28 February 2025
Communications service providers (CSPs) are leaving significant B2B revenue untapped due to process inefficiencies, fragmented systems, and skill gaps according to new research conducted by Omdia on behalf of Amdocs.
The research, titled ‘Money on the Table: The Truth about Telco B2B (And How to Fix It),’ reveals that service providers are missing out on $24 billion annually due to problems with their commercial processes. This finding is based on enterprise revenues disclosed by CSPs representing 70% of the total market. Globally, this equates to 7% of global telco enterprise revenues – a market that will exceed half a trillion dollars in 2025. The study found that up to $170 billion in global telco revenue is at risk annually during renewal and new business deals.
The survey highlights critical pain points in sales and renewal processes:
• Over 50% of bids contain errors or omissions, delaying deal closure
• One in five requests for proposals (RFPs) are not answered in time due to internal inefficiencies
• 40% of CSPs cannot correlate data across internal systems during the renewals process
• Digital marketplaces have a 50% or more abandon rate, indicating major gaps in converting leads into revenue
• Many CSPs struggle to transition from "circuit slingers" to solution sellers, hindering revenue growth
• Money is left on the table during renewals, as teams lack time for upsell opportunities
Omdia’s analysis uncovered a vicious circle within telco B2B operations: CSP revenue mix dictates resource allocation, often reinforcing investment bias rather than addressing the root issues:
• Incumbents focus more on contract management and renewals, often neglecting pre-sales and sales investments.
• Challengers prioritize new business acquisition but risk neglecting retention strategies.
• Mergers lead to reactive efforts to retain clients, distracting from proactive growth initiatives.
These inefficiencies, coupled with disconnected systems and teams, hinder service providers from fully capturing the lucrative B2B revenue opportunity.
Positively for service providers, these challenges are fixable, and the survey found that more than half (53%) of operators are planning to invest in customer engagement to address their B2B commerce challenges, with 43% planning B2B-related investments in tools, systems, and platforms.
“While service providers are acutely aware of the challenges they face in managing B2B customers, the magnitude of the money they are leaving on the table has been underestimated,” said Gil Rosen, Chief Marketing Officer at Amdocs. “The B2B market presents huge opportunities for growth, particularly beyond pure-play connectivity, but to capitalize on this and better serve business customers at scale, service providers need to take a smarter approach to digitalization and increase their adoption of advanced automation and AI-driven capabilities, seamlessly integrated across systems to streamline operations, reduce inefficiencies and empower enterprise sales to focus on sales and growth as opposed to managing complex and lengthy backend logistics.”
“Telco B2B is entering an exciting growth phase but service providers are struggling to keep up,” said Camille Mendler, Chief Analyst at Omdia. “Billions of winnable revenue are already slipping through the cracks due to fragmented systems, disconnected teams, and outdated processes. Unless service providers address these issues now their big bets on AI, network APIs, 5G slicing and other new services are in jeopardy.”
