FEATURES BSS/OSS

The right product offering – right from the start

How can African operators make the most of business support systems and revenue assurance? As Salman Tariq of Optiva, a provider of revenue management software, tells Vaughan O’Grady, monetisation and BSS platforms can play a pivotal role in helping operators to differentiate their services – and will be even more effective as networks evolve.

WHAT CHALLENGES DO business support services (BSS) solve and why are they relevant to Africa? First of all, as Salman Tariq, VP Sales Middle East and Africa, Optiva, a provider of mission-critical, cloud-native revenue management software for the telecommunications industry, pointed out, sub-Saharan Africa is large, diverse and one of the highest-growth regions for telecom services.

He added, “Having said that, most markets in this region are still in the developing phase, and their needs vary from the more mature and saturated markets. 5G enterprise opportunities are exciting as a future prospect, but most developing markets in this region are still looking to solve some fundamental problems.”

One thing is clear that is GDP per capita on the continent is low. This, in turn means that telecom service providers in this region operate on very thin margins. A significant segment of the consumer market is highly costconscious, has low ARPU, does its telco purchasing daily, sometimes even hourly and is an immediate churn risk if their experience is negative.

Thus, said Tariq, “Customer trust, cost transparency, price plan competitiveness and bill shock prevention are key issues that drive customer buying behaviours. With limited disposable income, consumer trust and revenue predictability are intimately connected for these markets.”

Monetisation and BSS platforms play a pivotal role in solving these challenges but, as Tariq explains, they must be able to offer what this market needs. “They need to have the capability to demystify the complex products and promotions hierarchy into a comprehensible personalised value, alert customers before they are expected to run out, recommend the best top-up option to continue uninterrupted – and do it while understanding the behaviour and preferences of each individual.”

There is an issue that makes this a more challenging task: smartphones enabled by 3G and 4G technologies. These continue to use a lot of background data, which most consumers do not easily comprehend. This puts the onus on their telco provider to ensure end-to-end transparency. “If there is a perceived notion that my provider is ‘taking’ my money, this segment will not only stop purchasing, but this could also cause significant reputational damage,” said Tariq.

He continued, “At Optiva, we ensure that while we continue to invest in product innovation for the future, we also address the critical business problems of developing markets. Our platforms are enabled with advanced accounting algorithms, flexible modelling for customer notifications and alerts to enable service providers to win the trust and wallets of their customers.”

As you might guess, reliability and accuracy are key factors for monetisation systems. It is not unusual for operators in Africa to experience a storm of complaints at their call centres due to a few unaccounted bytes of data. As Tariq pointed out, “Imagine servicing that problem with a call to a CSR agent that costs multiple times more — not to mention the reputational damage such situations can cause!” With extremely tight operating margins, the room for error is almost zero, and operators have to get it right first time.

Tariq explained that advanced BSS systems can help operators tackle that issue in multiple ways. They can help drive more revenue predictability and capitalise on the short upsell windows by detecting and acting on them. They can also provide strong selfservice capabilities that enhance customer satisfaction and stickiness and reduce the costs of managing customers.

“Additionally,” he said, “to keep the revenue per transaction aligned to the costs, BSS systems are expected to pre-empt user behaviour. This is achieved by using advanced machine learning techniques and having the ability to vary transaction load dynamically based on the revenue expectation from the product.”

Such innovative techniques are likely to become even more relevant in the future with 5G, where mass IoT use cases are expected to add massive transaction load on the platforms – but not necessarily proportional revenue increases.

With extremely tight operating margins, the room for error is almost zero, and operators have to get it right first time.

Mobile money could be a good fit for monetisation platforms.

Photo of Safaricom's M-Pesa service in Nairobi, Kenya: Vodafone Group