Closing the Profitability Gap in Wholesale Telecom: A Strategic Approach to Efficiency and AI

Are you sure your quoting process isn’t silently draining your margins?

In international wholesale telecom, quoting is often slow, manual, and expensive. Many operators struggle with outdated tools, fragmented systems, and scattered data, leading to an industry-wide quoting hit ratio as low as 5%. That means 95% of the effort brings no revenue. It’s not just inefficiency — it’s a structural leak.

The good news? These losses are preventable. With the right digital foundation, AI can become a true performance lever — but not before. For many operators, it may be time to move beyond ad hoc fixes and start treating quoting and fulfillment like their strategic processes, supported by data, automation, and clear ownership.

Where Revenue Slips Through the Cracks

Manual quoting processes remain one of the biggest cost drivers in international wholesale.

As Krystian Drozd, Head of Communications Business Line at Enxoo, explains:

“For years, international wholesale has struggled with very low hit ratios — around five percent. And this work costs. If operators streamline the quoting process and reduce the time needed to deliver accurate offers, it may translate into a significant financial gain.”

Ewa Jaśkowiak, CCO at Enxoo, adds:

“Manual quoting doesn’t just slow things down — it makes it harder to sell. Sales teams lose time chasing internal approvals instead of focusing on customer needs.”

The quoting chaos often stems from legacy infrastructure: old product models, disconnected sales workflows, and scattered pricing rules. This slows down teams, delays customer responses, and increases the risk of human error, making it even harder to stay profitable in a low-margin business.

Standardization Before AI

Before you layer AI on top, you need clean, structured, and accessible data. That’s why telcos looking to streamline operations and prepare for AI adoption increasingly consider purpose-built platforms like Enxoo for Wholesale — a ready-to-use platform that offers:

• A harmonized product catalog
• Prebuilt quoting and CPQ flows
• Integrated contract management

Georgii Saveliev from Stratus Carta highlights the benefits:

“You can start from scratch, or you can use a solution like Enxoo for Wholesale, with reference product models and processes. Deploy it into your Salesforce org and tweak it to match your requirements.”

This gives operators a head start and shortens time-to-value, creating an AI-ready foundation instead of spending years rebuilding from the ground up.

AI That Solves Real Problems

Once the foundation is in place, AI can automate and accelerate critical steps — understanding incoming requests, configuring the right services, and generating tailored quotes with minimal manual input:

• Email-to-Quote Automation: Email remains the primary communication channel in wholesale, despite the growing use of portals or APIs. In a successful proof of concept, Enxoo implemented Salesforce’s Agentforce — an AI-powered assistant that understands the customer’s request, configures the right service, and generates a quote based on email or Excel input. This eliminates manual work and speeds up response time.
  
• Contract Parsing: Embedded AI in Salesforce Contracts can extract structured data from PDF files or scanned images, turning legacy documents into searchable, actionable assets.

These capabilities are not about futuristic hype — they’re solving today’s pain points with immediate ROI.

Think ROI, Not Just Innovation

Quoting improvements shouldn’t be treated as side initiatives — they’re strategic levers for profitability.

As Krystian Drozd concludes:

“We need to start with data and systems. Do you have a proper product catalog? A proper CPQ? Then build pricing and approvals on top. That’s how you get results.”

With AI as a multiplier, not a band-aid, wholesale operators can:

• Streamline quoting to reduce time-to-quote and lower transaction costs
• Deliver accurate offers faster and improve win rates

Watch the Experts Discuss

In Episode 2 of our AI in Telco: Charting the Course series, Enxoo experts share how telcos use AI to turn quoting chaos into profitability.

▶️ Watch now: AI Strategies for Wholesale Profit Growth

Looking to explore what’s possible for your wholesale operations? Let’s talk.