TMT sector emerging as catalyst for India’s digital progress: KPMG

To sustain the unintended but welcome impetus to technology media and telecom (TMT) sector from the COVID-19 pandemic, companies need to transform their business models and develop significant — not incremental — new revenue streams, according to a new study released on Tuesday.

Organisations need to significantly invest in infrastructure and technological advancements, supplemented by adequate government support, said the report titled ‘TMT Industry CEO Outlook: Smart. Secure. Sustainable’ at India Mobile Congress 2020. Alongside, the government needs to swiftly implement recent schemes and provide more transparency to boost market confidence, it said.

Major risk factors impeding the growth of TMT sector are related to cybersecurity, supply chain, regulatory, financial stress and emerging technologies. Supply chain uncertainty has impacted companies across the world forcing a rethink of global production network design.

The report said current environment presents an opportunity for India to showcase itself as a promising alternative manufacturing hub for global players.

The risk emanating from the pace of disruption caused by emerging technologies is a concern. At the same time, maintaining the current state and not adopting these technologies is no longer an option.

Cybersecurity threats due to continuous remote working need to be handled with robust risk management policies. This will be critical in supporting regulatory requirements and building customer trust.

Also, according to the report, the long-pending financial and regulatory hurdles need to be resolved with a collaborative approach between the government and private players.

Businesses everywhere require a new array of technology solutions to optimise business processes, enhance supply chain visibility and anticipate bottlenecks.

In response, the TMT sector needs to evolve its business models and engage in active collaboration to provide converged technology and communication solutions to customers.

As the TMT organisations themselves re-focus on driving digital transformation, they also need to adapt to the evolving digital first customer behaviour to deliver enhanced customer experience and drive value.

Given the current financial instability of the telecom industry in India, telecom operators need to adopt ways to trim their high capital expenditure by undertaking infrastructure sharing and leasing activities.

Due to an increase in the penetration of smart devices, wireless technologies and advanced computing technologies across industries, telecom companies will have to closely align with IT companies to develop the required technological infrastructure.

While telecom players have a continued focus on network virtualisation and cloudification, additional investment will be required to enhance their data centre management and edge computing capabilities.

These upgrades will assist them in enabling the use cases and applications that require low latency and high bandwidth, said the report.

Emerging technologies provide an array of solutions to re-mould business and operating models across industries.

However, enterprises will need to assess the relevance of emerging technology projects against performance metrics to prioritise future investments.