Connected Commerce: Lessons from Nokia’s digital transformation

In the world of telecommunications, Nokia is making moves. The company, once known for mobile phones, now focuses on complex networking infrastructure, mobile network equipment, along with related services and software for major clients like telecom carriers, enterprises, and governments.

At a recent event, Irina Starikova, Nokia’s Head of Enterprise Applications, discussed Nokia’s order-to-cash (O2C) digital transformation story.

The key O2C processes that support complex technology sales for a B2B company like Nokia, she emphasized, are in order receipt, structuring, and orchestration.

“We’ve had good success digitalizing order intake – our digital storefront. The complexity comes in … once orders are received. For us, it’s critical to be able to process complex customer orders carefully and efficiently. This happens in the digital backend of our O2C processes,” Starikova said.

Nokia’s order-to-cash digital transformation

“When you get customer orders, you want to be able to take them in and acknowledge that you’ve got it. Following that, there are many very important validation and communication steps that enable order structuring and orchestration,” Starikova said.

She outlined Nokia’s process:

1. Compare the customer’s order to the quotes, the signed contract, and other orders already received from them
2. Check with the supply chain and establish a committed date for delivery
3. Communicate with delivery and project services
4. Communicate with the core ERP system

This end-to-end flow, from customer contracts to orders to supply chain to finance and project management, is what Nokia calls their version of connected enterprise.

Order orchestration benefits

The digital order orchestration capability that Nokia implemented using SAP Commerce Cloud is at the heart of making it all work and brings with it many benefits.

These benefits include:

• End-to-end order status visibility, which enables optimization of order processing and delivery
• Improvements in customer experience
• A foundation for agile operating model changes.

G2 Fall 2024 reports: SAP CX solutions haul in 139 leadership rankings

In the latest G2 Fall 2024 Reports, SAP Customer Experience solutions earned 139 Leader positions across multiple market categories.

Lessons in digital transformation 

In telling the Nokia digital transformation story, Starikova shared three key lessons.

1. Balancing customization and standardization are a constant challenge. “Finding the right balance for how much to customize versus how much to stay standardized, that’s being demanded, that requires constant attention,” she cautioned.
2. External expertise is crucial. Starikova stressed the importance of having experts from their software partners at the table and engaging with product teams for support, especially given the complexity of integrations to many other core platforms.
3. Hiring the right competencies is vital.

“Going after the initial seeding of right competencies on the team has been a game-changer. That’s a big lesson learned,” she said, noting how bringing in solution architects with prior experience significantly enhanced quality of their solution architecture and speed of implementation.

These insights aren’t just for Nokia. They’re valuable for any company navigating the complexities of digital transformation and B2B commerce.

Connected commerce for B2B businesses

Nokia’s digital transformation story underscores the importance of integration in B2B commerce, especially when dealing with complex products and services. It’s not just about the front-end experience, but the critical back-end processes that make it all possible.

For companies embarking on their own transformation that includes complex order orchestration, Nokia’s journey offers a roadmap.

The future of B2B is connected, efficient, and adaptable. As Nokia has shown, even with the complexity of 5G networks and IoT platforms, digital transformation isn’t only possible, but essential. It’s the key to delivering the innovative solutions our world needs, one seamless order at a time.

 

---