Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:15):
Artificial intelligence is changing the way the world works and is already having an impact on the way that network operators work and how their technology partners plan their portfolios for the future. But just how transformative could a I be on the day-to-Day telco processes and operations? Well, to find out, I'm talking today with Danielle Rios, AKA Telco Dr. And acting CEO of disruptive telecom software developer Totogi. Danielle, great to talk with you again. Thanks very much for joining us. Let's start by looking at the implications of a recent development at the Swedish Buy Now pay later FinTech firm, Klarna, where the CEO recently announced that the company is not only introducing widespread process automation, but also replacing Salesforce and Workday with its own in-house AI applications. What's your take on this particular development?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (01:12):
Well, this was massive news that rock the enterprise software world, not just in Telco specifically, but really in every industry, right? I mean, this is almost a crazy idea. I mean, Klarna is not a small company. They have about 5,000 people. It's about 1.3 billion in revenue. So this isn't a startup with small needs, simple needs. This is a pretty significant company that's decided to replace stalwarts known SaaS companies that are not chump change in the enterprise software world. And they're using AI to rewrite it. And so I think it's huge news if true and if it actually works. I think it's something that telco executives should absolutely be watching to see how a company can take known commercially available enterprise software and replace it with AI generated code. And so I think it's a very exciting development and really going to be watching to see what happens with Klarna and their move off Salesforce and Workday.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:26):
Okay. Now, of course, Klarna is quite a new company. Telco's not so much, and telcos are famous for having tons of legacy enterprise software, most notably for their BSS functions. Do you think telecom operators should follow suit and implement the kind of approach that Klarna just announced?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (02:47):
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely something Telco execs, especially in the IT space should be watching. Lester Thomas several years ago talked about the BSS state that Vodafone has at their over 20 opcos with every Opco running about 180 different BSS vendor modules, homegrown kind of systems. And these systems are known to be highly customized to match the internal processes of a telco and highly integrated with other systems. And so looking at Klarna and using that as just pattern matching on what they're doing, if that starts to work and AI can really generate code for enterprises to use this, gives telcos exactly what they want. They want a BSS system that matches their internal workflows, meets their needs, exactly in a way that they get to control it. They get to move the roadmap forward at their own pace and likely do it at 90% of the cost. And when I look at all the reports that you put out about BSS and that TM Forum does in terms of people really want a modern system, they want it to be cloud native now, they want more AI capabilities, they want it at a reduced cost. They want it really fast. Think AI is really answering a lot of these needs. And again, I think telco execs should be asking themselves, how do we make this happen for our organization? If Klarna can do it, how can we make that happen as well?

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:28):
Okay. Now, we spoke recently during the TM forums DTW Ignite event in Copenhagen where we talked about Totogi's BSS magic. Is this the kind of role you envisage for BSS magic, helping the telcos to go at their own pace with AI and transform their back offices?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (04:49):
Yeah, I think one difference between Klarna and say Telco is Klarna is a software company. And so they have those internal capabilities and clearly Klarna, there's been several stories that have come out in terms of how AI first they're trying to be. And Telco isn't quite there, right? They're not software shops, certainly they're trying to be, they have big IT groups. And so the idea behind BSS magic is really how can we add as Totogi a software company, add our expertise to the problem and assist the telcos in getting to this vision. And so the idea is it's a grand vision. The idea is having business people being able to direct the AI to build the BSS capabilities, extract insights, change the interface, integrate to new systems. And so the idea of BSS magic is to assist a business person, not even a technical person to do those things.

