Getting the customer involved and evolved

Welcome to the Summer issue of Evolve. This is the time of year when we're getting out our buckets and spades and preparing excitedly for our summer holiday at the beach.

But even as I write that, I realise that in many ways I'm painting a picture from the past. It's a cliché, that old beach, bucket and spade nirvana I've summoned up there. In reality our lives are no longer compartmentalised in that particular way. We don't ALL leave work and go to the beach for the same two weeks. Not any more.

And the fact is that when we do go on holiday, wherever it is, we'll be taking our mobile phones and even our laptops with us to stay in touch. So there's no more 'getting away from it all' either.

Even worse, just to make the cliché work in a limited way, I've had to ignore the fact that all of you in the southern hemisphere are still doggedly working through the dull months of winter in expectation of the spring ahead.

The fact is that for whatever reason, partly technological, partly just a change in the culture, partly because we've gone 'global', those old 'life compartments' have broken down and our activities and expectations now tend to mash themselves across what used to be distinct boundaries of home and work, work and leisure, night and day, summer and winter.

In the process we're all cross-fertilising from one sphere to the next. And as we point out in 'The Changing Face of Customer Management' in this issue, social networking in our private lives just changes our expectations in other spheres.

Companies who understand that, and understand how social networking might be harnessed to change the rules of engagement between providers and customers, can only stand to gain. There are huge opportunities in terms of sticky customer engagement, generating feedback, organising self-help networks and crowd-sourcing new ideas.

In fact, building customer involvement into service design and management might solve a lot of service provider problems. According to Ari Banerjee, Senior Analyst at Heavy Reading and our interviewee, one of the biggest changes in the operator sector has been the rise in the number of services which then have to be managed. Ari talks about a service 'explosion' and he says the emergence of the 'over the top' players such as Apple, Google, Joost, etc, means that service provider's BSS and OSS systems have to become much more dynamic if they are to compete effectively. It has to be about the customer experience, he says.

We also bring you news of the latest Cerillion win with Columbus Communications Inc., a leading Cable MSO, which has signed a multi-million dollar deal for the Revenue Manager, CRM Plus, Service Manager, Output Streamer and Web Self-Care modules of the Cerillion pre-integrated suite.

Enjoy the summer, and look out for next issue of Evolve hitting your inbox in the autumn.

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The Changing Face of Customer Management

Customer management has come a long way from the days of plain old 'CRM'. It is no longer about call centres and listening to an endless loop of 80s pop music whilst in the queue, but has become a rich multi-channel user experience with customers expecting to be able to access instant support and administer their own accounts through a multitude of different technologies and touch points.

Whether it's online banking and payments, or mobile check-in on your way to the airport, consumers now expect to be able to access their services instantaneously from wherever they are and using whatever technology they happen to have available at the time. In the same way that operators are striving to remove service 'silos' in their back office systems, customers are demanding the same self-service capabilities through all channels and it is no longer acceptable to have to switch between applications or devices to manage a different service.

Social Networking

For most of us, the advent of social networking has meant a sea change in the way we communicate with each other, both at home and in the work environment. The medium we use for social networking has also evolved quickly to meet this changing paradigm. Online social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn and micro-blogging services such as Twitter are now available on multiple platforms, from their roots on the web browser through to devices such as mobile phones and directly on televisions.

This ability to communicate in the 'web 2.0' and social networking space has given the consumer an expectation of being able to access other services with the same fluidity and ease of access to information in the telecommunications space. This gives operators both a challenge and an opportunity; the challenge in meeting the demands of the customer, but also the opportunity to embrace social networking and create value through communities of like-minded people.

Only recently I had cause to contact my service provider, Vodafone, about a problem with their email service. Not wanting the hassle of phoning the call centre, I sent a 'Tweet' to @VodafoneUK and within half an hour or so, I had my response. It was not a conclusive answer, but pointed me to a specific online forum where I could post a more detailed question which would be picked up by one of the experts. Sure enough, 1 hour later I had my answer and the problem was solved.

This was quite a different experience compared with the usual call centre service and in many ways goes against the traditional approach of trying to resolve all issues on the first call. Rather than taking 15 minutes in one call to the call centre to resolve my issue and probably needing to speak to 2 or 3 different people each time re-explaining the problem, I had several short bursts of interaction that fitted into my busy day. And the surprising thing was that the final solution was not from Vodafone customer services, but from a fellow forum 'expert' user.

