Cerillion Customer Forum – October 2023
The latest Cerillion Customer Forum offered our clients a look-ahead to features of upcoming product releases, plus some great debates and discussions. We look back at two days of telecoms talk and crystal conquering in London.
Our first in-person Customer Forum – since COVID sent us all hunkering down behind our screens – took place earlier this month.
As always, the forum provides our customers with an in-depth look at the newest features of this year’s Cerillion releases, and brings together a wide range of representatives from our customer base around the world to discuss their plans and challenges, and have their say on future developments.
Held in the grandeur of the Institute of Directors (IoD) on London’s Pall Mall, it was great to be able to meet everyone face to face rather than talking to a laptop. Customers from all over the globe flew in, and not even a train strike could stop us!
The forum opened with a brief introduction from Amit McCann, Account Management Director, with updates from the team. This was followed by Marketing Director, Dominic Smith, who gave an overview of the latest telecoms trends, with a strong emphasis on the move from telco to techco, and how Cerillion can help CSPs to navigate this digital journey.
It was then over to two of our customers to present case studies on their companies, their Cerillion journey so far, and their plans for the future. This was a new feature for the in-person forum and, based on the lively discussions it triggered, one that we’ll be doing more of in the future.
Following that, Brian Coombs presented our product roadmap, covering planned and proposed enhancements for the next three major releases of the Cerillion BSS/OSS suite: Cerillion 23.2 (releasing this month), Cerillion 24.1 (April 2024) and Cerillion 24.2 (October 2024), as well as live demonstrations of some of the latest features.
The afternoon then pivoted to the hot topic of the moment – AI, specifically GenAI. Brian demonstrated the latest release of our now AI-powered Enterprise Product Catalogue, with natural language used for product creation, further moving the needle from IT having to be involved with new products to it being a truly business-based process. As expected, there was a very healthy discussion between all participants around the potential of this exciting new technology and what they would like to see in Cerillion to take full advantage of it.
After a quick change, we were then off to the Crystal Maze Experience for a fun evening crawling around the Futuristic Zone, solving puzzles in the Industrial Zone, shooting arrows in the Medieval Zone, and many other weird and wacky tasks, before of course the finale within the Crystal Dome – start the fans please! With only one Account Manager getting locked in, this was considered a big success – we should probably consider rescuing him soon! The evening and the conversations then carried on over drinks and a good Italian meal.
Day two, and Louis Hall, Cerillion CEO, kicked things off with a quick rundown of Cerillion’s broader position in the global market, and our strong recent financial results. Then it was back to Brian to take everyone through the latest iteration of Cerillion’s Digital Vision, an update on the TM Forum Open APIs, and a really interesting panel discussion on the challenges of being fully digital in your processes.
Amit then returned to talk about the options available from Cerillion in the Managed Services department, and the advantages to always being on the latest version of our software, along with Nisha Mirachandani, Head of Support, and Prakash Chovatiya, the project manager in charge of our Evergreen software programme. It was great to hear how happy everyone is with the service they get from these important departments, leaving our customers free to deliver on their business objectives without having to worry about the systems behind it.
The final session of the forum included a few more demos, a run-through of the longer electives list for potential R&D items, and an invitation for our customers to give feedback on the priority of these.
At the end of a good two-day event, we all agreed it had been very worthwhile; customers had made new contacts with other operators, they’d heard from us about our plans, and we’d heard from them about theirs. After a bit of trepidation as to how an in-person forum would play out after so long in the virtual world, we all left looking forward to getting back together at the next one.
Now to rescue our Account Manager from the Crystal Maze!
Get in touch with your Cerillion Account Manager for more information on future Customer Forums. For those who couldn’t make it, a shorter online version will follow soon.