BearingPoint today launched research that validates the multi-trillion-dollar enterprise ICT sales opportunity facing CSPs. The study surveyed 250 decision makers in enterprises in Europe, Asia and the USA, and found that 97% of organisations were willing to purchase ICT services from CSPs.

The study also investigated the approach and changes 100 CSPs are making to address this opportunity with their enterprise customers. According to BearingPoint, if CSPs are to successfully claim their share of a market estimated to be worth USD$3.6tn by 2022, they must re-align their investment strategies and offer reassurance to enterprises that they will accelerate innovation and speed to market, invest in better understanding their customers’ business needs and improve collaboration with other valued partners.

“Enterprise IT spending is huge, growing fast, and one of the last untapped growth engines for CSPs in saturated markets. Enterprise will be pivotal to 5G and IoT. The research makes for positive reading in the main – there is an obvious opportunity for CSPs to capitalise on – but there are obstacles they must overcome. Among them, they must prioritise investment in enterprise, junk overly bureaucratic legacy processes and policies that slow them down and commit to understanding and engaging with enterprise customers differently,” said Angus Ward, CEO BearingPoint. “Critically, CSPs must act quickly – if not, they stand to lose out to more agile and open competitors.”

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The study identified critical areas CSPs could improve, the more prominent three are:

• Improve levels of investment to drive enterprise revenue;
• Remove overly bureaucratic processes and legacy technology that is stifling innovation;
• Accept they can’t do it alone, build an ecosystem of valued partners.

“CSPs must make some tough decisions. 5G’s arrival in the next year or so means they have to make the enterprise segment their top priority and allocate the necessary resources to support it – even at the expense of their consumer businesses,” said Ward. “CSPs are already losing enterprise business to more agile digital players. This trend will continue unless they act now. They must abandon traditional, restrictive product development and replace it with leaner, more agile operations that encourage innovation, speed and experimentation.”

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