VanillaPlus Magazine April-May 2012 Edition by Prestige Media

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ISSN 1745-1736 DRIVING

PROFITS

FOR

COMMUNICATION

SERVICE

PROVIDERS

▼

TALKING HEADS Accanto chief executive says CSPs are rising to customer service assurance challenge

UNIFIED BSS How can all the systems provide a single view?

OPERATOR INTERVIEW Telus’ Customers First Culture leader shares experience ▼

THE J.O.K.E.

MAKE A GIFT OUT OF A CRISIS

▼

is on us when it comes to customer service

What can we learn from GiffGaff's open approach?

PLUS!

PLUS Contracts, Products, People and Market News • Inside NetCracker's US$449m Convergys acquisition • The Contract Hot List • Diary • Read the latest BSS & OSS News online now at www.vanillaplus.com

Together, Telcordia and Ericsson can help you realize value through unparalleled efďŹ ciency and customer experience with the industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foremost capability in operations and business support systems. Because perfect moments begin with an outstanding experience. ericsson.com/telcordia

A new name, a new look, a new direction. CSG and Intec are now CSG International. With our recent acquisiƟon of Intec, CSG InternaƟonal is now a globally focused leader in helping clients ĂĐĐĞůĞƌĂƚĞ ďƵƐŝŶĞƐƐ ʹ ĂŶǇǁŚĞƌĞ͘ At the core of our union is a transformaƟonal partnership. As a combined enƟty, we now oīer our clients an unprecedented set of business support soluƟons and services to help them capitalize on dynamic market changes and opportuniƟes. With more than 25 years of experience, and serving over 500 customers in 24 countries, CSG is even beƩer posiƟoned to help businesses accurately capture, manage, generate and opƟmize revenue, strengthen customer relaƟonships, and exploit emerging opportuniƟes. We are commiƩed to long term partnership with our customers and believe collaboraƟon and communicaƟon are an integral part of helping our clients achieve success. We invite you to proĮt from our experience. Visit us at: www.csgi.com

IN THIS ISSUE

TALKING HEADS Michele Campriani, CEO of Accanto Systems

EDITOR’S COMMENT George Malim muses on the Just OK Experience

COMPANY NEWS Inside NetCracker’s US$449m Convergys Information Management acquisition

PRODUCT NEWS cVidya releases enhanced bypass fraud detection module

CONTRACT NEWS Kapsch CarrierCom and Openet to deploy policy at Telekom Austria Group

MARKET NEWS Aircom buys Symena, Swisscom Ventures invests in Matrixx Software

PEOPLE NEWS NSN appoints Ken Wirth, Jason Bandy assesses how M&A can create career opportunities

THE CONTRACT HOT LIST VanillaPlus’s round up of the major contracts recently announced worldwide

TALKING HEADS Michele Campriani, CEO of Accanto Systems, says CSPs are rising to the challenges of delivering high quality user experiences in the 4G world

REVENUE ASSURANCE Terri Haney explores how CSPs can build business models for optimum revenue performance

POLICY MANAGEMENT Dennis Landscheidt explains how policy management is a monetisation enabler

UNIFIED BSS CSPs are seeking a single view of their BSS but can vendors deliver, asks George Malim?

EXPERT OPINION: BSS FOR UBIQUITOUS DELIVERY Gabriel Matsliach says its time CSPs adopted a modern approach to BSS

DIARY Where to go and what to see

CLOCKING OFF! Nick Booth looks at how one MVNO is making a virtue out of a crisis

REVENUE ASSURANCE

20 EXPERT OPINION: BSS FOR UBIQUITOUS DELIVERY

With solutions deployed to 180 customers in over 60 countries, Accanto Systems is a leading supplier of advanced Customer Service Assurance and troubleshooting solutions to communications service providers. Accanto’s probe-based Customer Service Assurance solutions provide in-depth monitoring, analysis and troubleshooting capabilities, helping operators overcome the massive challenges associated with migration to converged, next-generation telecom architectures. Accanto’s solutions can be utilised by any level of the organisation, from the NOC to marketing, and scale easily for use by new technicians all the way to technical experts. www.accantosystems.com

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

EDITORIAL ADVISORS

The JOKE’s on us when it comes to CEM

George Malim, Editor: VanillaPlus

Just as the original Jeep off road vehicle was said by troops to be an acronym of Just Enough Essential Parts, and concepts of just-in-time – or JIT – manufacturing have revolutionised the cost base of factory operations, I’m wondering if telecoms operators are having a JOKE. That’s a new acronym for Just OK Experience.

After all, if the OTTs are generating the lion’s share of the profits, why should operators, in spite of their service excellence hyperbole, do more than the bare minimum required to extract subscriptions and charges from the user base? The idea of being good enough has a lot going for it but it is complex to compute that fine balance between being adequate and becoming a joke. With that in mind, my thoughts turn to TalkTalk, the UK broadband provider started in 2002 by device retailer Carphone Warehouse. TalkTalk came to market with a range of attractive propositions for consumer users and it’s probably fair to say it attracted more users than it expected. As a consequence it has never really caught up on the customer service front. Chief executive, Dido Harding, a former Tesco executive who knows a thing or two about customer facing retail environments, has had a year or so to try and improve things and, in her view, results are coming through. According to UK regulator Ofcom’s most recent figures (for the three months ended December 2011), TalkTalk is still the most complained about broadband provider but the regulator has seen less than half the number of complaints about its broadband service than in the same period in 2010. “We're pleased that Ofcom saw less than half as many complaints about our broadband service than this time last year,” said a company statement. “There is more work to do but we are confident that the measures we've put in place are paying dividends.” They certainly are – if you’re a TalkTalk shareholder. Dividend last year was 5.6p a share which goes some way to proving my point that quality is a subjective measure and what’s good for a customer isn’t necessarily good for a shareholder. Enjoy the magazine

John Aalbers, chief executive, Volubill

Dan Baker, Research Director, Technology Research Institute

Martin Creaner, president, TM Forum

Andreas Freund, VP Marketing, Orga Systems GmbH

Louis Hall, chief executive, Cerillion Technologies

Gaby Matsliach, general manager, BSS Product Line, Comverse

Pat McCarthy, VP of Global Marketing, Service Delivery Solutions, Telcordia

Simon Muderack, COO, Tribold

John Rainger, vice president, EMEA, CSG International

Mac Taylor, CEO, The Moriana Group

Chris Yeadon, director of Product Marketing, Ericsson

Dr Reinhard Zuba, CMO, Vipnet (Telekom Austria)

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George Malim

EDITOR George Malim Tel: +44 (0) 0208 292 4036 george@vanillaplus.com DIGITAL EDITOR Nathalie Bisnar Tel: +44 (0) 1732 808690 nathalie@vanillaplus.com

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News Analysis: Inside NetCracker’s US$449m Convergys deal to enlarge end-to-end offering The news that NEC Corporation is to buy Convergys’ Information Management business and integrate it into its NetCracker business is symptomatic of a need Sanjay in the market for small Mewada: and mid-sized telecoms Who’s going to software vendors to buy solutions a slice at a time? become larger and bring integrated solutions that address more, if not all, of the OSS/BSS stack, together. That’s the main reason for the acquisition, Sanjay Mewada, vice president of strategy at NetCracker, told VanillaPlus. “Absolutely, the end-to-end aspect is increasingly important. If you take fulfillment as a domain, there was a time when CSPs bought best of breed solutions for order management, inventory management, workflow and all the other functions and had an army of systems integrators to integrate it all and thread it together. It’s increasingly not possible to do that not because there is limited money and fewer people available but because vendor solutions have got to a point where their end-toend offerings are very, very good.” “Who’s going to buy solutions a slice at a time when they can buy end-to-end fulfillment as a footprint?” asked Mewada. “The trend continues to accelerate in tier two and tier three CSPs and we certainly see end-to-end OSS/BSS platforms being in great demand. That end-to-end capability is certainly a driver for the deal and we will have a very powerful and important presence in the BSS market following its’ completion.” Part of the rationale behind NEC’s acquisition of NetCracker in 2008 was that the Japanese vendor has its own range of BSS products that had achieved sales in Japan and Asia. Were there integration issues? No, said Mewada: “The Convergys deal gives us over 150 customers straight off the bat. It allows us to make a sustained and strong play in the OSS/BSS as a standalone entity. It enables us to leapfrog the company’s development – gaining 150 customers would take a while.” The existing NetCracker business is about half the size of Convergys’

