As a market or as market builders I believe many of our cohort and customers are stuck in decision deadlock, unsure if they pour money into their traditional voice/data/telco stack(s), adopt AI, or invest in human capital.
So they should be, but the thing about decisions is that they need to be made. Even more confounding, not deciding at all is, in itself, a decision. Tough school, this one. So, when it comes to “Artificial Intelligence” (or is it just Machine Learning?), decisions must be considered at the rate and pace of change.
From launch to loyalty, connecting every part of your business, automating workflows, accelerating go-to-market, personalising experiences and maximising lifetime customer value at scale.
So, what is it, panic or paralysis? Well, hopefully neither. Panic intimates you are too late, and paralysis ensures you will be. The truth does not get any easier to swallow, does it?
You know that you want to disrupt the market, or at least your margin or share, and you know that AI or ML is the efficiency and expediency you need. You hear, read, smell, taste the benefits of these technologies, and you know that you need to reap the benefits. Well, here is the thing. It has been done by someone before, someone who has developed a niche play in marketing, billing, self-service, bundling, whatever… and that others are using and benefiting from it. Now.
You, in fact, do not need to build that big idea. You need to place it in your customer engage, buy, build, benefit process. You need to buy in the smarts to accelerate your journey. You need to think and act critically and with purpose around what can slot in, accelerate, and yield.
The Myth of Incremental Safety
Here is where most organisations &/or decision makers lie to themselves. They convince themselves that incremental improvement equals safety. That “sweating existing assets” (groan) is prudent stewardship. That layering AI on top of legacy systems somehow constitutes transformation. It does not. It is optimisation theatre.
Cobbled together solutions, stitched across platforms never designed to reason, learn, or adapt… well they simply entrench complexity. They create fragile operating models that demand more people, more process, and more explanation as time goes on. This is not caution. This is deferral.
Being a Creative Disruptor
This is the point at which leadership matters. You need to be a creative disruptor. Not reckless, not ideological, but decisive. Disruption here does not mean burning everything down. It means recognising that replacing components is sometimes the most conservative option available. Replacing for intelligence and agility gives y0u the opportunity to expand sideways around voice to all things data and all things subscription. Who are my best prospects in my customer base for a new offering? Is it better to bundle or offer separately? Autonomous decisions driving targeted yield. Sounds delicious right?
So you need the correct components. Fit for purpose matters. Systems designed with AI and ML in mind behave differently. They assume change. They assume learning. They assume automation as a default, not an exception. When you adopt them, you are not betting on a single use case. You are shortening the distance between insight and action.
This requires letting go of sunk cost thinking. It requires acknowledging that past investment does not justify future compromise. And it requires the courage to stop pontificating about what might be possible and instead act on what is already proven.
Act, With Caution, But Act
You do not need to invent the future. You need to assemble it intentionally. Proven platforms, proven patterns, proven outcomes. Integrated where they create flow. Retired where they create drag.
Mobile, Fixed Mobile, Broadband, Satellite, 3cx, good old VOIP, Teams – what is limiting a breadth of value play? Action.
Act with caution, yes. Understand dependencies. Protect customers. Manage risk. But act. Because the real risk now is status quo. That the real cost is opportunity lost at machine speed. The real failure is choosing familiarity over best fit.
The market will not wait for consensus. Your competitors will not pause while you deliberate. And your customers will not reward explanations about why transformation was hard with more or greater investment.
Decide. Replace what no longer serves. Invest where leverage compounds. Stop debating whether AI/ML belongs in your operating model. It already does.
The autonomous era is here.
It is time to reimagine how your product and customer operations work – replacing fragmented systems and manual processes with one intelligent, AI-driven stack.
The only remaining question is whether you lead that change or watch it go by.
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