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Ep 43 – Telco’s Pinball Wizard: Neil McRae
BT Chief Architect Neil McRae talks about the company's digital transformation and strategies for working with hyperscalers … and pinball, of course!
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Ep 15 – Totogi: The new ant at the picnic
Last week I took part in TelecomTV’s DSP Leaders World Forum in two ways: a panel and a talk, both available by registering here. I love the talk, so I’ve turned it into a podcast episode to share it with the world.
It starts with a killer David-and-Goliath business story: Siebel vs Salesforce. You may remember how Marc Benioff’s tiny, little challenger Saleforce toppled tech-giant Siebel with innovation and courage.
Marc’s big idea was that there should be a single CRM that customers would access through the internet – nothing would be installed on premise. When the industry started to become aware of Salesforce, the startup was called “an ant at the picnic.” It ran up against the same objections I hear from telco execs every day about why they can’t use the public cloud. Hit the play button to hear:
- The Siebel vs Salesforce story [2:20];
- The naysayers’ list of why Salesforce would never win [4:05];
- Why the naysayers were wrong [5:27];
- The truth about the customization trap [7:12]; and
- An introduction to webscale charging engine Totogi, and why it will change everything for Telco [10:00];
Intrigued? Curious? I hope so! Listen now.
Links and Resources
- You can find the transcript for this episode here.
- Check out the Totogi website
- Watch the video version of my DSP Leaders World Forum talk
- Read Bloomberg’s February 2000 article calling Salesforce “an ant at the picnic”
- This is a super cool TelecomTV page of my panels, talks, interviews and resources
- Get ready for MWC21:
- Learn more about safety plans for MWC21 in Barcelona
- Get the stats from The New York Times Global Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker
- Read more about the event on the MWC Barcelona website
- Check out my favorite GIF from the past week:
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The Telco in 20 podcast won a 2022 Gold Hermes Award and was recognized on Forrester’s 2021 list of the Top 100 Channel Podcasts and Feedspot’s Top 10 Telecom Podcasts list.
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Podcast Credits
- Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios Royston, TelcoDR
- Executive Producer: Kristin Donelson, OneLouder Marketing
- Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
- Editor/Producer: Alisa Jenkins Wilson, Springboard Marketing
- Audio Editing: Andrew Condell
- Music: Dyami Wilson
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the Siebel vs. Salesforce story, and why does it matter for telecom?
In the late 1990s, Siebel dominated CRM with expensive, highly customized, on-premise software. Marc Benioff challenged them with Salesforce—a single, cloud-based CRM that anyone could access via the internet. Despite widespread skepticism, Salesforce won decisively. DR draws a direct parallel to telecom today: most telcos still run costly, customized, on-premise applications, setting the stage for similar disruption.
2. Why did Siebel lose to Salesforce?
Three fundamental flaws doomed Siebel: it was tech-focused rather than business-focused (80% of budget went to integrations, not outcomes), every installation was heavily customized (siloing customers from ongoing innovation), and it was far more expensive than Salesforce. Salesforce, as a webscale product, channeled every dollar into R&D and pushed every improvement to each customer instantly.
3. What is Totogi, and what problem is it solving?
Totogi is a cloud-native startup building a webscale SaaS charging engine designed to handle 100% of the world’s charging volume on a single platform. It’s positioned as the “Salesforce of charging”—replacing expensive, customized, on-premise charging systems from vendors like Amdocs, Ericsson, and Huawei with a single alternative focused on business value.
4. How does Totogi’s automatic plan design work?
Totogi’s automatic plan design leverages AI and ML tools to analyze a carrier’s goals, tariff plans, subscriber data, and competitor offerings—then automatically recommends and implements optimal plans. DR highlights projected results of up to 20% churn reduction, 25% more subscriber acquisition, and 15% ARPU growth.
5. What is the Totogi super app, and why should telcos care?
The Totogi super app gives carriers a framework to offer pre-negotiated, third-party services—streaming, banking, rideshare, travel—directly to subscribers through their mobile app. Telcos have the unique advantage of pre-installed apps on nearly every mobile device, but rarely use that reach. The super app turns that idle superpower into a new revenue stream that can exceed monthly subscriber revenue.
6. How does DR frame the public cloud opportunity for telco executives?
DR challenges telco execs with a simple “would you rather” question: would they rather spend the next decade building customer satisfaction and loyalty—or managing datacenter issues? As CEO of TelcoDR, DR argues that objections to the public cloud today mirror the objections to Salesforce in 2000, and points out that naysayers were all proven wrong. Totogi, she says, is “the new ant at the picnic.”