With cloud, technology is a renewal business, not a one-time sell: Pradeep Agarwal, Oracle

Rapid, unpredictable change is forcing telecom operators to rethink traditional operating models. There is a need for transforming the future of telecommunication systems that demand a modern, scalable cloud platform. Tech giant, Oracle plays a huge role in transforming the operations to be more efficient with its cloud-based solutions.

Speaking with Pradeep Aggarwal, Sr Director- Cloud, Oracle, Voice&Data understands the significant needs for the transformation and how a custom ERP solution can advance process optimization and enhance universal improvement in the functioning process.

Few Excerpts:

Voice&Data: Oracle has transformed itself from being a product organization to a service providing organization, what is the idea behind this change?

Pradeep Agarwal: Oracle has been at the helm of many technological changes that have happened around the world. It’s has been our endeavor to enable our customers to be top of their game, in terms of technology. Today, we are striving to be the biggest influencer as well as the first adopter and promoter of our products and services. We have software-as-a-service applications, as well as platform and infrastructure services and important components such as social and business analytics.

With cloud, technology is a renewal business, not a one-time sell. It changes the way we connect with our customers and the services we offer. It’s all about driving value and re-earning our business every day.

Oracle’s transformation into a cloud-first company has fundamentally changed how we engage with both our customers and employees. With cloud, technology is a renewal business, not a one-time sell. It changes the way we connect with our customers and the services we offer. It’s all about driving value and re-earning our business every day.

Voice&Data: Telcos, these days, are facing several challenges. Is there any challenge that you think, Oracle can tackle and bring a difference to the telco?

Pradeep Agarwal: It is true that telecom providers are facing challenges today given the requirement of building a robust infrastructure. The intention is to shape customer expectations from the telecom industry. On a day-to-day basis, there are multi-level challenges faced by the telecom companies in order to substantiate the amount of data stored on the OTT applications. Given the increasing customer base, the network services must support the smooth flow of information. In the coming year, telecommunications companies will make data privacy and security as a top priority as they plan for growth.

As there is a growing necessity to address the challenges, at Oracle we aim to contribute to the smooth functioning of the telecom industry. Cloud solutions support financial operations, hiring and employee management and managing customer operations and help create a standardized experience. Oracle ERP Cloud qualifies to solve the underlying issues and provide a functional platform to support the exchange in an efficient manner. Telecom companies will be able to better serve their customers, orchestrate memorable events, and develop new revenue streams.

This digital transformation of their infrastructure will enhance their traditional models and create standardized customer relationships.

We recently modernized the Human Capital Management (HCM) operations for Airtel through a mix of integral solutions from Oracle and assured that they can hire the best talent in the market.

Voice&Data: What kind of transformation or value addition can Oracle impart to the telecom sector?

Pradeep Agarwal: Like all other sectors, the telecom sector is also going through digital transformation. Telecom organizations are quite large in size, overnight transformations are not possible. Therefore, most organizations try to do it in a phased manner. We try to assemble all parts of the ecosystem. For example, we recently modernized the Human Capital Management (HCM) operations for Airtel through a mix of integral solutions from Oracle and assured that they can hire the best talent in the market.

And a burgeoning number of phone subscribers and internet users with increasing expectations from customers coupled with regulatory and compliance aspects forces telecom players to be agile. Agility describes the ability to move at speed and change direction, all while maintaining balance and control. India’s top telecom providers are using Oracle solutions to secure communications services, apart from ensuring sound operational solutions around the industry, like telecom billing and other operational solutions.

For example, talking about the support functions of the industry, with the changing game in telecom as a business, support functions are expected to ensure that they are able to provide enough value to the business. They provide enough information and analysis to support the back end of the business. And that is what we're trying to achieve through our models around the back office, which is ERP, and models around human capital management, so that we get more involved and evolve through the way a telecom industry connects with millions and millions of customers or consumer and subscriber base.

Voice&Data: Can you explain the portfolio from a SaaS standpoint, the advantage in terms of all the solutions within SaaS?

Pradeep Agarwal: SaaS portfolio is divided into 3 major parts – ERP, HCM, and CX. ERP is to manage finance, procurement, auto-management operations, planning, budgeting, performance analysis, supply chain management, etc. ERP is like the bloodline of any organization, which keeps the organization running.

Human Capital Management (HCM) is not just about hiring, it is a complete life cycle of an employee within an organization. It includes recruitment, performance appraisals, training programs, performance analysis, time management, etc.

Automation helps the telecom players to do mundane tasks like generating bills, giving reminder calls to the customers or giving information pertaining to leaves, etc.

Customer Experience (CX) is about how an organization connects with its customers. It is about converting your customers into your advocates. More importantly, now we incorporate Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, IoT and Blockchain around all these solutions. Automation helps the telecom players to do mundane tasks like generating bills, giving reminder calls to the customers or giving information pertaining to leaves, etc. Thus, the team can have more bandwidth to do actual work and to add value to their customers.

Voice&Data: Since this solution is cloud-based, what sort of benefits does it provide to the customers or specifically to the telecom industry?

Pradeep Agarwal: Transforming telecommunication demands a scalable, flexible and secure cloud platform in today’s digital customer experiences the driven world. The future is driven by 5G which calls for a dire need of unifying the core processes. One of the major benefits of cloud-based solutions is the cost of entry is very low.

Due to the influx of infrastructural investments, we put up high processing infrastructures, and every security aspect is taken care of. So, the infrastructure cost we take up will be passed on to the cloud service provider. Therefore, our service cost goes down and the return on investment would be more acceptable for a user-based company.

The biggest benefit it brings is the scalability because the operator is not investing in the infrastructure, it can be scaled down to the lowest part of the organization and it can be scaled up to the highest level and redefining experiences.

The implementation of cloud-based solutions enables digital convergence with disruptive services as they optimize the supply chain and transforms the back office.

The third benefit that comes with it is a constant evolution. Technology is evolving every day as there is a change or an enhancement in this field with every passing hour, now when an operator decides to deploy technology or analyzing the profitability of each line of business, this analytical technology continues to evolve and change. Oracle has taken the responsibility of keeping each customer updated on technology. The implementation of cloud-based solutions enables digital convergence with disruptive services as they optimize the supply chain and transforms the back office.

Voice&Data: There is public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. How would a telecom organization decide what works for them or what is best suited to them? How does Oracle help the telecom company make the appropriate choice?

Pradeep Agarwal: It would be apt to say that telecom service providers are both consumers and providers of cloud infrastructure and its services. In order to support its IT and telecom application on their network, they require cloud infrastructure. These companies also extend their cloud services to small-scale industries for running their applications. It is predicted that in the next three years, telecom enterprises and their data center planners will need to prepare for a major shift. As the workload increases so does the requirement of expansion of data center and then the companies will have to decide a model that best fits them.

While using a public cloud, customers have limited visibility into the architecture of the service they are using and will not be able to spot specific security protocols or service offerings. Everything is managed and chosen by a cloud service provider. Given that multiple organizations use public cloud hosted by Oracle. We at Oracle provide standard access to information for public consumption or data sharing across entities.

In private cloud infrastructure, the customer can define everything about the cloud and delve deep into the service offerings and architecture. However, the customer gets to control the functioning exclusively. It is useful in catering to a 360-degree approach for workloads within an organization. This includes applications with sensitive or confidential information.

Hybrid cloud adoption will contain both cloud models where the telecom companies can easily segregate data and transfer data between clouds as and when necessary. It is said to be more suitable and an appropriate choice for telecom service providers.