Innovative and Integrated: Optimising Your Voice Business to Enter the A2P Market

The silos between messaging and voice are disappearing and that is creating demand for service providers that understand what it takes to be successful in both segments. Enterprises need to choose a set of solutions that can serve their needs no matter what communications application they’re using.

The increased demand for unified communications has created an opportunity for service providers, especially those which have been able to build a robust offering around all products.

A2P messaging is growing and maturing across the globe at a rapid rate. Markets and Markets predicts that the global A2P messaging market size is expected to reach $72.8 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 3.2 percent during the forecast period. A2P offerings will continue to evolve with long-standing and new challenges faced by market players.

More and more enterprises within industry verticals are using A2P to communicate directly with their customers to send notifications, critical alerts and two-factor authentication messages. As a consequence of market expansion, differential cost and revenue structures have now emerged in the telecommunications market – with efficiency and reliability being a critical aspect in an end user’s considerations.

On top of this, an increasing number of organizations are adopting cloud numbering services into their offerings to match growth in international inbound traffic. Cloud numbering can deliver expanded reach, greater customer experience and optimized business continuity. Adding voice and messaging enabled numbers allows enterprises to take control of costs with a flexible solution.

Service providers that are successful in providing integration in A2P, numbering and voice along with access services will gain a competitive edge and achieve higher margins as a result.​​ To do so, they need to deliver an innovative network and connectivity experience, as well domestic regulatory knowledge and in-country support that differentiates their offering to match the evolving needs of their customers.

Better Business Messaging

Combining access numbers, A2P messaging and voice offerings with a customized approach can remove the complexity of deploying new solutions alongside existing offerings. Carriers must be prepared to match the speed of the rapid digitalization to secure new revenue streams and rise above industry competitors and challenges.

• Understanding Your Prospects

Buyers of A2P messaging services vary greatly and the market can appear vast. They can be everything from aggregators focused on sending school notifications through to some of the largest organisations in the world. While voice is a core enterprise service and engagements have been fairly simple, service providers have to assess where and how they are going to play in the market before even looking at the technical challenges. This way, they can optimize their user experience and tailor their invest when developing their offerings.

• A2P Delivery Assurance

Precision and performance are integrated in an ever-changing unified communications landscape. To capture the potential of integrated A2P and voice offerings, service providers need to ensure that messages are being delivered to the right person in the right market. Deploying numbering intelligence can ensure an optimized customer experience through the guaranteed delivery of messages. By delivering constant and reliable performance, service providers can compete on quality rather than cost. They gain loyalty, trust and revenue from a solid customer base.

• Fighting Fraud

Telcos need to effectively monitor and prevent fraud instances to secure the trust of end users. Choosing a partner to provide big data analytics can combat rising fraud attempts and provide early detection into launched attacks with comprehensive identification and prevention of threat activity. Implementing reporting systems allows service providers to have on-demand information at their fingertips that can be leveraged through customized alerts.

By rolling out a high-level fraud prevention system with a trusted provider, industry players can effectively detect, monitor and block fraudulent traffic for their unified communications to achieve greater monetization success when unifying their offerings.

• Maintaining Margins

While making the move into the integrated solutions market, service providers have to maintain healthy margins to support the growth of new revenue streams. In addition to fraud, Origin Based Rating (OBR) has emerged as a new and growing challenge for service providers. Service providers that proactively deploy OBR mitigation are able to protect their margins in voice whilst dialling-up their unified capabilities at the same time. They will have greater visibility into OBR losses and be prepared for a future where OBR is standard across multiple countries. This will allow organizations to secure revenues and maintain customers.

• Gaining Local Support

Cloud numbering is essential for regulatory aspects and operating in hard to reach markets. Heavily regularized environments can be especially challenging to break into without local presence. Enterprises can create a virtual local presence with geographically specific numbers to better serve your customers. Integrating cloud number service can give them the ability to seamlessly set up and scale in new countries and regions with virtual numbers that are already compliant on all fronts.

• Preparing to Adapt

The A2P market is moving so quickly that service providers need to be prepared to adapt, pivot and grow as new opportunities develop. Unlike a traditional voice business, A2P messaging is really in its infancy. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is still only used in a few consumers or business applications with massive room for growth. At the same time, rich communication services are long overdue to be deployed and used to deliver new customer experiences. The market is wide-open and there are practically unlimited possibilities for growth and innovation.

Creating Competitive Advantages

Service providers need to be prepared to innovate their offerings and invest in growing unified communications services opportunities to keep up with new demand. The key to success is to differentiate their offerings with seamless end user experience whilst proactively reacting to industry demand.

Integrating A2P, numbering and voice solutions can strengthen a carrier’s market position and allow them to grow beyond borders. Acting with innovation is the differentiator to meet industry transformation and customer demand.