Information Management business. Mewada sees combining the two as critical in bringing the company up to a scale where it can compete with the largest providers. Will NetCracker start to resemble a big specialist vendor such as Amdocs? “Ultimately, it will go that way but with one critical difference,” said Mewada. “We started out as a software products company and that’s our pedigree. Convergys is also very product centric so we will not build custom solutions on a customer-bycustomer basis. The NetCracker product used by one customer is the same as that used by another. We’ll continue to emphasise productised value and the COTS approach. That will be the fundamental differentiator.” Even if the transaction isn’t quite a minnow-swallows-whale story – in fact, it’s more of a cod swallows tuna story – there will still be a substantial and complex integration to go through. “Integration’s always an important part of an acquisition and for us it is certainly important and critical but it’s not going to be as big a challenge as generally perceived for a couple of reasons,” added Mewada. “We’re as global as Convergys is and NetCracker is part of NEC. NEC’s a US$40bn company and we have its help and support. There’s also the nature of the business to consider. We haven’t gone out and bought an equipment vendor, for example. The line of business isn’t fundamentally different so there isn’t a huge shift in culture to adapt to.” Finally, the Convergys IM business can trace its roots back to Geneva Technologies, the UK-based business acquired by Convergys in 2001 for US$700m. In that light, has NetCracker bought a bargain? “You have to compare apples to apples when you look at valuations,” said Mewada. “It can be misleading to look at absolute numbers. For instance a $20 stock transaction versus a $10 cash deal could see the $10 cash make more sense to a vendor or vice versa. There were 80 to 100 companies active in OSS in 2000, 80 or 90% of those are gone but Geneva continues to solve meaningful problems for CSP users so the message is that companies come and go but the measure of success is whether the technology they created disappeared as well. Geneva’s technology is still here.”

N E W S U P D AT E

Amdocs says 40% of calls could be deflected online Research commissioned by Amdocs, has uncovered an opportunity for CSPs to reduce call centre costs and to improve customer experience by creating a more complete, consistent and accessible selfservice capability, while using customer insight to proactively prevent and eliminate calls. The survey, conducted by analyst firm, Coleman Parkes, found that 75% of surveyed consumers said they would prefer to use online support if it were reliable, but only 37% currently even try to use self-service options, which are often perceived as inaccurate or incomplete. 91% say they would use a single, online knowledge base if it were available and tailored to their needs. The lack of satisfactory online support is driving large numbers of consumers to call centres, wasting valuable resources. More than 40% of customers contact a call centre after they cannot find answers to their question via self-service and up to 50% of “How do I …?” calls could be deflected to self-care channels.

Mobile industry lost US$58bn in 2011 through poor FM and RA A new report from Juniper Research finds that the mobile telecoms industry lost more than $58 billion last year – over 6% of global revenues – due to inadequate FM (Fraud Management) and RA (Revenue Assurance) processes. The report suggests that under a ‘nightmare scenario’ whereby operators fail to implement any remedial measures over the next five years, the scale of losses could rise five-fold by 2016. The report, ‘Mobile Revenue Assurance & Fraud Management: Business Strategies & Forecasts 2012-2016,’ finds that, as operators have been obliged to integrate an ever-expanding array of devices and to simultaneously manage a surge in cellular network traffic, billing systems have failed to keep pace. As a result, they are increasingly unable to accurately or efficiently capture the large volume of transactions that occur on the network. The complexity has magnified the scale of revenue loss, resulting in bad debts and a greater opportunity for fraud.

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P R O D U C T

N E W S

N E W S U P D AT E

NSN provides trial CEM software and services for Guangdong MCC Guangdong MCC, China Mobile’s largest subsidiary, has signed a cooperation agreement with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for the company’s customer experience management (CEM) software and services. The cooperation, set to last for more than six months, will provide Guangdong MCC with a unified view of its customer data, along with continuous reporting of usage trends to help it improve customer experience. “Operators are faced with a number of challenges, including high data consumption and increasing pressure on revenue,” said Markus Borchert, president at Nokia Siemens Networks Greater China. “Our customer experience management expertise will help Guangdong MCC enhance its service experience by highlighting where focused capacity upgrades may be needed and automatically correcting device settings without people needing to report problems via customer care. It can also assist the operator’s marketing teams by providing new insights on subscribers’ usage and preferences, enabling targeted actions to increase customer loyalty and drive new revenue.”

cVidya releases enhanced bypass fraud module for high usage fraud detection cVidya Networks has launched a new enhanced bypass fraud module which integrates into its FraudView Fraud Management solution. With the new module, CSPs are able to detect Alon Aginsky: both under-the-radar Almost US$3bn methods and those lost each year exploiting SIM boxes, to make as many calls as possible in a short period, with advanced alert and aggregation methods. As the complexity of bypass fraud schemes continue to develop, it is crucial for CSPs to detect these fraudsters efficiently and effectively. Bypass fraud has become the number one fraud type in developing countries as fraudsters continue to find new ways to disguise their operations by using prepaid

SIMs, making only a few calls and limiting call times. In order to help CSPs prevent losses from these new techniques, cVidya has made many improvements for instantly detecting bypass fraud. Real-time detection, within one hour, enables most bypass scenarios to be proactively blocked, and a new set of bypass predictors, based on summarized data, was also added. “Bypass fraud losses are almost US$3 billion annually according to a recent CFCA survey,” said Alon Aginsky, president and CEO of cVidya Networks. “With cVidya’s expertise in fraud management, the enhanced module for FraudView will have much more comprehensive bypass fraud detection, barring fast and furious scammers instantly and even catching offenders that make bypass calls over a long period of time.”

Kapsch CarrierCom to deploy Openet Policy Manager at Telekom Austria Group Telekom Austria Group has selected Kapsch CarrierCom to integrate Openet Policy Manager across six operating companies in Eastern Europe. The deal was led Thomas by Kapsch, which will Schopf, COO, serve as the system Kapsch integrator and provide CarrierCom regional complimentary services and support for the solution. The six network operators are to benefit from spam attack detection and flexible bill shock prevention as well as the implementation of requirements related to roaming regulation. The deployment will go live this year and support approximately 19 million mobile subscribers, enabling them to benefit from enriched and innovative services and an enhanced customer experience. "Kapsch and Telekom Austria Group are connected through long-term business

relations. Through Kapsch's knowledge and experience as our business partner in the area of system integration, an efficient integration is guaranteed," said Johann Pichler, CTO of Telekom Austria Group. "Openet has made it easy for us to offer our operators within the Telekom Austria Group flexible and secure policy and billing solutions to support the smartphone revolution, while providing both new and existing customers with enriched and innovative services that will enhance their experience of our network service." Thomas Schopf, Kapsch CarrierCom's COO, added: "Kapsch and Telekom Austria Group have been cooperating for several years. The knowledge we have gained through providing regional services and support within our cooperation with Telekom Austria Group is crucial for the integration. Openet's Policy Manager delivers exceptional performance and flexibility and is an ideal solution to enable a safe mobile experience for Telekom Austria Group's operating companies."

M2 Telecommunications goes live with Cerillion CRM and Billing for People Telecom services M2 Telecommunications Group, the leading reseller of mobile, fixed and data telecoms services in Australia, has gone live with the Cerillion CRM and Billing solution. The new system consolidates M2’s billing activities for its People Telecom branded customers and services and provides fully automated fulfilment and provisioning to the host networks. In time, M2 will migrate all of its retail and wholesale operations to Cerillion. Cerillion implemented the Revenue Manager, CRM Plus, Service Manager, Output Streamer, Web Self-Care and Information Manager modules from its pre-integrated product suite, and performed migration from M2's legacy systems. The new solution from Cerillion enables M2 to introduce new products and offers quickly across its multiple brands and achieve a significantly lower cost of operation, whilst improving revenue assurance and overall financial control. “Cerillion’s ability to support multiple

brands, resellers and channels on a single convergent system and the quality of their professional services team were both key reasons for selecting them from a strong field Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion of contenders” says Geoff Horth, CEO of M2 Telecommunications. “Having looked initially at over fifty BSS vendors it was Cerillion’s track record of delivering outof-the-box yet highly configurable systems that made them the stand-out option.” Louis Hall, CEO, Cerillion Technologies, added: “M2 is an outstanding business that has achieved rapid growth both organically and through some astute acquisitions, and we are delighted to have helped them move to the next level of efficiency by consolidating their back office systems to a single convergent solution. We look forward to expanding our activities in Australia and helping M2 achieve further growth and success in the future.”

