Industries worldwide are having their traditional core businesses challenged by disruption, and organizations have little choice but to find new revenue streams and overhaul business models to stay relevant.
A panel discussion titled “Reshaping the Next-Gen Business Models and Ecosystem of Tomorrow with Digital Transformation” saw C-suite executives share how their organizations have innovated to meet customer demands.
The traditional telecommunications provider business has faced disruption on several fronts, from voice to data roaming to competition with new entrants into the industry, shared CEO of Group Enterprise at Singtel Bill Chang. “Telcos therefore need to have their fingers in non-telco related businesses,” said Chang, adding how 46% of revenue at Singtel's Group Enterprise business division now stems from non telco- related businesses such as cybersecurity.
Disruption should be viewed as the best time for companies to innovate, says Parminder Singh, Chief Commercial and Digital Officer at Mediacorp. “It’s a good time to ask what business you are in, and try to be as broad as you can be while doing that,” said Singh. “We realized we were good at content and storytelling for news, business and lifestyle, so we focused on those.”
France-based Eutelsat decided to disrupt the satellite services industry with the launch of a high throughput, satellite-based broadband service with no data cap for consumers, challenging the commonly held notion about satellite-based connectivity being finite in nature. “But we tripled our sales and were ultimately successful,” shared CEO of Eutelsat Asia Jean-François Fenech.
A business that is clear about its direction can leverage partnerships to fill operational gaps, said Singh, citing Mediacorp’s collaboration with transport platform Grab for delivery of the former’s content via in-car tablets. Eutelsat too, as a B2B business, formed a distribution partnership with Orange so its services could more effectively reach consumers.
"The iliterate of the 21st century are not those who cannot read, but those who cannot learn, un-write and re-learn," said Chang.