Why Telco’s Needs To Stop Building Faster Horses 

Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” 

It’s one of the most quoted lines in business history because it perfectly captures the trap of incremental thinking. Ford’s brilliance wasn’t that he improved transportation - it was that he reimagined it. He looked beyond the accepted limitations of his time and built something that fundamentally changed the world. 

The uncomfortable truth is that telecoms IT and retail leaders are still breeding faster horses even though the car exists. Consumer expectations have evolved dramatically - yet many of the world’s biggest carriers are still clinging to retail systems designed for an era of cash drawers, paper contracts, and siloed systems. 

The Reality Inside Telecom Retail 

Walk into almost any telecom store today and look behind the counter. You’ll often see a modern, customer-facing shop front - but behind that, a giant desktop PC hiding a chaotic mess of software juggling. 

One system for POS. Another for billing. Another for CRM. Then one for product catalogues, another for digital signing, and maybe a separate portal for promotions or stock transfers. 

Every transaction becomes a swivel-chair marathon between tabs, systems, and manual data re-entry. Staff spend more time fighting the software than serving the customer. Postpaid activations can take 30 minutes or more, and customer frustration builds while employees drown in complexity. 

The sad part? This inefficiency is completely normalised. Retailers and IT departments have come to accept it as “the way telecom works”. 

But that’s the horse. And the industry keeps feeding it. 

The RFP Problem - Mistaking Evolution For Innovation 

Maplewave sees it every year: RFPs from tier-1 carriers that say they want a “next-generation retail system.” Yet, when you look closely, what they actually describe is a slightly shinier version of what they already have - a new POS interface connected to the same tangled back-end ecosystem. Why is this the case? 

Most retail, IT, and business transformation teams are structured around legacy systems, each with their own slice of the architecture - CRM, billing, POS, finance. There are separate budgets, KPIs, and vendors. No one sees the whole journey end-to-end. 

That’s why many RFPs focus on replacing components rather than solving the ecosystem problem. The questions they ask - “Can it integrate with our billing system?” or “Does it support omnichannel?” - assume the existing structure is correct. 

It’s not. 

The very architecture of most telecom retail systems prevents transformation. It’s like asking for a faster horse while ignoring the existence of the automobile factory next door. This leads to endless cycles of integration projects that add more middleware, more cost, and more points of failure. 

Innovation dies in the gap between IT’s comfort zone and Operations’ imagination. 

Until leaders start questioning the structure of their systems - not just their surface features - the cycle will continue. 

The Car Already Exists - It’s Called The “Single Front End” 

The car, in this analogy, is a single-front-end commerce platform. This is far from the traditional POS system. It’s a single, unified front-end platform that integrates directly into billing, CRM, BSS, CPQ, ERP, and product catalogues - firing off all the required processes through one seamless digital journey. 

This isn’t a conceptual future. Our customers are using this today in live deployments across multiple continents. 

When all channels and processes are united, the benefits are immediate: 

• Fast Transactions: Postpaid activations are completed in under five minutes - and prepaid in under two. 

• Web-Based Architecture: Cloud-hosted, works on any device, adheres to modern standards. 

• Integration: Seamless connection to ERP, CRM, and BSS/OSS, enabling single-entry transactions. 

• Performance: Real-time syncing, zero duplication, and automated updates. 

• Customer Experience: One consistent, digital, paper-free process that works across all retail channels. 

The result is a system that doesn’t just do transactions faster, it transforms what a transaction is. 

The Multiplier Effect of Doing It Right 

When you fix the architecture, the benefits multiply across every part of the business. 

Faster transactions aren’t just about speed - they’re about what you can do with the time you save. 

Instead of spending 20 minutes typing and waiting, your salespeople can spend that time educating customers on plans, accessories, and digital services. They can use the freed-up minutes to demo smart home products, teach customers how to use self-service tools, or cross-sell value-added bundles. 

Every stakeholder benefits from a unified system: 

• Operations: Reduced errors, simplified processes, and consistent workflows across all channels. 

• Finance: Lower operating expenses and faster revenue recognition. 

• IT: Fewer change requests, easier upgrades, and dramatically lower maintenance costs. 

• Retail: Improved NPS through faster queues, happier customers, and more empowered staff. 

The real magic happens on the customer side. A five-minute transaction isn’t just efficient - it feels different. It communicates competence, confidence, and care. 

When customers can walk in, activate a new device, sign digitally, and walk out in minutes - without paper, without frustration - that experience becomes your brand. 

 Final Thoughts - Have The Courage to Get Behind the Wheel 

True transformation doesn’t come from upgrading the past. It comes from recognising when the world has already moved on. 

Telecom IT and business leaders face a choice: continue maintaining the stable, feeding the horse, and convincing themselves it’s improving - or get behind the wheel of something that’s built for the future. 

The first option keeps you busy. The second makes you better. 

At Maplewave, we believe the difference between a retailer that evolves and one that leads comes down to having the courage to challenge what’s “normal”.   

Curious if your current POS meets the mark?  Take our free 4-question assessment to see how it compares to best-of-breed solutions: https://maplewave.outgrow.us/telco-pos-assessment 

 Speak soon!