Providing phone numbers and packages used to be simple; your customers would let you know what routes they wanted and you, the operator, would install a landline phone connecting them up to your network.

You’d also give them a unique number, which would become their number for making and receiving calls.

The fundamentals of this process have not dramatically changed, but the industry has. You still provide your customers with numbers, but thanks to technological advances and the global economy, you rarely have to install hardware.

In fact, you hardly need to deal with hardware at all. Most of this is done via software, online and in virtualized environments. Take Unified Communications as a Service, VoIP, and the big data boom as evidence.

Even if, unlike much of the industry, you’ve managed to move with the times and update your customer-facing features and services in line with changing trends, it’s still hard finding the time to completely overhaul your back-office processes. Changing the way you do business is a huge energy and resource drain.

While such long and arduous processes are probably inherited from your predecessor, it’s hard to justify changing things that have worked for so long, especially when you need to focus on filling your pipeline. Why fix something that isn’t broken? Unless it’s holding your business back.

Just because it doesn’t seem broken, doesn’t mean your business is efficient and achieving the best ROIs it could be or preparing for the future of communications and how customers order telco services. The industry’s digital transformation presents as many challenges as it does opportunities, but who said the road to greatness was easy?

To tackle challenges head-on and bring your back office up to speed, your business must be agile and adaptable. As a result, evaluating your business operations strategy becomes fundamental to success. Here are our tried-and-tested steps to businesses looking to scale back operations, deliver better customer solutions, but grow rapidly:

Automate your processes, deliver faster

Look inward at existing systems, see where you can automate repetitive tasks and free up your workforce’s time to focus on bigger and better things. By using software to help with daily tasks, you’ll also get rid of simple but costly overheads.

Automation also speeds up your tasks. For example, we’ve pre negotiated contracts with vendors around the world so that any number purchased through the SpeakIntelligence widget is activated within minutes, removing the need to fill out long and outdated contracts that are then slowly pushed through long and outdated processes.

Reduce overheads and embrace new technologies

While simple automation can help you reduce overheads, the SpeakIntelligence widget is unique in that it allows you to entirely collapse your back office. By installing the automated webshop widget on your site, you can sit back and relax knowing your business, customers, and even your accountant, are well looked after without the costs associated with running a traditional telco business.

Consolidate your vendors and remove inefficiency

In an industry like telco, your business probably has age-old contracts with trusted partners, but those partnerships also come with great inefficiencies because so many vendors now have overlapping services. It’s time to consolidate and ensure you’re not working with multiple partners all providing you with the same things.

Using one vendor for multiple services instead of many means less paperwork, and will inevitably speed up your order process. This allows you greater time and resources to then better serve your customers. Even your accountants will be happy as they’ll have fewer partners to invoice.

Futureproof your business by adding extra streams of revenue

It’s hard to innovate when you’re constantly fire-fighting to stay competitive, but, as the saying goes, you should never have all of your eggs in one basket.

Find extra streams of revenue away from your main product or service. This can help as a buffer against a particularly bad month, a shift in the industry, or even as a tactic to increase customer acquisition and retention; a no-frills product offering is great for a certain type of customer but to keep them interested, you need to offer more.

A handful of low-cost and low-maintenance add-ons or related services will do the trick. If you sell phone numbers, how about call routing packages? For anyone else in the telecoms space, an industry-related side hustle like the SpeakIntelligence widget may be more beneficial.

Just load up our webshop onto your site. You can then market it as an entirely new branch of your company or cross and upsell phone numbers and their packages to your existing clients. Because the SpeakIntelligence widget is completely self-sufficient, it won’t cost you anything in time, money or resources.

Focus on customer experience and you will be rewarded

If you build a business with your customers in mind, they will come. And they will stay. Customer loyalty is incredibly hard to earn when there’s more competition today than ever, ensuring every interaction a customer has with your business is a positive one, is instrumental in your success.