Omantel is working to enable the Oman 2040 Vision to digitize the economy and society through providing a digital B2B2X marketplace where seller/ISVs organizations can sell their own solutions in a digital shop, and at the same time partner, package and sell bundled digital solutions for respective market segments.
Professor Mo Zoualfaghari, Global Technology Lead, Telecom, AWS, leads this Fireside Chat at TM Forum Digital Transformation World 2024, with Mohamed Abdullatif, General Manager, Customer Lifecycle Management, Omantel, and Andrew Thomson, SVP Digital Enablement, Beyond Now and TM Forum distinguished fellow. Together they discuss Omantel’s planned introduction of the first nationwide B2C and B2BX marketplace in Oman, built and operated by Omantel and powered by AWS and Beyond Now. This video highlights the company’s ongoing transformation from telco to techco and the importance of digital platforms and marketplace capabilities for success and growth.
Mohamed
Omantel holds the distinction of being the first and largest telecommunications company in the country with a major role in the renaissance of our beloved country, Oman. Our vision extends beyond that of a traditional telco company. Through strategic relationships and the collaborations we have with technology leaders such as AWS, as well as setting the internal foundations for digital acceleration, we are evolving into a digital technology powerhouse not only to serve our internal aspirations, but also to serve the key tenants of Oman’s 2040 vision, which is: digitization, innovation, diversification, entrepreneurship and sustainability.
Andrew
Platforms are a great opportunity for telcos because telcos have come from the environment of connectivity, and platforms can enable them to move beyond connectivity with other partners. So, we think about platforms enabling organizations to come together. We have particular expertise from different companies, at AWS and Omantel, for example, cloud and connectivity, but also other partners coming from different industries looking to completely digitize their approach to their customers and their employees. So techniques, artificial intelligence, digital twins and IoT services are all part of a platform play that can support customers, but also enable the complete acceleration of revenue and reduction of costs because we’re operating everything from the cloud.
Mohamed
At Omantel, we use the B2B interaction and the use of APIs under the marketplace project as key factors for growth and innovation. Firstly, Omantel can utilize the B2B interactions to enable the businesses, partners and suppliers to expand their product ranges and reach new markets, as well as creating value. Secondly, APIs play a major role in the streamlining of processes. Marketplace APIs support businesses to streamline B2B transactions and improve system integration, as well as automate processes. Through the APIs, we can also enable businesses to customize tailor-made solutions to meet their business needs and preferences.
Andrew
Clearly APIs are the way to join the processes to join various systems. I think the uplifting and exposure of the AWS marketplace through a B2B2X marketplace in Oman is a good example where you can bring in ISVs and actually enable them to become part of the solutions for the different verticals. The APIs within TM Forum work, and we have a catalyst which is focused on enabling the ODA’s APIs be uplifted to be B2B2X capable. This is a very important piece of work, to ensure that we really streamline and remove manual touchpoints, because if we've got a manual interface and manual touchpoints it's an exposure for cybercriminals. We really need to ensure that we automate everything end-to-end to reduce the cyber-attack surface.
Mohamed
Managing the transition, from a telecommunications company to the launch of a digital technology platform, not only serving Omantel, but serving the nation has been a great learning experience. Omantel navigated such challenges by taking some crucial steps from day one.
The first step was ensuring compliance to the regulatory issues from the start of the project, while putting together the framework of our marketplace project. The second step was engaging with the regulatory bodies – opening up a dialog with them – as well as demonstrating full alignment to the country's 2040 vision.
At the end of the day, our digitalization initiatives such as marketplace are just a continuation to the country's 2040 vision. And this accelerated and paved the path for approvals. As the largest and first telecom company in the country we have formed a partnership with the regulators. Therefore, we mitigate the risks for current laws, as well as what's expected in the future.
