Welcome to Summer, the season of warmth, sun, straw hats, strawberries and the June 2007 edition of Evolve!

Since our last issue, Cerillion has continued going from strength-to-strength. We have just opened our Global Solutions Centre (GSC) in the Indian city of Pune and the big increase in investment in our core products, together with the augmented capacity the new site will confer, will allow us quickly, and more competitively, to meet the unique demands of each and every one of our customers. We talk to Mark Nicholls, Cerillion CTO, to find out more about the opening of the GSC and another new chapter for Cerillion.

Elsewhere, we all know by now that the global climate is threatened and we all know that the weather is changing all over the world. And, while weather certainly isn't climate  – and it is a gross mistake to confuse the two or to imagine that they are interchangeable – a simple glance out of the nearest window can often be enough to confirm that weather-wise, things ain't what they used to be.

And, with environmental issues so much to the fore, it is hardly surprising that the IT and telecoms industries are also now coming under scrutiny and are beginning to go if not full-on emerald then at least a greenish tinge around the edges.

A recent survey by Forrester Research shows that 85 per cent of European and North American companies now admit that environmental factors are important in planning IT operations, and yet a mere 25 per cent consider the impact of green issues in regard to their purchasing processes. Furthermore, most large companies still have no green policies or standards in place in spite of growing awareness that environmental concerns will, inevitably, impact their future IT operations.

Christopher Mines, a senior vice president at Forrester Research says, "We heard two reasons why green matters: efficiency and corporate responsibility. Most IT decision-makers told us that a green purchase would only happen in the context of cost reduction. These are hard-headed ROI-driven business decisions."

Bearing this in mind, in this edition of Evolve we examine just what the greening of the telecoms industry might involve, especially in terms of electronic billing and on-line self-service.

We also take a look back at the Billing and Information Management Systems (BIMS) event that took place recently at London's Olympia. The 2007 event, re-branded from the original “Billing Systems” (which seemed to have been around forever), included a much broader conference programme to reflect the changes in the BSS landscape of recent years.

Elsewhere we report on Cerillion's decision to join the TeleManagement Forum, the world's leading trade association to be focused fairly and squarely on management issues directly related to the telecoms, media and information industries. By becoming a member of this leading industry body and under the aegis of the TM Forum, Cerillion will now have direct input to the nexus of developments in the billing, order management, provisioning and mediation sectors and will be able to bring our considerable experience to bear in the forums and standards-setting bodies that will help determine the future shape of converged communications. 

The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Green?

Across every industry sector, companies are coming under increasing pressure to adopt environmentally friendly strategies. In line with the current emphasis on conserving resources, reducing wastage and cutting carbon emissions, telecommunications is at the forefront of this revolution in green thinking.

Telecoms operators have long been pioneers in helping businesses from other industry sectors pursue a green agenda. The deployment of robust global wide area networks and connectivity for video-conferencing applications, for example, have both played a key role in reducing the need for business travel and unnecessary face-to-face meetings.

However, operators increasingly need to see the provision of tools to help other industries become greener as just one element of their overall environmental strategy. They must now be focused on making a more direct contribution towards the future well-being of the planet.

Conserving Resources with Electronic Billing

Telecoms operators have already made a start in the direction of greater environmental responsibility, with several key initiatives already well advanced. One of the most significant of these is the work they are doing to promote electronic billing. Historically, this was sold to customers as a potential cost saving. Hard-copy itemised bills typically entail significant print costs. Electronic billing, in contrast, is comparatively cost-effective.

Yet, despite operators actively pushing this benefit, the take-up by customers has so far been slow. One of the likely reasons is that the environmental benefits of the service have until recently not been highlighted by operators.

BT recently began to ‘push' a green angle to electronic billing by encouraging its major customers to convert to its OneBill service in preference to hard-copy paper invoices. BT's announcement was just one sign that, in the future, telcos are likely to give the issue of ‘green billing' a higher priority.

Indeed, most operators today are actively looking at ways in which they are selling the service. With the public better informed about environmental issues than ever, the ‘green' approach is likely to have great resonance with customers in the future.

Operators often see electronic billing as one element within a larger integrated self-service strategy. The concept of self-care for customers is in itself an environmentally friendly one.

Customers can be encouraged to carry out key tasks easily themselves online such as ordering new services or updating personal details, without drawing unduly on the resources of the operator, either in terms of people or of systems. Self-care typically results in reduced customer dependency on large call centres, and, by association, radically reduces the amount of physical equipment required to service customers.

Pre-integration and the Managed Service Model

Operators can make a more direct contribution towards protecting the environment through the type of systems model they choose to implement. Opting for a pre-integrated set of systems when updating IT systems or IT systems architectures, is a good first step.