Super-Consumers

These days, many consumers are what you might call 'tech savvy' and like to experiment with their smartphones and all the latest services. But there is also a rapidly growing band of 'super-consumers' who are far more tech-savvy than most operators, using multiple different devices and really pushing the boundaries of what applications and services were designed for. If operators can tap into this expertise and use them to help solve the problems of other users and become advocates of their services then this will become a really powerful marketing tool.

Some users are happy with the kudos of being a recognised 'expert' in their particular community, whereas others may need some sort of incentive to become more involved such as loyalty points or special bonuses and discounts. One mobile service provider who has taken this concept a step further is giffgaff who actually rewards its customers twice a year in the form of a cash payment for promoting its services and helping resolve the technical problems of others.

Customer-Focused

Of course this change in service channels means a whole new set of issues that need to be considered by the operators and new processes to be developed. In the 'old world' of customer services, if a customer was on the receiving end of poor customer service or even insulted over the phone by a customer services representative, it would occasionally make it into the newspapers if the customer sold their story. With social networking and online forums this information is immediately visible on the world wide web and can be re-posted to millions within a matter of minutes. In fact, earlier this year Vodafone themselves had to suspend a disgruntled employee who posted an 'obscene' tweet from the official Vodafone Twitter account.

However there's no way back from this now. If today's operators don't embrace the changing face of customer management, then smarter, more customer-focussed service providers will. And operators will be pushing themselves further towards to the dumb-pipe status so many of them are so desperate to avoid.

Nevertheless, these new channels do also present a great opportunity to engage with their customers, promote new services, test out new product ideas and above all listen to what customers are saying. Jimi Hendrix said that 'Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens' and operators would be very wise to listen to their customers now.

Dominic Smith
Dominic.Smith@cerillion.com

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Interview with Ari Banerjee

In this issue of Evolve, Dominic Smith talks to Ari Banerjee, Senior Analyst at Heavy Reading, about the latest trends in the BSS / OSS industry and where service providers should be focusing their investments.

Ari Banerjee Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading   Ari Banerjee focuses on service provider IT, including all aspects of telecom software research. Prior to joining Heavy Reading, Ari was the VP of Next Generation Software Systems at Yankee Group, leading and overseeing all aspects of their telecom software research. He also worked for the billing and customer care division at Lucent Technologies, and subsequently the global software and services group at CSG Systems. Ari holds a B.E. in electronics and communications from Manipal Institute of Technology in India and an M.S. in computer information systems from Bentley College. He also holds an M.B.A. from the University of Glasgow Business School.

DS: Hi Ari, and welcome to Evolve. Tell me about Heavy Reading and your areas of research?

AB: Heavy Reading is part of the United Business Media / Techweb conglomerate. We are the research arm of UBM with the media side of the business being Light Reading. Also part of UBM is Pyramid Research, which provides country specific analyst research, so we can really get down to country specific data as and when needed.

The combination of Heavy Reading and Pyramid Research provides a complementary mix with technology specific expertise and country specific knowledge combining perfectly, and through Light Reading we can also provide the media activities such as webinars and industry events for example.

Within the group we have a set of very strong analysts with typically at least 10 years experience and we are working closely with the service providers. My core areas of focus include all aspects of BSS, OSS, SDP, digital commerce, revenue assurance, service assurance, and elements that span both the infrastructure and network software markets, such as data warehousing, analytics, and business intelligence.

DS: You've been around the BSS/OSS industry for many years, how do you think it has changed in the past decade?

AB: One of the biggest things has been the consolidation in the market, with lots of M&A activities on both the service provider and vendor sides. We are typically seeing the bigger companies getting bigger, but there are also the medium sized BSS/OSS vendors and niche providers who have survived and are very highly respected too.

There is also a fundamental change on the technology side, with some of the biggest areas now being the need for real-time transaction management and having better customer insight. Historically, service providers would only have to manage a small number of services and their back office systems were very static. Now there is a service explosion, and the emergence of the 'over the top' players such as Apple, Google, Joost, etc, means that service provider's BSS and OSS systems have to become much more dynamic, and it has to be about the customer experience.