N E W S U P D AT E

Telus turns to DigitalRoute to cut usage data processing costs DigitalRoute's MediationZone product has been deployed by Canadian CSP Telus. The CSP set out to replace its existing mediation platforms in order to reduce costs for processing usage data across the company’s multiple business support systems (BSS). DigitalRoute, a provider of mediation solutions for the communications industry, was selected after an evaluation of the available mediation technologies on the market. MediationZone is now in live operation at Telus, providing an integration layer between the mobile core network and the BSS. The deployment is one of the first steps in a comprehensive replacement programme as Telus is now looking to further enhance its cost performance by expanding the use of MediationZone over time to replace its other mediation systems. “MediationZone has reduced our total cost of ownership for mediation, and it also provides the ability to reduce the overall load on our business support systems,” said James Ritchie, vice president of consumer development and support at Telus. “With its implementation, we are able to efficiently meet our expanding mediation needs, the result of continuous growth in mobile data.”

TeliaSonera chooses Tribold EPM for B2B transformation TeliaSonera, Europe’s fifth largest telecoms operator, has selected Tribold's Enterprise Product Management (EPM) software for its B2B Transformation programme across its units in Finland, Denmark and Norway. Simon Muderack, Tribold’s CEO, said: “Working with TeliaSonera we look forward to improving a number of systems and key processes used to deliver services to new and existing TeliaSonera customers.”

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AIRCOM organises self to acquire Symena for SON and LTE capabilities N E W S U P D AT E

TechMahindra and Mahindra Satyam in US$1.8bn merger Tech Mahindra and Satyam Computer Services have approved a proposal to merge Mahindra Satyam with Tech Mahindra along with certain wholly owned subsidiaries of Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra. The logic of the merger is that the combined entities will benefit from operational synergies, economies of scale, sourcing benefits, and standardisation of business processes. The exchange ratio recommended by the valuers and approved by both the boards is 2 shares of Tech Mahindra, for every 17 shares of Mahindra Satyam. On a proforma basis, the Mahindra Group will own 26.3% in the combined entity, British Telecom will own 12.8%, 10.4% will be held as treasury stock, 34.4% to be held by the public shareholders of Mahindra Satyam and the balance of 16.1% will be held by the public shareholders of Tech Mahindra. Tech Mahindra will issue 103.4 million (Rs 10.34 crore) new shares, thereby increasing its outstanding shares to 230. million (Rs 23.08 crore) and its equity capital to Rupees 2.308 billion (Rs 230.8 crore).

Telefónica signs mobile payments deal with BOKU Telefónica Digital has announced a strategic agreement with BOKU, an enabler of online mobile payments, to enhance its payments capabilities. The agreement, which also sees Telefónica participate as a strategic investor in BOKU’s latest funding round, comes as Telefónica gears up for the launch of its mobile wallet services. The partnership opens up access for BOKU to Telefónica’s global footprint of 25 markets and 300 million customers, while providing Telefónica with access to BOKU’s expertise in secure and reliable online mobile payments. BOKU has developed the use of mobile networks as a payments mechanism, creating a network of merchants and a method of quickly and easily paying for virtual goods via the customer’s mobile phone bill. The company's recently launched BOKU Accounts service expands this capability by enabling offline purchases in physical stores.

AIRCOM International, an independent network planning and optimisation solutions provider, is to acquire Symena, a provider of optimisation and Automatic Cell Planning (ACP) tools. AIRCOM said the deal – for an undisclosed value – will strengthen its LTE radio capability by integrating Symena’s systems with its planning and OSS tools, enhancing its existing self organising networks (SON) capabilities. Founded in 2002, Symena was the first company to offer a commercial ACP solution for LTE. It has also been developing specific SON solutions since 2009 and has market traction with operators, network equipment providers, systems integrators and drive test tool vendors. As a spin-off from Vienna University of Technology, Symena offers 2G and 3G network capabilities as well as in-depth technical expertise on optimisation algorithms. The combination of innovative optimisation methodologies from Symena, with the scalable OSS capabilities of AIRCOM, is set to create a comprehensive SON offering for the market.

clear demonstration of our commitment to cost effectively deliver optimal service quality Alwyn Welch, across multi-technology CEO, AIRCOM and multi-vendor networks,” said Alwyn Welch, CEO, AIRCOM. “AIRCOM has always advocated and evangelised SON capabilities and the enhancements it will deliver, both to an operator’s customer base and ultimately its bottom line. By capturing Symena’s proven technology and internationally recognised skillset, we can deliver even further value to our respective customers while offering a powerful business case to new operators and vendors.” Thomas Neubauer, CEO, Symena, added: “We are tremendously excited by the wealth of new opportunities that closer collaboration with AIRCOM will deliver to new and existing customers. Both Symena and AIRCOM share the same vision for SON, and the instrumental role it will play in driving efficient and profitable networks through 2G, 3G and LTE technologies.” Neubauer will join AIRCOM’s management team.

“Our decision to acquire Symena is a

Swisscom Ventures into real-time charging with investment role in Matrixx Software Swisscom Ventures, the venture capital arm of Swiss former incumbent Swisscom, has invested in real-time charging software provider Matrixx Software. Swisscom Ventures Dave Labuda, invests in innovative CEO, Matrixx areas that it sees as Software strategic – with mobile broadband solutions being a crucial area of investment. Matrixx Software, led by CEO Dave Labuda, is designed to deliver real-time processing that provides CSPs with instant visibility, intelligence, and control of data services across their mobile networks. Using smart-charging

technology together with mobile apps and dashboards, the solution transforms network traffic into actionable information that CSPs need as smart devices go mainstream. The solution is built with patent-pending technology that claims to provide a 100 times increase in performance and efficiency. “We’re very excited about Matrixx Software’s vision for mobile broadband,” said Stefan Kuentz, investment officer with Swisscom Ventures. “We only make a few investments out of hundreds of opportunities each year and this investment allows Swisscom a prime position to profit from the tremendous growth of mobile broadband services.”

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Welcome to our regular Jobs column, brought to you by Identify Networks, Sponsors of People News The M&A wave continues – Vodafone and CWW, Ericsson and Telcordia, Netcracker and Convergys' Information Management division and Facebook and Instagram have all merged or are in the process of being acquired. These transactions will no doubt cause significant employee anxiety with many of the existing staff Jason Bandy fearful of unwanted role changes, personnel changes, relocation worries and ultimately redundancy concerns. Despite the best efforts of smooth talking public relations and internal communications consultants to communicate the joys of the opportunity, many people will be feeling unsettled. However, mergers and acquisitions are part of the everyday fabric of global business and wherever we work the prospect of the organisation suddenly changing hands is never too far away. To help survive in an M&A scenario, I recommend that you consider the following: 1 Embrace Change – Recognise the opportunity, adapt and thrive. Set some clear objectives and rise to the challenge. 2 Get Involved – Become part of the decision making process, maintain a high profile and facilitate the chance to network. 3 Don’t Hide – Make it clear to the people that you embrace change by being as visible as possible. Make yourself available, be busy, be positive and most importantly deliver your very best work during this time when others may be slacking. 4 Be Prepared – Complacency and unrealistic expectations are the enemy. Look, listen and learn all about your rights, your options and take the earliest opportunity to build a plan. M&A is a double-edged sword it can provide an opportunity to develop your career further in the combined company or provide the impetus to seek opportunities elsewhere. Keep a cool head and take the situation as a chance to assess your options. Jason Bandy, Director, identify Group Ltd jason.bandy@identifynetworks.com Mobile: +44 (0) 750 001 3084 Tel: +44 (0) 845 370 2900 www.identifynetworks.com

Nokia Siemens Networks appoints Ken Wirth head of customer operations Americas Ken Wirth has been appointed head of Customer Operations for North and Latin America at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). In this role Wirth will be responsible for the company’s sales throughout the Americas and will join the company’s Executive Board. Previously, Wirth was president of the End-to-End Networks business at Alcatel Lucent. Wirth will report to NSN chief executive officer, Rajeev Suri. Wirth has spent much of his career in leading roles in the telecoms industry. He played an important part in building Alcatel-Lucent’s global LTE business with Verizon, AT&T, China Mobile, Telefónica and other leading operators. Before that Wirth held a range of leadership positions at Alcatel-Lucent, including heading the company’s 4G/LTE business unit and serving as president of the Verizon customer team. At Lucent Technologies he was president of Multimedia Network Solutions which consisted of the fixed access, data and optical businesses. Before that, Wirth was president of Lucent's Optical Networking Group. He originally joined Lucent Technologies from AT&T, where he held sales, product management and financial roles. “Ken is an ideal addition to the Nokia Siemens Networks team at a time when we are seeing increasing market recognition of our technological strength and strong momentum in our LTE sales,” said Suri. “I look forward to him joining us during this key period of mobile broadband evolution.” Wirth started his career with AT&T Network Systems and has a BA in Communications from Seton Hall University, New Jersey. He will be based in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Dave Adams joins MDSL as service delivery manager MDSL, a provider of international Market Data Expense Management (MDEM) and Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solutions, has expanded its UK operations with the appointment of Dave Adams as service delivery manager.

