Significant progress has been made towards delivering nationwide gigabit coverage. As of H2 2023, over 50% of UK homes and businesses now have access to full fibre networks.

With a £5bn government commitment to connect the 20% hardest to reach communities (and an additional £1bn towards 4G coverage), the telecoms industry has seen a significant growth spell over recent years. Whilst many players have already seen tremendous success, there is still a significant number of residential providers with coverage of 10,000s of properties rather than 100,000s.

For those who have scale quickly, the focus switches to winning and retaining customers. Less established businesses face the challenge of having to differentiate themselves through competitive offerings and exceptional service, while meeting the ever-growing expectations of customers.

Building infrastructure is expensive. Marketing is expensive. Acquiring customers is expensive. Losing customers is more expensive. Telecoms businesses need to make the most of all the tools they have available to scale quickly without relying on increasing headcount.

In the post, we look at why Salesforce’s Communications Cloud is the platform of choice for hyper-growth Telcos, how it differs from the core Salesforce offering, and how our customers have leveraged it to accelerate growth.

What is Communications Cloud?

Communications Cloud is a part of Salesforce’s Salesforce Industries suite. Salesforce Industries are industry specific packages, built on the Salesforce platform, but pre-configured for typical industry use-cases and packaged with a number of tools to help customers in those industries see ROI faster. By leveraging industry-tailored setups, customers see a reduction in time and money spent on customisation and development.

Initially the result of Salesforce’s acquisition of Vlocity, Communications Cloud has been one of the longest standing and most widely adopted industry offerings Salesforce have acquired. It is used by the likes of Vodafone, Lyca Mobile and Jurassic Fibre among others.

6 Ways Communications Cloud accelerates growth for Telcos on Salesforce

1. Realise value faster using the Industry Data Model

Comms Cloud extends the standard Salesforce data model with a number of objects and data points to manage the information and processes Telcos need to operate effectively. This model follows the TM Forum SID-compliance framework, so is widely adopted across the industry as standard.
For customers, this means a faster implementation and time to value as the core architecture is already in place. It also means lower risk, as the model is tried and tested.

Additionally, this makes for easier system integration with other tools and integration of acquired businesses, as common data models are adopted across the industry.

2. Launch new products and offers quickly with Enterprise Product Catalog

For many Telcos, their product offering is constantly being evolved over time. Salesforce’s Enterprise Product Catalog utilises reusable components and attributes – making the process of modelling or updating complex product bundles sold significantly faster. This allows companies to reduce the time needed to launch new products or offers to their customers, giving them a competitive edge. By emphasising re-usability, this also leads to greater consistency in downstream processes and reduction in drop-out.
Comms Cloud is also able to integrate seamlessly with 3rd party catalogues for real-time pricing ‘on-demand’.

3. Industries CPQ + Multi-site Quoting provide controlled, guides selling with flexibility

CPQ (Configure, price, quote) tools are often used to ensure the right products are being sold at the right price to the right customer. This makes for better buying experiences, better protection of margins, and less headaches down the line. Comms Cloud enables users to generate accurate quotes and shopping carts in line with company rules around pricing and product bundles.
For B2B organisations, guided selling experience removes the complexity for sales teams.

This can also support typical MACD processes (move, add, change, delete) for changes to in-flight contracts – simplifying the steps needed and reducing risk of error.

4. Build custom User Experiences with OmniStudio

Comms Cloud includes OmniStudio – an incredibly powerful toolbox that allows users to build reusable branded experiences across channels with clicks-not-code. The reusable nature of these components means common customer experiences can be deployed wherever your customers are.

For example, a common use case we have delivered for our clients is to build and deploy an end to end Order Journey to a website. Here, customers can browse services, apply discounts, set up Direct Debit, arrange installation and complete orders within minutes. Once this Order Journey has been developed, it can then also be deployed to other channels such as mobile apps or direct sales teams’ tablets seamlessly.

OmniStudio also has capability for zero-copy integration – meaning we can pull in real-time service and price information from external sources too!

5. Use Contract Lifecycle Management to manage and sign contracts faster

Comms Cloud CLM allows sales and legal teams to create, amend, negotiate and sign contracts digitally in a more streamlined, collaborative manager. This both speeds up the time getting contracts signed, and saves users time having to manually update agreements.
Digital redlining makes for easier communications and collaboration with customers and removes the ‘email table tennis’ often occurring during negotiations. Salesforce provides a full audit trail of all contract changes for compliance and better understanding into the contracting process.

6. Leverage Order Management to orchestrate orders in an automated manner

Once your customer completes their purchase, Salesforce can automate the full provisioning process, decomposing by line item and triggering the correct fulfilment steps. This saves teams hours of time manually activating services or inputting delivery information. Tracking the status of each individual component of an order allows businesses to make sure operations run smoothly, understand dependencies, and troubleshoot fast if problems do arise.

Automate error handling for ‘unhappy paths’ to reduce drop-outs. Combine this with AI to automatically course-correct, and the potential is incredibly potent!

If you are a Telecoms business looking for a customer platform to help you scale at pace, then Salesforce Communications Cloud may be the right choice. To learn more about Salesforce and how it can benefit your business, contact Ignyto today.