Most service providers have only paid lip service to the 'customer experience' over the past decade, but it is really becoming a reality today. Any sort of technology that enhances the customer experience is really being encouraged by the service providers today.

DS: Telecoms is very much a global market – what differences do you see by region and by telecoms technology?

AB: It is very hard for a service provider today to just be a local player without considering what happens when their customers travel. The expectation of connectivity wherever people are means that it's critical for wireless providers to ensure they have the right peering and roaming partnerships in place. And policy management, bandwidth management and pricing management are all things that are becoming very important in order to cope with the strains of more and more smartphones and wireless data users.

Service providers are also not just satisfied with being a player or leader in their own market, they want to go further. One way is through partnerships, the other way is to have their own access, so lots of M&A is happening in international markets. Recently, if you look at Asia, Bharti Airtel, for example, was doing very well in India and now you see them moving into Africa through the Zain merger. We've obviously seen this before with the likes of Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica, etc but its no longer the preserve of a handful of large European operators.

For independent service providers, the key is to really provide a super customer experience, play to their local strengths, and be really agile and able to provide aggressive price plans and custom plans. Being independent means that they really need effective supporting systems, such as intelligent interconnect platforms, so that they can figure out who is providing what price points so that calls can be routed accordingly. We all know that 1 cent here and there can make a big difference to the bottom line. The software platform plays a really important role to enable these providers to be competitive and become more customer-centric.

Also, if you think about some markets where service providers are becoming banks, for example, Near Field Communications (NFC), mobile commerce, mobile money, a lot of that is being handled by the local independent mobile operators. That's a big way of creating customer stickiness, and it's about knowing your customers better and having nimble back office systems that support these goals.

DS: What are the major trends you are seeing now? Is the future in the clouds, or are Machine-to-Machine services going to finally fulfil their promise?

AB: Across the globe, I'm not seeing cloud as being the killer app or killer service. There's a lot of discussion around cloud monetisation and some of this makes sense, but cloud is a little bit over-hyped. Obviously we've seen AT&T, Telefonica and some other service providers investing a lot of money in their cloud infrastructure, but we are still a couple of years away from cloud really bringing a lot of revenue to the leading service providers. And there are a lot of service providers who are still in evaluation mode and yet to decide on a cloud strategy.

Similarly, M2M has potential, but 2010 is still very early and I don't think this will bring a lot of money to service providers in the next couple years. It will become important when looking at things like intelligent homes, security and health applications. But it is really dependent on the growth in embedded wireless modules within a wide range of household items and consumer electronics. Lots more devices means lots more transactions and that means lots more opportunity for service providers. And it's going to increase exponentially going forward.

With global interest in applications such as smart metering, utility computing etc the role of telco goes beyond connectivity to delivering to the utility an integrated dashboard that allows the utility to aggregate and monitor consumption as well as remotely control the meters in real-time. In this context some of the cost structures and paradigms typically associated with M2M will become very relevant.

I actually think we need to look at reality. Mobile broadband, mobile internet and mixed-model services – for example video conferencing, telepresence, high definition services and so on. These are the reality and these are things that operators are working hard towards now. In addition, providing services targeted at enterprise customers and providing the controls around use of services whilst roaming are all critical areas of focus.

You also have to remember that in many parts of the world, wired broadband does not exist and mobile broadband is the only broadband. The top mobile internet browsing countries are Asian countries and Russia/CIS, and not Western Europe and North America as you may expect, and mobile broadband in most cases will be based on prepaid.

DS: Where are we with 4G and what other emerging technologies or services do we need to be keeping an eye on?

AB: If we look at where we are today, except for a few pockets where '4G' has been launched, most operators are in the process of evolution towards 4G. So they are adopting HSPA, HSPA+ and they are saying that they will slowly move to 4G. They are looking to leverage the significant investments that have already been made in 3G, and then steadily provide a faster and better mobile broadband experience and it will take a few years to complete the transition to 4G.

The business model for 4G is still around connectivity and it's going to be 5 years or more before 4G really reaches any sort of critical mass. On top of mobile broadband, there will be a growth in video-based services and in particular those with an optimised quality of experience. This will include video conferencing, telepresence, and find-me or follow-me services.

DS: And how do you see the BSS/OSS vendor landscape?