Dave Adams, service delivery manager, MDSL

Adams brings experience from the investment banking sector, having worked at Lehman Brothers for 22 years. More recently, he spent three years at Nomura, holding a number of senior roles in technology including his last position as executive director of Infrastructure Service Management.

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

VanillaPlus Hot List: April/May 2012 The Hot List below shows the companies informing us of recent contract wins or product deployments. If your contract is not listed here email the details to us now marked "Hot List" <editorial@vanillaplus.com> Vendor(s)

Client, Country

Product / Service (Duration & Value)

Awarded

Acision

MTS, Russia

Acision Message Plus system, also called SMS Pro, to enable MTS to control and personalise message content

3.2012

Acision

Vodafone Portugal

Upgrade of Acision messaging infrastructure with Acision Flexible Gateway and Acision Message Controller

2.2012

Aito

Zain Kuwait

Customer Experience Analytics (CEA) system with key performance indicators

2.2012

Amdocs

TIM, Brazil

Amdocs' full Customer Experience Systems (CES) portfolio plus consulting, integration and implementation services

2.2012

Astellia

Nextel, Brazil & Mexico

End-to-end monitoring solutions for optimisation of mobile network QoS

3.2012

Cerillion Technologies M2, Australia

CRM and billing solution to consolidate M2's billing activities for People Telecombranded customers and services

3.2012

Comarch

Fault management system for Orange and T-Mobile's Networks! Infrastructure sharing joint venture

2.2012

Networks!, Poland

Comarch

BICS, Belgium & international

Network inventory and next generation service assurance products to improve service assurance and delivery

2.2012

Comptel

Wataniya Telecom, Kuwait

Comptel Dynamic SIM Management system to enable self-activation of subscribers

2.2012

Convergys

UNE Columbia

Managed services for real-time, convergent, 4G services platform

2.2012

Entone

Sunrise, Switzerland

Set top boxes for nationwide IPTV deployment

2.2012

Evolving Systems

MTS, Russia

Dynamic SIM Allocation system for single universal SIM provision

2.2012

i-conX Solutions

Canar, Sudan

Additional modules for managed QoS for I-conX Routing Optimisation Core

2.2012

Jinny Software

Batelco, Bahrain

MMSC, WAP gateway, value added services upgrades and USSD gateway

2.2012

Jinny Software

Cable & Wireless Communications, Guernsey New SMSC to handle wholesale and domestic SMS traffic

2.2012

Netadmin Systems

CAIW, Holland

3.2012

Implementation of an open access management platform for expanded fibre network

NetCracker

Claro, Brazil

NetCracker Telecom Operations & Management solution to streamline operations and improve end-to-end visibility

2.2012

NetCracker

Axia NetMedia, six countries

End-to-end charge generation, customer management and OSS systems

2.2012

Newcon

Orange Austria

Migration of batch and real-time billing and mediation process as part of architecture modernisation

3.2012

Nokia Siemens Networks

Telkomsel, Indonesia

CEM onDemand portal and Serve atOnce Intelligence customer and business analysis suite

2.2012

Nokia Siemens Networks

Starhub, Singapore

LTE mobile broadband infrastructure plus CEM, PCRF and subscriber data management systems

4.2012

Nokia Siemens Networks

Gunagdong MCC, China

CEM software and services for six month trial plus Serve atOnce customer and business analytics suite

4.2012

Openet & Kapsch Telekom Austria Group

Openet Policy Manager deployment integrated by Kapsch CarrierCom in six eastern European group properties

4.2012

Sandvine

CarrierCom

ClearSky Technologies, Americas

Network policy control systems

2.2012

Sandvine

Nex-Tech Wireless, USA

Network policy control systems

2.2012

SAS Analytics

Bintel, Africa

SAS Analytics to improve efficiencies of marketing campaigns

2.2012

SAS Analytics

Reliance Communications, India SAS Customer Intelligence to optimise campaign management and nurture customers

Subex

Avea, Turkey

Revenue Operations Centre (ROC) Revenue Assurance system for investigation, diagnosis and recovery of revenues

Subex

IDEA Cellular, India

Revenue Operations Centre (ROC) Fraud Management system through managed services for IDEA's postpaid

Subex

ZON Multimedia, Portugal

Revenue Operations Centre (ROC) Revenue Assurance solution to support Portuguese pay TV company's 1.6 million subscribers

4.2012

Syniverse

Vivo, Brazil

Syniverse RoamMonitor for usage alerts to reduce bill shock

1.2012

Telenity

Turkcell, Turkey

Canvas Converged Services Platform components for Turkcell's Telco 2.0 service provider gateway

2.2012

Telsis

Telefónica, Germany

Telsis Ocean 2280 application server to control existing VAS portfolioand enable in-house engineers to develop new apps

3.2012

Telsis

Cyta, Cyprus

Deal to boost performance, efficiency and flexibility of SMS network at Vodafone partner operator

4.2012

Tribold

TeliaSonera, Finland, Denmark and Norway

Enterprise Product Management (EPM) software for B2B transformation programme across Finland, Denmark and Norway

4.2012

and roaming businesses

Key:

SMSC = Smart Message Service Centre MMSC = Multimedia Messaging Service Centre

2.2012 3.2012 3.2012

USSD = Unstructured Supplementary Service Data PCRF = Policy and Charging Rules Function

HP to offer enterprise mobility platform for CSPs HP has announced a mobility platform for communications service providers (CSPs) that is set to enable them to help enterprise customers increase productivity by supporting employee use of smartphones and tablets. HP’s Enterprise Mobility platform will support enterprises in providing internal mobile applications to employees so they can access company data quickly, easily and securely on their personal mobile devices. The core components of the HP Enterprise Mobility platform are a mobile app store and a mobile gateway. The gateway, called HP Enterprise Mobility Gateway will enable CSPs to help enterprise employees access the right enterprise data at

the right time by connecting mobile applications with an enterprise’s back-end systems. Available on the customer premises and as a service from the CSP, the gateway enables developers to create data-rich apps that run effectively even when bandwidth is limited. “Service providers are at a point where they need an enterprise service delivery platform, not just a telco service delivery platform,” said Glen Ragoonanan, lead analyst, Infrastructure Solutions and SDP Strategies, Analysys Mason. “It makes sense to work with a partner like HP that has both telco and IT heritage and can bring the two worlds together.” Sponsored by:

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

T A

Sophisticated usage and quality data enables CSPs to monetise network investments creatively Michele Campriani is CEO of Accanto Systems, the specialist provider of Customer Service Assurance solutions to CSPs. With more than 15 years of experience in the service provider market, he was previously general manager of the Protocol Product Group at Sunrise Telecom and before that responsible for OSS business at HewlettPackard. Here, he tells VanillaPlus how CSPs are rising to the challenge of delivering high quality user experiences in the 4G world and, critically, using CSA to monetise their customer data, tap into new revenue streams and compete more effectively with the Over-The-Top providers. VanillaPlus: Accanto has provided Customer Service Assurance (CSA) systems for several years. What is CSA, and how does it help CSPs address their current challenges?

extract valuable information from the traffic to map the actual customer activity to service usage and quality information profiled by customer type, service, device and so on.

One of the greatest

Michele Campriani: One of the greatest challenges for CSPs in this new world of highbandwidth, multimedia mobile applications, especially if they are in the midst of migrating to LTE, is in creating an end-to-end visibility of the network and services, and presenting this information in a customer-centric view. This is critical as the old rule of ‘the network is performing well, so the customer must be experiencing good service’ is no longer true.

Accanto was built around the CSA concept from day one. We were one of the first to understand where the market was going and anticipate customer needs. As a consequence of that, in 2011 we experienced an incredible growth in our business as the market understands and is embracing our concept.

high-bandwidth,

in this new world of multimedia mobile applications is in creating end-to-end visibility

VP: The use of monitoring systems has evolved greatly over the past few years, moving from their classical role in operations, to utilising the rich data they provide for other revenue generation opportunities. What examples of this evolution have you seen?

