreach is key. For most communication service providers (CSPs), the dealer program is driven by retail so, Kurup said, “We needed to get plugged into that…and take our database through what the solution-selling programs would be like…then introduce a very discipline sales program for them”.
Better get to market
The CSP realized it needed an improved get-to-market (GTM) approach. The pandemic underlined the fact there were two large, distinct groups within the enterprise sector. The first was digital natives who were easier to convert to using solutions. The more regional, traditional SME base required a larger recruitment program, and this is where “a strong interleave with the dealers,” as Kurup put it, paid off. The CSP spent a lot of time working on sales enablement, sales language, and how to explain why solutions were required.
A squad to keep up to speed
Kurup explained, “Because of the requirements to productize quickly, we started to get Agile GTM IT squads spun up quickly to make sure we could keep to that speed of launching products on a monthly basis.”
Management sponsorship
As Axiata is predominantly a mobile and consumer brand, top-down sponsorship was crucial, “especially in the first three to six months, till we got to a steady run rate,” Kurup stated. “That required the enterprise officer, the CTO, and marketing folk sitting together on a regular basis to ensure that we got that attention within the organization to launch those products. And as soon as they were out to market, quick iterative methods to see what was energizing the sales performance; what we could do from a marketing perspective to ensure we got the right traction in that sales component as well as to help alleviate a lot of the blockers or bottlenecks within the organization.”
Enhancing inorganic capabilities
Kurup said, “Enhancing inorganic capabilities is important, whether through acquisition or strong partnerships, to boost the sales capabilities for the solution sets as well as delivery.
A large portion of the solutions came through tie-ins with hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google, and a strong partnership with Telefonica, plus Kurup said, “There was a whole ecosystem of partners in all the markets in which we operate that could bring that capability onboard. That's been a very good complement to us in the solution sales.”
Internal departments were onboarded to Microsoft for security, and to Google for workspace, meaning that, “We were able to quickly develop capabilities to deliver solution sets to our marketplace. That gave us a distinct advantage in comparison to our competitors, where there was a slight or initial gap between the sales and delivery motion of solutions.”
Moving to larger enterprises
Although Axiata’s concerted effort to capture the enterprise solutions market began with SMEs, Kurup said that “using almost the same template and focus, we have started on delivering solutions or standalone ICT components, both for the public sector and large enterprise.
“The sale cycles, of course, are a bit longer, and the size of business is a bit larger and the CSP added a complementary component in the shape of a deal team which works very closely with the sales force,” he added.
Kurup concluded, “The key to what we've learned over the last year or so in launching solutions is to ensure we have a very quick iterative process internally to keep pushing forward on areas where we are having good sales traction, as well as understanding what's not working from a marketing and sales perspective where we've not had good sales traction. But overall, we've been able to reach a good runway business on the solution side and that's been a good learning process for us.”
Watch Gopi's keynote on why a concerted effort is needed to capture the enterprise solutions market.