AB: An interesting development is that it appears the best-of-breed model is coming back into fashion. Perhaps not to the same extent as it was in the mid 90s where service providers would work with 5 or 6 vendors, but at the same time they don't want a single vendor providing the whole solution. I am hearing overwhelmingly from service providers that many of them cannot afford the full best-of-suite from the very large vendors with lots of systems integration effort. So we are likely to see 2 or 3 vendors being asked to work together to provide complete solutions, rather than service providers being locked-in to one vendor for all solutions.

There are some very important things that the BSS/OSS vendors need to be providing. From a core BSS standpoint, I think the real-time usage management, transaction management and the infrastructure to provide convergent billing becomes very important. The focus needs to be on prepaid, but not just voice, we are talking about prepaid broadband and all these kinds of services. The ability to support multiple wallets, provide real-time offers and promotions, loyalty points and so on becomes very important. At the bottom line, we could summarise these needs as having a policy management mechanism, being able to provide convergent billing, and being able to provide prepaid in a scalable way. There will be a blurring of lines between postpaid and prepaid, and real-time mediation is going to become very important here, helping to bridge the gap. Historically the prepaid market was owned by the Network Equipment Providers and going forward we will see much more involvement from the IT / Billing guys.

Also in the BSS area, wholesale billing will become very important. In some markets we are seeing governments getting involved in providing the infrastructure, and then asking other players to come and provide services on top of that. So, having an infrastructure that can manage wholesale and retail relationships on the same support system will become very important.

On the OSS side, I think streamlined fulfilment becomes very important - automating processes and helping to reduce call centre rates. And for 4G type services, RF planning and capacity management really needs to be much more integrated with service fulfilment. Overall, service assurance and service management play a critical role in the customer experience. The other key OSS area is order management. With self-service and multi-channel ordering the order management platform really needs to be fully integrated end-to-end from order capture and sales through to the fulfilment and activation.

A centralised product / service / resource catalogue which spans BSS / OSS will also be critical. Now it's not just about service providers' own products, it's about service delivery platforms, media content and app stores. The challenge is how do you bring that into the mix alongside legacy catalogues and enable the product management teams to package and provide commercial offers in a robust and straightforward way.

DS: And finally, if Operators are to invest in one major BSS/OSS area this year, what would be your recommendation?

AB: From a BSS standpoint, it has to be convergent charging and being able to handle transactions in real-time. If service providers still have separate legacy prepaid and postpaid infrastructure, then moving to a real-time convergent architecture will be critical. They might not need it straight away, but they really need to put this in place quickly to prepare them for the future.

And for OSS, I would recommend a focus on streamlining the end-to-end order management process and improving service assurance as these will both have a direct and positive effect on the customer experience.

DS: Ari, thank you very much for talking to Evolve.

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Columbus Communications Inc. Selects Cerillion for Multi-site Cable Billing Solution

London, 21st June 2010 – Cerillion Technologies, a leading provider of next generation customer management systems, today announced a multi-million dollar contract with Columbus Communications Inc., a leading Cable MSO, to support its operations across multiple countries. Cerillion will implement the Revenue Manager, CRM Plus, Service Manager, Output Streamer and Web Self-Care modules from its pre-integrated product suite, and perform migration from Columbus' legacy systems.

The initial five-year agreement will see Cerillion's convergent CRM & Billing solution installed in the Columbus data centre in Curacao to support CATV, High Speed Data (HSD) and Voice services for its operations in Curacao.

The Cerillion system will help Columbus to provide innovative product bundles to its customers and to rapidly introduce new services, including the launch of prepay video. In addition, pre-integration of CRM processes with the back-office billing functions will enhance the overall customer experience and enable the highest levels of revenue assurance.

"We believe Cerillion will enhance Columbus' ability to meet our customer needs as we deploy innovative new technologies and services in the highly competitive markets we exist in and expand to" says Brendan Paddick, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Columbus Communications, Inc.

"Cerillion's ability to provide a comprehensive view of the customer, coupled with an agnostic view of the network, provides Columbus Communications' retail business units with a highly flexible platform for servicing any customer on any service" says Andre Foster, Vice President of Information Technology, Columbus Communications, Inc.

"Cerillion is delighted to be working with Columbus on this critical transformation project" commented Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies. "Columbus has demonstrated its ability to penetrate its existing markets with a compelling service bundle and we look forward to being a partner as Columbus continues to expand across the CALA region."

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