Accanto’s intelligent Customer Service Assurance (iCSA) platform provides just this type of capability. Overall, iCSA allows the operator to

challenges for CSPs

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

T A

Evolution of mobile MC: CSA is indeed expanding out of its data applications has created strong consumer demands, and has more or less forced operators to take a much more proactive stance on network monitoring.

traditional boundaries, finding its way into the larger operator ecosystem, whether as a complete service assurance solution, or as a feeder of valuable data into other systems. In this sense, Accanto’s newly launched Accanto iD platform when used as a middleware source, can feed customer behaviour, location and experience information to fraud management, billing verification, business intelligence and other value-added applications. On top of that, its general flexibility enables development of creative revenue generating services. For example, INRIX, in partnership with Telefónica O2 and Accanto, wanted to deliver effective automotive road congestion avoidance solutions, which at the time were slow and inaccurate. A possible solution, they realised, could be introduced by making use of inputs from the millions of mobile devices already on German roads. The resulting system, which was featured in selected BMW models from September 2011 on, provided, thanks to Accanto iCSA, a time from ‘road event to presentation’ of less than 60 seconds – a vast improvement over the existing market solutions. The system uses Telefónica’s existing mobile network and the individual users’ mobile devices as mobile probes to detect traffic jams or other incidents. Accanto’s CSA platform provides ultra-fast data collection and correlation capabilities. It gathers real-time location information of the subscriber, fully anonymised it to protect subscriber privacy and feed it into mediation and traffic information portions of the system. This is a great example of how service assurance is transforming from a ‘necessary evil’ into a key business enabler that is helping operators differentiate and create new revenue streams. In particular, CSA allows the operator to reuse and maximize value from their investment in probing infrastructure by getting enriched and valuable data that enables improved applications to be delivered. In addition, they can monetise the value of the data collected by ‘selling’ this data to other value added applications such as the INRIX example. That means they can improve the value of existing applications by obtaining richer and more accurate data sources.

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

competitive as they face the threat of the new generation of over-the-top (OTT) operators? MC: A well-implemented CSA solution can be a key competitive differentiator against OTT service providers who do not own their own networks. The network and especially the end-toend visibility of the service traffic is the greatest asset for any service provider. By having sophisticated usage and quality data, the CSPs are in a much better position to understand how their customers are interacting with services, and how they are being affected by them (positively or negatively). It allows them to become creative in monetising their network investments by utilising the customer information they currently possess to deliver innovative new services. Taking advantage of in depth network data is something that OTT providers simply cannot do. VP: When we interviewed you in October 2010, you indicated that operators must migrate from being simple connectivity providers, to becoming service providers that can deliver data services and web applications. To what extent has this migration taken effect and what role has Customer Service Assurance had in that evolution? MC: Evolution of mobile data applications has created strong consumer demands, and has more or less forced operators to take a much more proactive stance on network monitoring. The problem is that monitoring this new class of application, increasingly over 4G networks, has put the current generation of monitoring and troubleshooting tools on the back foot. One of the major problems is that there is simply too much information to make sense of and the classic network monitoring approaches are struggling to deliver real business value. They are unable to analyse the volume of data collected sufficiently quickly to deliver meaningful business insight. To help meet these needs, last year Accanto came to market with an adaptive approach to Customer Service Assurance. That allows the operator to arbitrarily make use of the three monitoring dimensions – resource, service and customer – in order to provide the best point of view for the issue at hand. It enables the CSP to avoid being overloaded with useless information

VP: How does CSA allow CSPs to be more

– or false alarms, and to look at the most critical information and issues first to prioritise interventions. With the adaptive approach, it is possible to select a number of dashboards, structure them over different layers and display the most relevant information along different perspectives and axes in a timely and effective manner. VP: Since our last interview how has Accanto been doing as a company? MC: Accanto continues on a strong growth trajectory. Over the past year, we have grown more than 60% and have been adopted by eight new major operators. We currently serve five of the top 10 service providers in EMEA, which tend to be at the forefront of innovation and next-generation technology adoption. Our performance has been beyond our expectations. VP: Looking to the future, tell us your vision for LTE. How is the market maturing, and what are you seeing as key challenges for operators? What does it mean for CSA? MC: LTE is being deployed primarily as an overlay network, which means additional challenges to operators who must grapple with interworking issues between 3G, 3.5G and 4G. It requires a different sort of monitoring capability – for example data correlation, reduction and presentation in ways that are effective and meaningful – and a different mentality in the NOC, a more service-oriented approach. Once these challenges are met and the operator can monitor from a customer-centric perspective, LTE provides incredible capabilities for service differentiation. Accanto has a great amount of experience in helping both tier one and two CSPs deal with the complexities of LTE.

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

REVENUE ASSURANCE

Is your revenue assurance strategy ready for the new generation of consumers? It was 136 years ago that the first bi-directional electronic phone transmission took place. Today it is estimated phones exceed the world’s population with much of the growth occuring in the last decade. In this extract from a recent whitepaper, Terri Haney, solution manager at SAP, says that although the technology has changed, the questions remain the same: How to build business models to achieve optimum revenue performance? How to scale products and services and who to partner with? For service providers today, converging factors, including next-generation networks, emerging technologies, and multi-sided business models, have propelled revenue assurance to the forefront of their revenue management strategies. The change has been so rapid; many carriers have been caught unprepared with nonintegrated, disaggregated, and silo-driven revenue assurance processes. For too long CSPs have built siloed organisations that have treated fraud management, analytics, billing, rating, charging and revenue assurance as separate areas as if they were not related when in fact each area can impact revenue performance. With emerging technologies and consumer demands, CSPs need to expand their focus across the entire enterprise to prevent leaks and become proactive to deter leaks as well as fraudulent activity. To build an effective revenue assurance strategy it is critical to build a holistic view that incorporates advanced process integration and business intelligence capabilities across your platform. The strategy should support multiple billing systems and allow diverse revenue models to operate freely in different channels and to interact with different partnerships. The strategy needs to address: Data Quality is at the crux of revenue assurance. Data needs to be managed and treated as an asset that is accurate and trustworthy. This requires existing data and new incoming data must meet the highest quality standards.

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

Credit and Risk Management. Effective risk management means having a 360 degree view of your customer accounts regardless of their products or services or which billing system(s) are used to process their account. Fraud Management is critical as millions of transactions are being processed per second. Your strategy must provide an integrated and bottleneck-free revenue assurance solution that can monitor all revenue-event traffic in real time. Margin Management. With shrinking margins and increasing consumer demand for more products and services, CSPs must be able conduct ‘what-if’ scenarios quickly allowing them to launch new products with confidence and to monitor the profitability of products post launch. Partner Settlement. Expect the number of partners to expand as more industries look for ways to leverage smart mobile devices. This means having an integrated solution that can manage receivables and payables, which is low touch and high value. CSPs that can balance between positive cash flow while ensuring accurate and timely payments will become the partner of choice. In today’s challenging, new world of nextgeneration networks, emerging technologies, and innovative business models, shouldn’t revenue assurance be at the forefront of your revenue management strategies? To read the whitepaper in its entirety, and to see how you can get involved with the Telco 2.0 Challenge, please visit www.sap.com/telco20

www.sap.com/telco20

POLICY MANAGEMENT

Next generation policy management – the monetisation enabler For communication service providers (CSPs), the explosion in smart device usage is a good thing. More smart devices – smartphones, tablets, and so on – mean more customers. For network managers within these CSPs, the story is a bit more nuanced. After all, says Dennis Landscheidt, solution manager at SAP, in a recent whitepaper, increased smart device usage leads to exponential growth in data demand – but such growth can easily overwhelm the capacity of CSP networks One response to the data crisis that can be observed in the market is that many CSPs are moving away from all-you-can-eat data flat rates to tiered price plans with personalised offers. The idea is clearly to avoid penalties for overusing data, but to monetise new revenue streams. Policy management is positioned more frequently as an enabler for monetisation, as it is moving out of the technical sphere into the commercial sphere. For example, let’s say that a customer with a mid-tier data tariff wants to use a smartphone to stream a high definition video. Due to traffic congestion, however, you, the CSP, are limiting bandwidth in a fair way to conserve capacity. When your customer attempts to stream the video, he or she receives a notice explaining that current bandwidth conditions will not support the stream. Instead of sending a notice that disallows the stream, you could respond with a notice that allows your customer to upgrade the data tariff for a time-limited nominal fee. For instance, the customer could spend $2 for two hours of higher bandwidth – just enough time and capacity to watch the movie. The latest response of IT providers is to integrate policy management and charging and rating solutions in order to enable these kinds of new business models. This is without doubt a very important step into the right direction. Yet bringing policy management and charging together is only one point of a holistic policy

www.sap.com/telco20

management approach. The move from data flat rates to price plans with limited included data volumes might impact customer experience. An answer to this could be new mobile personalisation offers. What if customers could use mobile apps to choose when and for what services higher bandwidth should be guaranteed? Maybe only for videos or certain web pages? Also on device cost control is a very important feature that will allow customers to gain real-time access to balances and counters, helping to avoid bill shocks, especially if customers are more and more charged on a usage basis. Last but not least, holistic policy management assumes an understanding of what customers want. This, in turn, requires ongoing analysis of customer usage patterns – which can only be accomplished with powerful, real-time inmemory analytics. With such capabilities, you can quickly analyse where and when congestion problems occur and then implement new policies in a timely manner to rectify the problem. What if you can also glean insights that enable you to offer location- and customerspecific tariffs ahead of time to proactively reduce congestion? This can help keep customers satisfied, reducing churn and increasing CSP revenue. To read the whitepaper in its entirety, and to see how you can get involved with the Telco 2.0 Challenge, please visit www.sap.com/telco20

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

UNIFIED BSS

CSPs seek a single view Concepts of unified BSS have been around for many years but what constitutes unification is a divisive issue for the industry. George Malim assesses what unified billing means and what it should bring to CSPs.

