The first crucial step to make a 5G strategy

5G is such a nascent technology that it’s often hard to envision what you can do with it. We know that 5G allows for a high density of connected objects and requires low energy consumption of these devices. It offers very low latency, translating into rapid response time. It provides reliability and security.

So how can you take these features and apply them to your organisation?

That is the wrong question to ask.

Unless your company has all the in-house expertise required for 5G adoption—and let’s face it, which single entity does? —it can be counterproductive to start by choosing the technology and figuring out which area of the business can benefit. That’s because you’ll end up creating a business case based on the technology, not based on the needs of the market and customers.

Instead, it’s best to engage in business discovery first.

Business discovery means diving deep into your business’ problems and opportunities, then thinking about solutions. When doing business discovery, it’s best to focus on a specific area.

This can mean honing in on a problem to solve or an aspect of customer experience to improve. It also involves understanding the opportunities that exist for that business area.

Here are examples of specific areas of business for various industries:

●       Fintech — Enabling ubiquitous payments that are instant and secure

●       Manufacturing — Predicting and preventing equipment downtime

●       Transport — Monitoring, predicting, and optimising fleet utilisation

●       Farming — Automating irrigation systems

●       Health — Assisting mobile clinic operations in remote areas

●       Government — Enhancing the security of mission-critical communications

●       Retail — Designing an unmanned store

The advantage of a business discovery phase is that it compels you to focus on how to solve your problem or achieve your goal. Doing so leads you to pinpoint the specific feature or features of 5G that can help you—instead of starting with a vague notion of 5G as a blanket solution. And that’s the point when you can start creating a business case for 5G.

For instance, to implement ubiquitous payments, you need 5G’s capacity for a high density of connected devices, as well as its extremely low latency and high level of security. To assist in mobile clinic operations, you need reliability and very low latency. To protect mission-critical communications, you must take advantage of 5G’s network slicing feature, which enhances security.

Business discovery also allows various stakeholders within the enterprise to align on the problem and goals.

Instead, discovering the reason for 5G adoption should be part of the 5G strategy process. That way, once you have a prototype to show your management, you also have the business case that proves it benefits.

At Singtel CODE, a lab that helps enterprises conduct training, prototyping, and developing use cases for digital transformation, business discovery is done through a one-day design-thinking workshop.

Design thinking is a human-centric approach to problem-solving and innovation. Workshop participants focus on understanding customers’ needs. They’re required to come up with creative ideas, solutions, and prototypes within a short period of time. And in the context of creating a 5G strategy, they also need to make sure their ideas can be scalable and commercially viable.

Infographic: How to conduct business discovery for your 5G strategy

Even though you know how to conduct the business discovery phase, you’ll need to look beyond your enterprise to make it work. That’s because generating and testing 5G solutions require domain expertise and special equipment, and the costs for acquiring these are steep.

An organisation needs expertise in programming, cloud, and low-latency applications, among others. It also needs experience designers, as 5G changes the client experience. Such designers can capture the change of experience you want to provide customers and identify the steps to achieving this change with the help of technology.

That’s why in Singapore, enterprises, startups, and SMEs conduct workshops, prototyping, and experimentation in 5G ideation labs and testing facilities. These labs provide functional 5G expertise, as well as 5G network capabilities and edge computing platforms.

Enterprises in these labs can learn from the other experiments taking place, unless these are confidential. Labs give them an environment where they can focus on innovation, away from their daily work.

By conducting business discovery sessions in 5G labs, organisations can overcome two of the most common objections against 5G identified by Bain & Company: “the business case isn’t there” and “it will take too much capital”.¹

They also avoid the common mistake made by companies, which is to develop digital transformation strategies “solely in the context of a company’s industry” and overlook ecosystems in the process, according to McKinsey.²

As we move towards a 5G future, enterprises can pave the road ahead by taking the first crucial step in making a 5G strategy.

Speak to us today to enhance your 5G business capabilities.

¹ Bain & Company, Why the 5G Pessimists are Wrong, 2018.

²  McKinsey, Why Digital Strategies Fail, 2018.