Adopting such an approach allows operators to significantly reduce the time projects take, together with the amount of travel and resource usage required, especially when compared with the traditional best-of-breed approach, which can involve large integration teams visiting the operator's site every day for months on end.

Operators can take the benefits achieved from pre-integration a stage further by choosing to follow a managed service model, thereby reducing the expense of integration teams flying to different locations to install and maintain new systems. Instead, existing infrastructure at existing managed service centres and existing hardware and software can be used – a much more environmentally sustainable approach.

The benefits achieved will tend to accrue over time with the cumulative efficiencies of re-use. Once an operator has commissioned a service partner to put in place the relevant people, skills, hardware and infrastructure in one of these centres, there is no need to re-invest every time the centre is used. And of course the wide area network connectivity provided by operators enables them to achieve all the benefits associated with hosting services in distant locations and managing them remotely.

In the complete managed and hosted model, this is taken one step further still, with the management of the system typically carried out by a third party from a remote location. The managed service approach does of course reduce, if not completely eliminate, the need for teams of engineers to travel to and from site.

A Green Future Ahead

If they have not already deployed them, most of today's telecoms operators are at least considering implementing electronic billing and online self-service capabilities for their customers. Perhaps they also need to look at how they provide those services to their customers and then they really should also consider the benefits of both the pre-integrated solution and the managed service approach.

Renewable energy providers are often able to sell their services at a premium because they are selling to the ‘green aware consumer'. In the age of telecoms commoditisation, one way operators can justify maintaining their prices is through investment in green initiatives and having green systems in place. Maybe, in the future, operators may even have a legitimate argument for charging a premium when selling electronic billing and self-care to a green audience?

Another distinct possibility is the emergence of niche operators focused entirely on targeting the green consumer. In recent years, the market has seen the arrival of virtual operators who target specific industry segments, encompassing everything from students to sports enthusiasts and from children to coffee-shop users.

Perhaps we are not far away from seeing the first telecoms reseller, which sets up, brands and positions its products purely in the green segment and exclusively targets the green consumer? With the growing business focus on environmental protection, this development is likely to become a reality sooner rather than later. The future is bright, and there's a very good chance that it will also be green.

Dominic Smith
Dominic.Smith@cerillion.com

In this issue of Evolve, Dominic Smith talks to Mark Nicholls, Chief Technical Officer with responsibility for Cerillion's new Global Solutions Centre in Pune, India.

DS: Mark, after many months of preparation, the new office in Pune is now open. Tell me about how Magarpatta City was selected and your involvement in establishing the new Global Solutions Centre (GSC)?

MN: In Pune there is a wealth of property that is being constructed to cater for the IT and outsourcing boom. Magarpatta City was always our first choice from day one of our property hunt. It offers world class facilities and infrastructure, and an opportunity for the Global Solutions Centre to be shoulder to shoulder with tier one players.

Setting up Cerillion's Indian operations has been an immense but rewarding challenge. My involvement over the last 18 months has encompassed all aspects of the project from initially preparing the business case through to overseeing the recruitment of the first staff in the new office. I am delighted with the end result and especially pleased with the effort and commitment put into the project by the team in India.

DS: The inauguration of the new office marks the beginning of a new chapter for Cerillion. What role will this have in the on-going growth of the company?

MN: The GSC will allow Cerillion to compete with market leaders through increased investment into our core products, which will give us the edge in our industry. It will also give us an increased capacity to deliver to the unique demands of each of our customers, and to do this more competitively.

The infrastructure at the GSC will enable us to recruit the best staff from the fastest growing IT market. This ambitious & experienced skill base will allow Cerillion to be at the forefront of technology and processes. Coupled with staff in the UK and Americas , we are now able to offer truly global coverage and support to our clients.

DS: With many global hi-tech companies already present in Pune, what challenges does Cerillion face in building the local team and developing a centre of excellence?

MN: With the infrastructure setup of the GSC completed the real challenges are ahead. Knowledge Transfer, defining efficient intra-company processes, recruitment and retention of staff will be our main challenges in the coming months.

Key individuals from our London headquarters have been seconded to Pune to train and empower our new staff to be self-sufficient and drive value beyond cost savings throughout the organisation. We are also implementing suitable cross-cultural training programs that will build strong partnerships between offices globally.

Using a blend of UK and local experienced staff from market leading companies will allow us to develop structured processes that will drive quality and continue to increase our efficiency. The responsibilities given to the GSC must be aligned to the maturity of the office. It is vital that we create a solid foundation, upon which we can build a strong and efficient operation for the future.