The promise of unified BSS is one that involves a system that provides a CSP with a single view of its BSS across all the siloes and systems. Ideally, unified BSS should be supported by a single system but this is telecoms and it isn’t an ideal world so concepts of unified BSS in deployment often involve an adjunct system that overlays existing legacy BSS systems to provide that unified single view of a CSP’s BSS. “The real definition of unified BSS for us is one that involves a single system,” says Siobahn Ryley, product marketing manager at CSG International, which offers its SingleView unified BSS system. “SingleView is a single install, single database, single product and there are significant benefits such as reduced risk and reduced cost in terms of hardware that CSPs can derive from that. We have implemented SingleView as an adjunct system for those that don’t want to take the big bang approach to systems upgrade but want to achieve a similar result using their existing systems.”

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

Ryley thinks unified BSS is being deployed to a greater extent, although it may not always be named as such. “From CSG International’s point of view, unified billing is old world convergence,” she adds. “That, of course,

For Timo Ahomaki, vice president of product management at Tecnotree, the benefits are

obvious but the industry has struggled with bringing the concept to reality. “The concept of unifying the BSS is nothing new, but actual real-life implementations remain few and far between,” he says. “At Tecnotree we are currently implementing a number of systems based on a data-centric approach where all BSS elements operate on the same master copy of user and service information. That involves not only the traditional pieces of BSS, but also elements on the fringes such as marketing automation and product catalogue. Basically, all the systems dealing with the customer and their services need access to the same body of data in order to create a truly unified approach to BSS. We are currently seeing a number of our customers taking the – admittedly rather huge – step to create a unified view of customer information in order to provide a homogenous view to the customer across all touch points from the point of sale to billing.”

means many different things to many people but I think it is now becoming an actuality. We’ve got customers using exactly the same system for prepaid and postpaid customers – the only difference is their credit limit, prepaid users have zero and postpaid credit limits are greater than that.” However, as Ryley acknowledges, unified BSS is about far more than simply converging prepaid and postpaid billing. Rob Smith, direct or market development at MDS takes up the theme: “Unified BSS is critical for CSPs because it encompasses more than just a solitary billing system, bringing billing, analytics and customer management together to enhance the customer experience and provide support for myriad new services operators are now looking to offer,” he says. “Without truly unified BSS, CSPs will struggle to capitalise on the glut of consumers looking for more personalised and flexible services. CSPs themselves will struggle in their desire to move up the value chain to offer more than just telecoms services and effectively compete with OTT providers.” There is a shift in attitude that CSPs will have to go through to access the advantages of unified BSS. Understanding that where the data is held is less important that having the same data consistently available to all compenents is probably more important in enabling a unified or single view of the customer. “The approach to where this master data repository should reside varies quite a lot,” says Ahomaki. “For some, billing is the place to be due to heavy emphasis on financial risk management. For others, an approach more akin to CRM seems to make more sense. Whichever the approach though, the core BSS components should be able to utilise the data available without resorting to local copies which too easily get out of sync.”

have made the architecture convoluted and difficult to manage. Unified BSS promises to strip away all that but it is an early stage in terms of system deployment. “While no one has it completely right just yet, it is feasible for these disparate systems to be integrated effectively,” adds Smith. “In fact it’s something that operators have to do, to avoid the unfeasible – and very costly – job of augmenting or replacing their systems further down the line. There needs to be standardisation across CSPs to support unified BSS, there has to be a consensus to work more closely together so that data can be easily transferred and systems can interact on a more efficient level.” To create that consensus, it’s not just the CSPs that will have to work together. The vendor community must play its part and act responsibly to ensure unified BSS as a concept doesn’t get bogged down further in a mire of competing definitions and marketing obfuscation. “We find – it’s a sad fact – that a lot of companies claim to be able to do converged prepaid and postpaid and you have to drill down a long way before you find out they are two systems bolted together,” says Ryley.

Timo Ahomaki: Industry has struggled with unified concepts

Rob Smith: No one has it completely right yet

If they can’t be straightforward about the nature of their pre- and postpaid billing solutions, what hope is there for transparency in the greatly more complex arena of unified billing? Buyer beware.

Keeping all the data in sync seems obvious but the BSS domain is a large one and piecemeal approaches to system upgrade VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

BSS FOR UBIQUITOUS CONNECTIVITY

EXPERT OPINION:

New monetisation and customer management needs require unified BSS With new devices, technologies and services fundamentally altering the CSP business, it’s time CSPs took stock of their supporting infrastructure and adopt a modern approach to BSS, writes Gabriel Matsliach, Chief Product Officer, Comverse

Gabreil Matsliach, chief product officer, Comverse

Advanced network technologies and ubiquitous connectivity have opened up new revenue generation opportunities for CSPs such as Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communications and Enterprise Cloud Computing offerings. At the same time, more advanced and converged services are accessible to end-consumers across varying devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops, increasing usage. These new connected opportunities have brought new monetisation, marketing, competitive, and customer and offer management challenges to the surface. To secure differentiation and profitability CSPs must take stock of their supporting infrastructure. BSS – including CRM – directly enables and impacts: service offering and bundling, monetisation capabilities, and end-customer experience – including end-customer aspects of policy management. It also directly impacts the customer service representative (CSR) experience and efficiency, as well as the real-time marketing and promotions capabilities of an operator. And, of course, BSS data is an important business intelligence data source. In the connected world, CSPs’ infrastructure must support: more services, more sophistication and higher consumer expectations; policy-enabled monetisation options and capabilities; convergence – in all its forms; real-time; the ability to do more with less. Disparate ecosystems by their nature are not adequately equipped to address the new monetisation, customer management and crosschannel real-time marketing needs of the ultra connected world. With disparate data models and product catalogues these siloed environments produce disjointed views of customer and product data obstructing the necessary links required between this data and policy engines, CRM systems and customer care channels.

To learn more visit: www.comverse.com

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

A modern approach to BSS: unification A modular BSS system that unifies critical business functions from policy management and enforcement to CSP-specific CRM, to charging and billing – around a single data model and single service-agnostic and marketing-focused product catalogue will allow CSPs to uncover a gold mine of opportunities by exposing the full potential of their two most valuable assets: customer data and their networks. Such a system provides CSPs with the following essential business benefits required to succeed in the world of new connected possibilities: • Advanced policy-enabled monetisation for any service or business model – through the enforcement of traffic and charging policies that are subscriber and network-aware to ensure that dimensions such as type of device and application, usage patterns, QoS and priority level and value per bit are being considered as part of offers, plans and bundles • Automated and consistent multi-channel customer management and marketing – through the sharing of complete real-time customer information and activity, across CSP-specific CRM and customer care channels – including social media • Real-time everywhere – even into traditional postpaid environments – through the extension of real-time rating and charging to meet regulatory bill shock requirements, limit postpaid credit risk and promote personalisation, even for postpaid subscribers The Comverse ONE® Billing & Active Customer Management solution offers a unified approach to BSS – from CSP-specific CRM into the network, including policy. Comverse ONE’s design turns BSS into a strategic asset by enabling CSPs to manage and enforce smarter policies that are both subscriber- and network-aware, while being able to smartly monetise any service, content or business model all while providing a personalised and consistent customer experience.

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DRIVING PROFITS FOR COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS

www.vanillaplus.com

All things mobile

period

CTIA is All Things Mobile. Now with new dates in May, International CTIA

WIRELESS 2012 is even better positioned to meet the needs of the global wireless marketplace. This bold move is more than a change of date. It is the best opportunity to create a more personalized, powerful experience at the one place for carrier services, enterprise, communications, apps, content and social networking.

Pre-Conference Events May 7, 2012

! s e t a D N ew

Convention & Exposition May 8â&#x20AC;&#x201C;10, 2012 Ernest N. Morial Convention Center

Get Connected!