(05:50):
Now, where we are today with the LLMs, I don't think this vision isn't possible, but I had a person from Anthropic on the podcast dropping actually today where he talks about how the chips are advancing about three XA year, so that's nine x improvement on the chips. The LLMs still have a hundred x improvement coming our way. And so Totogi is betting that the LLMs and the ecosystem around the LLMs, the chips and software components continue to improve. We're still in the early innings and we're betting on that trajectory. And so we're building a piece of software that's riding the jagged edge of the AI capabilities to assist the telcos to be able to build their own BSS system. So we're really excited about this vision and every day just the world's changing with AI and we're just riding the wave and it's very exciting.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:53):
Yeah, absolutely. Things are changing so much. I mean, if you turn away for one week, you actually miss so much of what's happening in this sector. Now you demonstrated BSS magic at that TM Forum event. Since Copenhagen, what additional capabilities has the Totogi team delivered?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (07:13):
Yeah, like I said, early innings, and this is a vision that's probably going to take us over the next certainly five years and probably 10 to deliver on. And so we're starting with some basic common patterns that we see around the BSS. And so we see things like new implementations or moving versions from one version to another or swapping systems from an older vision to a new BSS vendor. And so that's a lot of data translations, data migration. So that's a first piece that we've tackled is how do you map the different schemas and move data from X system, from the source system to a target system. The next thing that we're tackling is change requests. There's a lot of change requests around BSS. They range from the very simple, build me a new report that I can access so I can get an insight to the very complex, let's add a schema, let's change the workflow.

(08:15):
Let's introduce the concept of a hierarchy in the data structure. And so we're starting on the easier side of the world there. And so we can take a statement of work. This is an English document that you load into BSS magic, and it will give the project manager a work breakdown structure, maybe the beginnings of some code snippets. It knows it needs to do maybe something for the database. So little simple things to help plan the work. It'll give you an impact analysis of, okay, if you're going to make this change over here in this module, it has these other downstream effects in other areas that you need to think about. And so it's really assisting the human planners and the human workers to design that project and hopefully execute it more successfully, more reliably and in a shorter period of time. And I think the third thing that we're doing is a lot of times you see this little temporary code snippets that are written around the BSS or during the project, right?

(09:16):
Things to make sure the data migrated correctly or run a quick report and give us a readout. And so it's generating these small snippets of code and test cases so that those project workers can get their work done more quickly. And so we're using it in our own business. If you recall, I bought the S-T-L-B-S-S assets about 18 months ago. And so we're using it every day with our own consultants in our own business. And we're seeing our project timelines drop. We're seeing our prices drop and our customers like that. And we're hoping the speed and the reduced price encourages them do more work and get familiar with the ai. And so kind of eating our own dog food as all startups do, and really excited to see that products start to take shape and our people actually start to use it and our customers start to enjoy it.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:13):
So the industry is buzzing with stories every day about how telcos are applying AI. For those telcos interested in trying out the capabilities of BSS magic, how can they get started with Totogi?

Danielle Rios, Totogi (10:26):
Yeah, I think DM me, I am everywhere. Look for me on Twitter or on LinkedIn, send me an email, is probably the best way to get started. And we're really looking for those telcos that have started to work with AI and understand the experimental nature of it. I think what really gets organizations going is not the usual, here's the product and out of the box, it has everything you wanted and you kind of walk out of the store, if you will, and start to use it. This is going to be a very iterative, experimental process. There was this great paper written by some MIT researches about a year ago about the jagged technological edge of ai. And like you mentioned previously, it's changing every day. I mean, you wake up every day and a new startup has come out or someone's gotten a ridiculous amount of funding or someone's really still a demo video and you really have to, our teams go out, we test it.

(11:25):
Is this hype? Is this real? Can we use it in our product? Can we use some ideas from this? So I think the telcos that are really using it know that AI is today, it's covering about 5% of what you want it to do. Tomorrow it'll be seven, then it'll be 10, then it'll be 12. And it's a very kind of iterative up and down, not a straight line, not a step function if you will. And so if your organization is totally into this kind of way of working, I think to Toki is perfect for you. And so the way this would work would be you would get drops probably every week and with release notes and you'd be trying it with your teams and giving us feedback. And so it's very iterative, but that's kind of how AI works, right? It's kind of too much to give it to your teams and expect them to completely change their workflows overnight. And so that's been working for us. It's been working with our customers at SDL. And so if that's you, give me a call, would love to chat with you and share BSS magic with you. Okay,

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (12:30):
Thanks Danielle. Great to talk to you as ever and look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Danielle Rios, Totogi (12:36):
Can't wait to see you again, Ray. Take care.