Recruiting and retaining people in this employee's market is one of the biggest challenges. Our offer of challenging work and great career progression is helping us get the best in the market. Our commitment is to get the right staff for the long term that fit into our work ethic and culture, and to not be influenced by the demand of increased headcount and workload. This I believe will build a sound base for the GSC.

DS: So what does all this mean for Cerillion's customers and partners?

MN: As Cerillion grows by increasing its client base, the GSC will enable Cerillion to continue to provide an excellent level of service to customers and partners, whilst at the same time tackling their increasingly complex requirements. The GSC will give us this flexibility through a greater pool of talented staff thus allowing us to deliver rapid time-to-market solutions.

The GSC will enable increased investment into the product suite, quality assurance and processes in a cost effective manner. It will allow us to accelerate our product roadmap and customer-specific development programmes, and be competitive in all geographies. In addition, with support centres in the US , London and India we can now provide round the clock support coverage.

Put simply, the Global Solutions Centre means increased product investment, faster time-to-market and better value for money.

Mark can be contacted at:
T. +44 20 7927 6000
E. mark.nicholls@cerillion.com

Cerillion Event Report: IIR Billing and Information Management Systems (BIMS) 2007, London, 6-8th June

Cerillion recently took part in the re-branded Billing and Information Management Systems (BIMS) event in London . As the industry has evolved since the “Billing Systems” event started 14 years ago, one of the key questions to be addressed is “Where does billing fit in the next-generation telecoms IT landscape?”.

During the conference programme, Cerillion CTO , Mark Nicholls, took part in an interactive panel discussion debating this very topic, alongside leading industry experts from Ericsson and Catalyst IT Partners , and chaired by Danny Dicks, principal analyst at Analysys.

The round-table style discussion covered many different topics that need to be considered in the new generation of business support systems, including:

• There is a concern that services and billing are in danger of becoming too complex for customers to understand. CRM & Billing systems need to be sophisticated to hide the underlying network complexity from the customer, whilst presenting them with easy to use services and transparent charging.
• Though the people responsible for buying and implementing billing systems are still the same in each operator organisation, there is now much more influence from other departments, particularly marketing, who play an important role in specifying the requirements for new service propositions. This can often result in “wish-lists” to cover all possible needs in the future.
• There is a growing belief amongst operators that they need to do everything in real-time, but many of them do not actually know why! All operator RFPs now require some degree of prepaid-postpaid convergence.
• As long as billing is maintained as a separate process, it can be outsourced to allow operators to focus on their core strengths of marketing, selling and managing the customer relationship. Managed services are also well suited to niche content services and the MVNO model.

After a highly interactive debate it is clear that billing is alive and well, and considered to be a strategic weapon in the telecoms operator armoury. However, vendors need to broaden their horizons for the next-generation telecoms IT landscape. As Mark Nicholls summarises: “The future may be bleak for billing-only vendors. The line between BSS and OSS is blurring and vendors need to focus on the complete order to cash cycle to continue to thrive.”

To discuss the billing challenges faced in your organisation and find out how Cerillion's end-to-end pre-integrated solutions can help your business grow, please contact us on: info@cerillion.com

Cerillion Joins the TeleManagement Forum as BSS and OSS Activities Converge

London, UK, 12 th June 2007 – Convergent billing specialist, Cerillion Technologies, today announced its membership of the TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum), the world's leading trade association focused on management of telecom, media & information services.

As a member of the TM Forum, Cerillion will be able to leverage its wealth of expertise and experience across the billing, order management, provisioning and mediation domains, to help shape the future of converged communications.

Cerillion Marketing Director, Dominic Smith comments: “ The recent merging of the GBA (Global Billing Association) into the TM Forum underlines the coming together of BSS and OSS activities and makes the TM Forum the essential industry association driving the next generation of standards and processes for the telecommunications sector.”

“The TeleManagement Forum is very pleased to welcome Cerillion as a member. With their expertise in convergent billing and pre-integrated software solutions, we feel they will make a positive contribution to the work of the TeleManagement Forum and our industry ” , added Aileen Smith, Chief Operating Officer, TeleManagement Forum.

About TeleManagement Forum

The TM Forum is the world's leading trade association focused on management of telecom, media & information services. The TM Forum currently facilitates over 80 technical programs and provides extensive training, conferencing and information services to nearly 600 members in 63 countries. Members include service providers, network operators, software suppliers, equipment suppliers and systems integrators. The organization provides industry benchmarks, guidebooks, process and software frameworks and specific ‘plug and play' standards, which give service providers the direction and specific roadmaps to achieve much greater business efficiency and operational flexibility to move to 21st century ‘lean' processes. For further information regarding the TM Forum, please visit www.tmforum.org