New Orleans, LA

WWW.CTIASHOWS.COM

Upcoming Events CTIA OSS Zone 7-10 May, 2012

Roaming Strategies 11-13 June, 2012

New Orleans, USA Organiser: CTIA www.ctiawireless.com

Brussels, Belgium Organiser:IQPC www.roamingstrategies.com

Broadband World Forum Asia 15-16 May, 2012

Cloud Computing World Forum 12-13 June, 2012

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Organiser: Informa asia.broadbandworldforum.com

Management World 21-24 May, 2012 Dublin, Ireland Organiser: TM Forum www.tmforum.org/ ManagementWorld

Maximising Customer Loyalty and Profitability 21-24 May, 2012

London, UK Organiser: Keynote http://www.cloudwf.com

Global Messaging World Congress 12-13 June, 2012 London, UK, Organiser: Informa http://globalmessagingcongress.com

Mobile Network Performance and Service Quality 18-21 June, 2012 London, UK Organiser: IQPC www.mobilenetworkperformanceevent.com

Berlin, Germany Organiser: IQPC www.loyaltyandprofitability.com

Digital Home World Summit 19-20 June, 2012

LTE World Summit 23-24 May, 2012

London, UK Organiser: Informa http://digitalhomeworldsummit.com

Barcelona, Spain Organiser: Informa ws.lteconference.com/

Mobile Health Summit 29 May â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1 June, 2012 Cape Town, South Africa Organiser: GSMA www.mobilehealthsummit.com

TIA & Connections @ TIA 6-7 June, 2012 Dallas, Texas, USA Organiser: TIA Telecoms http://tia2012.org

Gridcomms 11 June, 2012 London, UK Organiser: Smart Energy IP http://www.gridcomms.com

SIMposium Global 19-20 June, 2012 Berlin, Germany Organiser: Informa www.simposiumglobal.com

Pricing Mobile Data 26-27 June, 2012 London, UK Organiser: Informa www.pricingmobiledata.com

CEM UK 2-5 July, 2012 London, UK Organiser: IQPC www.cemintelecomsuk.com

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

GSMA-mHealth Alliance Mobile Health Summit The GSMA-mHealth Alliance Mobile Health Summit (MHS) brings together senior decision makers from the mobile and health industries to drive the mobile health ecosystem. This global event is designed to foster the commercial sustainability of mobile health across both the public and private sectors. Now in its second year, MHS will be held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre between May 29 and June 1, 2012.

May 29 – June 1, 2012 Cape Town International Convention Centre, South Africa

MHS offers decision makers, influencers, and thinkers from across the mobile health value chain to discuss key topics in mobile health. Speakers from mobile operators, insurance groups, pharma companies, healthcare providers, equipment manufacturers, infrastructure vendors, governments, NGOs, academics, application developers, and integrators present the latest developments in mobile health and in the ecosystem that supports it. MHS 2012 includes: • A spectacular conference agenda with insightful keynotes from top CEOs and executives including: • Helen Zille, Premiere of the Western Cape, South Africa • Andre Beyers, CMO, Airtel Africa • Thierry Zylberberg, EVP Strategic Partnerships, GM Health Line of Business, France Telecom • Gabby Zedlmayer, VP, Office of Global Social Innovation, HP

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

• Scott C. Ratzan, VP, Global Health, Johnson & Johnson • Axel Nemetz, Head of Health, Vodafone • A cutting-edge exhibition showcasing the most innovative Mobile Health products and services from today’s industry leaders • The premier forum for Mobile Health networking and deal-making with C- Level leaders of healthcare institutions, mobile network operators, development organisations and solutions providers, as well as regulators and policymakers Last year, over 600 professionals from 43 countries attended MHS while this year’s programme will grow with an even larger and more diverse audience. MHS 2012 is brought to you by the GSMA and the mHealth Alliance - leaders in the global mobile and health industries. For more information go to: www.mobilehealthsummit.com

CLOCKING OFF!

The levels of trust we have for people depends on the voice that delivers their messages, according to numerous studies. Sadly, the most recent research in the Journal of Sociolinguistics in the UK stuck with tradition and concentrated on Britain’s age-old snob obsessions with class and regional accents. So we learned that people with a Birmingham accent are automatically judged to be less intelligent than the average Briton, but are generally more trustworthy. Why intelligence is linked to deviousness, the study doesn’t say. On that note, this column would welcome a further study into the reaction to the fast-growing dialect, which is quickly establishing itself as the most reviled and mistrusted vocal style ever. There’s no name yet, so let’s call it the voice of the corporate spokesman. The pronunciation is still received, but it’s receiving its influence from a different place – the marketing department of a US corporation. Next time the population is sold short, listen to the voice of the media trained company spokesman who is wheeled out to pacify the masses. Ask yourself, do you trust this man? Are you convinced that safety lessons at an oil company have really been learned? Or that the bank really is ‘committed to customer service’ after its’ losses have been met by the tax payer? Since televisions reach every corner of society now, we’re all pretty media savvy and nobody trusts a company spokesman. That’s possibly why GiffGaff pulled a masterstroke recently by turning its gaff – a network failure - into a gift. Most people probably didn’t realize or care that this is a virtual network operator that uses O2’s network, until the news reports began to outline the details. The fact that GiffGaff allowed its problems to be exposed and was quite open about the causes would horrify most spin doctors. But the beauty of this rescue operation, which customers were allowed to observe in the raw, was that it worked. Who would have thought being painfully honest was the best way to convince people of your authenticity? When the MVNO’s billing system started to create errors, many subscribers of a traditional operator – such as parent company O2 – might have started asking for their PAC code and

having that difficult exit interview that customers must endure when they want to change supplier. GiffGaff, the self-styled ‘people’s network’ won sympathy from its subscribers, by being painfully honest with the public. It was open about the fact that engineers were working to fix the problem and that it had finally resorted to the people’s fix, of rebooting its systems. Who could fail to sympathise with a company that has to switch its systems off and on again? They’re just like us! As a public relations coup, it could only have been improved if they thumped the machines a few times. GiffGaff reported on progress on its social media forum, and we could all follow the diagnostic process on the web. For the techies in the subscriber base (of whom GiffGaff has a proportionally high number) this must have been entertainment on a par with watching a police procedural series on TV.

The author, Nick Booth, is a contributor to VanillaPlus and a technology journalist.

Maybe there’s a show in this idea. Who knows, perhaps unconventional investigators, who fix problems in their way, could be the next reality web TV stars. GiffGaff eventually announced that the fault came from the mobile switching centre that handles its traffic and accounts. That’s a brilliant plot development. I never would have had the MSC down as a suspect. Had I been watching I would have been on the edge of my seat. Whoever wrote the script for GiffGaff had done a far better job than any jargon spouting and predictable media consultant. Actions speak louder than wordsmiths – that’s only a cliché because it’s true. The public wants companies who are honest and possibly vulnerable, who don’t do things by the media training book. For now anyway.

VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

WORLD

May 21-24, 2012 Dublin, Ireland May 20-21, 24-25 Ofﬁcial TM Forum Training & Certiﬁcation

Rethinking Communications Enabling Connected Life

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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT SUPPLEMENT APRIL / MAY 2012

SUPPLEMENT P R O F I T S

TALKING HEADS

F O R

C O M M U N I C AT I O N

▼

D R I V I N G

Comptel's Matti Aksela says real-time events, analytics and action make the mobile business more beautiful

PLUS OPERATOR INTERVIEW Telus' Customers First Culture leader shares her experience

CEM ON THE OPERATING TABLE ▼ Should somebody call a medic?

S E R V I C E

P R O V I D E R S

COMMENT

CONTENTS S2 Introduction and contents S3 Talking Heads Matti Aksela, vice president of analytics at Comptel, says real-time analytics can provide the tools necessary to bring the customer experience to the next level

S6 CEM on the operating table Nick Booth explores whether, if customers are your lifeblood, there are enough CEM surgeons to cure the industry’s ills

S8 Data Collection and Correlation Freddie Kavanagh explains how CSPs can make the most of their CEM data

S10 CSPs need a change of lifestyle Telus’ Carol Borghesi, tells George Malim about her experiences leading the company’s Customers First Culture initiative

Since 1986, Comptel has helped more than 280 service providers across 85 countries to meet over one billion subscribers’ communications and infotainment needs. The event – analysis – action strategy forms the basis of the Comptel approach, building new solutions on the strengths in event data processing, advanced predictive analytics and actions directly onto the network. Comptel’s offerings in service fulfillment, mediation, charging and policy control, and predictive social analytics enable service providers to enhance customer engagement and, in turn, create revenue, reduce costs and lessen churn. Comptel is a global team of over 600 professionals, and net sales were € 77 million in 2011. www.comptel.com

