How telecom leadership is changing

The leadership landscape is changing for many mobile operators, driven by escalating customer demands and intensifying competition from over-the-top services. Many vendors and suppliers are finding that they need to address corporate decision makers from more than one part of the carrier organization.
Oracle recently shared its insights on these changes. The software giant’s 2013 purchase of Tekelec has given it increased visibility into a number of service provider organizations, some of which were already Oracle IT customers. Last week at TM Forum Live, Oracle’s Gordon Rawlings talked with RCR Wireless News about how the mobile consumer is driving changes in the leadership of telecom organizations. He said that one of the biggest shifts is the increasing power of the chief marketing officer.
“The days of the passive marketing director, in terms of accepting services, are gone,” he said. “The CMOs today typically are P&L owners and are very driven to try and offer and differentiate their services.” Rawlings added that CMOs are eager to trial and launch new services and are pushing IT departments to remove the barriers.
“Another role we are also starting to see evolve, although this is quite nascent, is the chief digital oFficer,” said Rawlings. The chief digital officer role may evolve from the CMO role, he said, and is often charged with reaching out to enterprise customers to help them find ways digitize their businesses.
CTOs and CIOs
Rawlings said that as mobile networks evolve, the roles of the telecom CTO and the CIO are becoming more connected. The classic example, he said, is policy and charging.
“There was a bit of divide between those kind of capabilities, but if we look forward to the kind of services that telcos need to be able to deliver, you’ve really got to think about those as a whole,” he said. “They’ve got to be cognizant of each other, they’ve got to really synchronize together in terms of personalization of services. In some organizations, that comes together as one CTIO organization, in some it’s still separate. But we need to basically translate some of the ways in which we talk into the things which are driving those different organizations, and often perform a role to actually bring them into one room.”
At times Oracle also tries to bring executives who focus on financials into that room, with an eye toward understanding how the network and the IT group can work together. “It’s undoubtedly a challenge for the industry as a whole to make this a lot tighter,” said Rawlings.