From Quote to Activation: Cable’s New Enterprise Battleground

By Mike Woods, EVP & President of Communications, Media and Technology, CSG

The cable industry is operating in a more competitive environment than it has faced in years. Telco, fiber and satellite providers are all competing aggressively for market share, while pricing pressure and customer churn continue to challenge traditional growth models. As a result, cable operators are shifting attention to the enterprise, where success is shaped less by network performance alone, and more by the ability to configure, price, quote (CPQ) and activate complex deals with speed and precision.

In mature telecom markets like China, enterprise use cases already account for a far greater share of network complexity and value creation. In 2026, we’ll see the North American market trend in the same direction, driven by more intricate connectivity needs, mobility requirements and integrated service expectations across businesses of all sizes. 

The enterprise opportunity is clear. The open question is whether cable operators can modernize CPQ and order management fast enough to capture it.

Mike Woods

What Enterprise Buyers Want: Speed, Simplicity, Services 

Just as consumers expect fast, seamless digital experiences, enterprise buyers expect top speed and accuracy in pricing, quoting and delivery when buying critical communications services. Even a strong product offering will lose momentum and could stall completely if it takes weeks to quote, revise and activate. 

Enterprise customers are also looking for simplicity in how they buy and manage services. They want fewer handoffs, clearer commercial experiences and more responsiveness when requirements change.

But unlike residential customers, enterprise buyers are not looking only for fixed connectivity. To reduce their internal administrative burden, enterprise leaders are increasingly seeking broader solutions that combine mobile services, devices, employee offerings, security capabilities and software layers in a bundled commercial package.

These expectations elevate the importance of CPQ and order management from operational tools to core enablers of execution. Enterprise buyers may experience a single proposal and a single point of contact, but behind the scenes, operators still need to orchestrate complex combinations of services, partners and contract terms without slowing the deal.

The recent Charter/Comcast–T-Mobile MVNO deal for business customers reflects the industry’s push toward broader, more converged enterprise connectivity portfolios. Innovative partnerships like this expand what a single provider can offer, but they also introduce additional product, pricing and contractual complexity. Without a modern CPQ and order management layer that can handle both owned and partner services, operators will struggle to translate these strategic moves into scalable enterprise revenue.

At the same time, enterprise buyers increasingly expect a consolidated experience: one deal, one price, one provider that covers a broad range of needs. And they won’t tolerate weeks of back-and-forth to make it real. To unlock value in the enterprise market, operators must be able to combine multiple services into a single, tailored, coherent deal, then quote those services together in real time with clear pricing and terms, and revise agreements quickly as customer needs evolve. 

For many organizations, this moment represents a clear opportunity. As complexity increases, capabilities that look strong on paper often become harder to operationalize in practice. This is where purpose-built CPQ and order management move from back-office tooling to a frontline role that directly influences growth. Closing the gap between commercial ambition and execution speed is one of the most meaningful ways cable operators can strengthen their enterprise position.

Where Enterprise Deals Are Won or Lost: Inside the Operator

Enterprise deals rarely fail because of a lack of appeal or service quality. They fail because of internal friction that slows everything down.

In many cable environments, quoting still relies heavily on manual, spreadsheet-driven processes. It is not uncommon for sales teams to wait days while teams assemble pricing, often pulling together 10 or more spreadsheets to price a single enterprise deal.

When customers request changes or revisions, sales teams are usually unable to respond in real time. Instead, they have to re-initiate the same disjointed workflows, adding days or even weeks to the sales cycle. 

Throughout this process, sales teams are expected to manage coordination and handoffs across siloed departments, adding further hurdles, delays and opportunities for error. 

Operators must eliminate the added complexity from the equation. In doing so, they not only need to remove operational obstacles throughout the workflow, but also keep salespeople focused on building trusted relationships with the customer and pursuing more ambitious deals. 

Modern CPQ was designed to support this by establishing a single source of truth for products, pricing and configuration rules. It enables sales teams to generate accurate quotes in real time, without endless email chains, manual approvals or custom spreadsheets.

From Quote to Activation: The Efficiency Advantage

From the customer’s perspective, the transition from quote to activation is where confidence is either reinforced or tested. Enterprise buyers operate on tight timelines, evaluating multiple vendors in parallel, so speed and responsiveness during quote and revision cycles become essential for partnership. 

This process shapes the customer’s view of a provider’s reliability and execution discipline. Operators that move smoothly from agreement to delivery signal operational maturity, while those that struggle risk being perceived as too difficult to do business with, regardless of the quality of their service, network or portfolio.

Strong linkage between quoting, ordering and activation also reduces downstream risk. When pricing terms, discounts and scope changes flow cleanly through the lifecycle, operators minimize rework, reduce revenue leakage and avoid corrective conversations later. 

Visibility across systems is key to catching inconsistencies early, before they become costly or customer-facing issues. Unified data, supported by AI where it makes practical sense, can help operators identify issues sooner and move more predictably from quote to live service. The goal is not automation for its own sake, but greater confidence in what is sold is what gets delivered on the timeline the customer expects.

Few operators have fully mastered this end-to-end execution, creating an enormous opportunity for those who can turn accurate quoting to fast, reliable activation on timelines measured in days rather than weeks.

Turning Operational Execution into a Competitive Advantage

Quoting and order management are no longer secondary operational functions in the cable industry. They sit at the intersection of growth, customer experience and execution.

As enterprise services become a larger share of future revenue, operators that simplify how they sell, revise and activate complex deals will stand apart. The opportunity is not about adding more tools, but about reducing friction, increasing visibility across the quote-to-activation journey and giving both sales teams and customers confidence in the outcome.

In a market where products and pricing look increasingly similar, advantage will belong to operators that treat operational execution as a strategic capability. Those that invest now in faster, more reliable CPQ and order management processes will be best positioned to win enterprise trust, shorten sales cycles and turn complexity into a repeatable engine for growth.

Mike Woods is President of Communications, Media and Technology at CSG, where he is responsible for driving revenue, business development, product management, and account management for CSG’s largest customers in North America. Since joining CSG in March 2018, Mr. Woods has served as Senior Vice President, Broadband, Cable, and Satellite (January 2023-January 2024), Senior Vice President and General Manager, Communications, Design and Delivery (March 2022-December 2023), Vice President, Output Solutions (January 2021-March 2022) and Executive Director, Customer Business Executive (March 2018-December 2020). Previously, he held leadership roles at Business Ink, prior to its acquisition by CSG, in addition to finance and commercial roles at Shell plc., Mr. Woods holds a BS in Business Administration and a BA in History from the University of Colorado at Boulder as well as an MBA from Rice University, where he was a Jones Scholar.