Andrew
The interesting scenario is that when one looks at the partners such as AWS and ISVs, they already operate in a certain way. And if you buy Cisco from AWS, you will probably automatically find you have a reseller that will become the contractor to deploy that service. So the interesting part about the partnership between the two organizations is to enable the abstraction of how things already work in existing marketplaces, into a marketplace where there's going to be the use of the existing commercial relationships, but with additional commercial relationships on top to respect the reality of how things already work. When one abstracts a marketplace, one’s got to ensure that it can be allowed to operate the way it does, and then partner with additional organizations inside Oman in conjunction with the way that Omantel used to operate, to satisfy its regulatory requirements. So it's a very interesting mix.
Mohamed
Omantel contemplates the transition from being a telecommunications services company to a technology company ecosystem, by ensuring that the strategic projects are part of its transition or transformation journey, such as marketplace, AI ML, and we recently started the rollout of generative AI.
We are also meeting or fulfilling the key elements of our corporate and digital strategy. For the past few years, Omantel has been fostering the culture of transformation and digital acceleration. And one great example of this is through creating the first of its kind innovation lab in the country, as well as attracting talent to cover some of the capability gaps we have.
Secondly, by collaborating with technology leaders such as Beyond Now, Omantel is demonstrating and bringing innovation and practices to ensure we are following the path of Oman’s 2040 journey. More importantly, Omantel is materializing customer centricity in its operations. And we are sure that the experience, whether it's B2B or B2B2X, will further enhance our customer experience by leveraging use cases such as customer 360, segmentation and personalization.
Finally, through Beyond Now’s marketplace we will launch new offers to the market, moving away from our traditional role of being a telecommunications company, to start evolving and practicing as a fully-fledged digital technology powerhouse.
Andrew
Omantel, in creating its B2C marketplace, isn't creating B2C in the context that telcos might imagine, because as you rightly said, you actually need a proper category management platform because there are going to be millions of products, all sorts of things which are typically found on Amazon. It's not what people expect it to be. The B2C here really is about any product you might buy on Amazon and this is an interesting crossover, because it's a very different type of data model sitting inside an FMCG platform.
But the customer, whether they're buying B2C or suddenly they're buying something which could become digitized, may discover that they're actually consuming from both platforms simultaneously, and therefore contracting a service which may end up being built by a seller in this platform, or by a seller on the platform who's going to be consuming from the other platform.
But at the end of the day, the sellers can be in either platform depending on what they're trying to offer. Because lifecycle management needs a different sort of service than if you're just buying/selling from an Amazon.
Mohamed
As a leading telecommunications and digital service provider, Omantel always seeks the opportunity of expanding beyond its national borders. Our international expansion journey started in 2010. Omantel acquired one of the major mobile telecommunications company in the Middle East and Africa – Zain. Omantel also last year launched a joint venture between Zain and Omantel under the name of Zain Omantel International to manage the wholesale business of both of the companies serving eight markets and covering around 55million customers.
Additionally, the strategic collaboration and alliances we formed with AWS are taking us to the international markets through some of the cutting edge technologies we are offering at the moment, such as cloud-generative AI, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Mohamed
The marketplace initiative is considered a greenfield for Oman. The penetration of e-commerce in Oman and in the region is only 25% with no strong competition. Oman is also forecast to be the second fastest growing e-commerce country in the Gulf. This opens a door to serve a lot of requirements, not only in Oman but outside it. The current requirements of e-commerce are being met by platforms which are not available in Oman. Therefore a lot of revenue cannot be recorded in the country. This was one of the main objectives behind putting such a program together. In terms of managing this program, of course, with us joining hands with AWS, we can ensure we are going to be launching the most fitting operating model to serve our marketplace initiative.
As I mentioned earlier, this is not a company initiative – it is a nationwide initiative. There are a lot of enablers that we are enhancing to support the marketplace initiative, such as our loyalty program. This loyalty program is only serving Omantel customers at the moment, but it could very much be, elevated to be the national loyalty program of the country.
So that's only one enabler. The other enabler is that we are also modernizing our data warehouse and our data lake to be ready for capturing such amounts of data under the marketplace. This has all happened as we are putting together the entire, framework of our digital acceleration in the company, and most recently generative AI, and how generative AI will complement the marketplace as we get closer to the launch dates.
