Telecom demands niche technology specialists

Telecom demands niche technology specialists

In an exclusive interaction, Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS India talks about the tech specialisations in demand in the telecom vertical 

Within the telecom industry there are two kinds of IT systems. One is the customer facing IT system which forms the backbone of the entire telecom business and is leveraged to provide various voice and data services to subscribers. The other is the internal IT team which caters to the needs of the employees and the entire workforce.

The telecom industry requires two distinct IT systems to run its business which reveals that the kind of tech skills diversity required within the telecom service providers is much higher, compared to other industries.

Gap between demand and supply

Though this means there is a huge opportunity for IT professionals within the telecom vertical, the skills required are quite specific. Specialised training in these areas is not very easily available in the form of a course or certification.

“Tech specialisations required within telecom vertical are niche and hence off-the-shelf-training modules are usually not available. In general, these skills are specialised, which may be acquired through hands-on experience or related trainings conducted by OEMs/ISVs,” said Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS India.

This is one of the reasons why telecom companies face a challenge when looking to hire IT professionals who are domain specialists in such niche areas. Many times, techies interested to work within the Telecom industry are not aware of the kind of IT specialisations in demand within this industry.

Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS India sheds light on this and talks about the kind of skill-sets in demand in Telecom.

Key tech skills in demand within customer facing IT teams

For IT professionals who want to work in the customer facing IT systems, there is a need to work with the core telecom apps encompassed in BSS (Business Support Systems), OSS (Operations Support Systems), VAS and others. For this, the techies must have skills and experience in applications that enable business processes and operational functionality.

For example, they should have exposure of:

• Telecom billing and CRM
• Mobile number portability
• Revenue assurance
• Fraud management
• Over the air functionality
• Business analytics
• Campaign management
• Churn management
• Customer self-care
• Regulatory and compliance prescribed systems (legal intercept, DND, second-consent etc)
• Decision support systems
• Supply chain management and stock management
• Lead management, call centre technologies
• IT services management

Essential domain knowledge for employee facing internal IT teams

Internal IT teams focus on building a robust IT support system for everyday functioning of the business. Their primary service target is the employees.

The key areas where team members of the internal IT team of a telecom company should have exposure are:

• ERP – financials and HR
• Collaboration and messaging
• Intranet and intranet portals
• Information security
• Data centers and IT Infrastructure

Movement of IT professionals from technical to managerial roles

While technical certification is relevant for projects, development or operations profiles; for managerial roles expertise in general management and soft skills are more relevant. Mostly IT personnel within telecom industry are engineering graduates and a sizeable percentage of them also have MBA qualification. Most of the time, this is sufficient to take up the challenge of a managerial position.

Hi guys If u like this post please leave a comment in comment box... comment box will top right of every post and bottom of every post. its useful for me give a better information.. check top of the blog there is menu bar in that go to comments i replied for u r comments because there is no direct option for reply for u r comments. if u want to give any suggestion in bottom of blog there is contact information option please leave a msgs with u r mail id sure i will get u.