CSPs need to pump iron to achieve CEM results Customer Experience Management (CEM) has risen right to the top of CSPs’ agendas in recent years. The reasons for that are obvious. CSPs are no longer engaged in a cosy competition with other CSPs. They’re fighting for revenues and profits with a huge variety of other businesses. In great evidence are over-the-top (OTT) web-based providers of content and services ranging from well-known services such as Google, iTunes and Facebook to a multitude of communication app providers and arcane providers of content. At the same time, basic communications services are being offered in the internet world by VoIP providers such as Skype or Jajah and traditional revenues, such as SMS, have been decimated by the emergence of social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Even the enterprise market is assessing how closely it needs to work with specific CSPs. Cloud computing has revolutionised corporate networking and traditional relationships are not necessarily going to continue. Therefore, on all fronts, it has become clear that CSPs have to do what they do and provide what they provide in a way that is demonstrably better than these competitors. That would be relatively easy if they were the same type of business as these competitors but they’re not. They are encumbered with multi-billion euro network investments and they are seen as the weak link in delivering the customer experience – in many cases unfairly. For the consumer, it’s straightforward to blame the CSP for failed delivery when in fact the fault may lie within a content provider’s server or systems. Add to that, that the phone company has a phone number and a portal you can complain to and the poor CSP is lumbered with the cost of customer service while the OTT provider enjoys the profit. As a consequence, CEM has become fundamental to the transformed CSP business. CEM indices are now routinely presented to C-level executives on a daily basis – right up to the CEO in some CSPs. The granularity of customer data such systems can present is vital, especially as CSPs are trying to scope the balance between providing excellent customer experience and making a profit. That is the really difficult bit for CSPs: Delivering excellence in customer service while maintaining profitability. This supplement explores how CSPs are adopting an analytical approach to CEM. That starts in the network and migrates across all the operating systems and departments of the business. As Carol Borghesi points out on pS10, this isn’t exclusively an organisational or technological challenge, the greater difficulty is in transforming the mindset of the entire CSP and its workforce. It’s like going to a gym to get fit, she says. There’s no point if you don’t have a disciplined exercise regime in place and you don’t go regularly. It’s time for CSPs to get pumping iron. George Malim, Editor, VanillaPlus

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

TA L K I N G

HEADS

Real-time events, analysis and action make the mobile business more beautiful Customer experience has been a hot topic in the telecoms industry for several years, but according to market and business studies, there is still space for improvement in keeping consumers and business users happy. Here Matti Aksela, vice president of analytics at Comptel, tells VanillaPlus how real-time analytics can provide the tools necessary to bring the customer experience to the next level.

VanillaPlus: Good customer experience has become a basic competitive requirement for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to be in business. What have been the drivers to get the CSPs and the whole industry to be so focused on the customer experience? Matti Aksela: Continually increasing, intensive competition drives CSPs to look for new ways of engaging with their customers for better customer loyalty and to find additional revenue streams as well as streamlining their own operations for productivity. In mature markets the cost of churn has been high on the agenda of the senior leaders for some time already and building a better customer experience is seen as a key to success. A big reason for the focus on churn is also the fact that customer retention costs are still lower than acquisition costs, although some analysis, such as that from tefficient, would suggest a weak trend downward for average contract acquisition costs and upwards for the average retention costs.

better customer experience. Getting spam is very irritating, but getting relevant promotions can actually be a very positive experience.

At the same time,

At the same time, feedback from the end customers shows that some work still needs to be done by the CSPs to get the basics right. Multiple consumer studies tell the same story, as an example, the recent research by Vanson Bourne essentially shows that the consumers don’t feel enough love and care from their service providers, but even very simple actions can help: The majority – 72% – of consumers in large European and US markets agree that if their mobile operators apologised and sent a special offer to compensate, it would make up for their poor QoS and would increase their loyalty. A small action can make a big difference to the bottom-line through increased customer loyalty.

end customers

CSPs are naturally also interested in driving more revenue from existing customers. If relevant promotions can be made to the customers, these promotions can actually be drivers for increased customer satisfaction and

VP: So, the task is clear but what needs to happen to address these types of customer and business requirements? Where is the industry moving in this, and where do CSPs have the biggest opportunities?

shows that some work still needs to be done by the CSPs to get the basics right

And this does not apply only to mature markets. Growth markets are also maturing at high speed so the CSPs in those markets need to be prepared as well.

The Vanson Bourne study also found the majority of consumer respondents – 65% – said that they would appreciate their mobile operator being more interactive. However, there are several interesting cultural differences. For example, French mobile phone users are the most likely to appreciate personalised customer engagement, with 77% welcoming it yet in Germany, more than half said they would not appreciate this.

feedback from the

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

TALKING

There are several drivers for the need for real-time analytics and actions, based

HEADS

MA: CSPs have the need to focus more on engaging with their customers with the right combination – having the right offer for the subscriber, and also making that offer at the right time – in essence, this will ultimately drive the need for operating in in real time. When contextual services utilising information on the subscribers’ location, device and actions become more prevalent in the market, the solution to be at the right time is through real-time analytics.

on the events as they occur

There are several drivers for the need for realtime analytics and actions, based on the events as they occur. As the technology continues to evolve, and more and more elaborate and engaging services are made available, analytics also needs to evolve. The ever-growing data volumes will provide CSPs with better access to the raw information required and tools for both deeper insights into their customers’ likes and dislikes and for appropriate and timely interactions with them. Also, the speed the data is generated at is growing, and at the same time the industry, and decision-making as a whole, is reaching ever faster clock speeds. When the information flows towards customers at an incredibly fast pace, the CSP must react very quickly or, even better, proactively, utilising predictive analytics, but tailored to this domain of dynamic big data. Thus while retrospective analysis, such as traditional reporting, will continue to play a role in evaluating performance, and serve as a tool for long term planning, I believe the future is in being able to extract actionable information from these huge streaming data volumes as quickly as possible. This can be, for example, with real-time predictive analytics applied in the context of the action, time and location.

We have been involved in several CSP evaluations where they have compared the accuracy of various systems in, for example, prediction of the churn and have shown very significant increases in prediction accuracy and decreases in churn rates. We have also demonstrated that the CSP can predict the customer life time value from the very beginning of the subscriber lifecycle, even before they have used the device. From that, the CSP can make decisions about how much to invest in the customer engagement of that specific customer for customer profitability, for example. With a high level of automation of actions, we can also address the need for CSP’s operational efficiency while delivering more personalised and better customer experience. VP: Can you give examples of how CSPs can use the system? MA: Comptel Social Links has a number of use cases that represent productised ways of utilising the predictive analytics. For simplicity, we have divided the use cases into some key categories. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but does illustrate some examples of common use cases where we feel Social Links can be of great benefit to the CSP:

Comptel Social Links is a use-case-based advanced analytics solution that makes highly accurate predictions on the future behaviour of customers and their individual preferences. This allows the CSPs to better understand their customers, further develop their differentiated service portfolio and optimise the messages and timing for the customer interactions. In essence Social Links brings CSPs the power to discover and act upon operational predictive analytics to

Increasing customer profitability and generating additional revenue is a target of another set of use cases. Up- and cross-sell campaigns usually aim for maximal product uptake, but Social Links also allows CSPs to make the most relevant offers to the subscriber, which is beneficial for both parties as the offer is something the subscriber is most likely to respond positively to. Social Links can help find the customers who are likely to respond positively to the campaign

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

MA: The key to more intelligent customer engagement is analysing the massive volume of customer data the CSP holds and turning it into meaningful intelligence that allows the CSPs to decide, at the most granular – individual customer – level, who to engage with, when to engage with them and with what kind of action.

New customer engagement: Social Links offers tools to aid in customer acquisition utilising predictive analytics in combination with social network analysis. When performed appropriately – and targeted optimally – peer to peer acquisition campaigns can be very effective. New subscribers also require special attention, but a typical challenge is that in the first days, the data available for analysis is very limited. Social Links can make a powerful ‘zero day’ analysis to determine whether the new customer is a potential high value customer, low value customer or a probable churner, or which services to promote to them starting from the beginning. Naturally the accuracy of prediction will continue to increase as more data becomes available.

VP: You have recently launched Comptel Social Links. How does your approach help CSPs achieve that more intelligent, personalised type of customer engagement?

find the optimal targets for actions towards the customer in an operational manner, and can be integrated into operator processes for maximal efficiency and benefit.

offers but would not purchase the product without the offer. This can be applied to a variety of services, products, subscriptions or for example another product family in a quad-play operator’s portfolio. Personalised and optimised campaign targeting is also essential for successful top-up and usage stimulation campaigns, where Social Links can find optimal offers and incentives on the most granular level, the individual subscriber. Customer retention is something most operators would like to improve on, and while Social Links also performs accurate churn prediction, true value is only gained when the action to prevent churn is also optimised. Moreover, optimised churn prevention mechanisms allow the CSP to engage the customer with personalised ‘stay with us’ offers before the decision to churn is made, also minimising the amount of money unnecessarily spent on the retention campaigns. Subscriber insight for portfolio management: In addition to the directly actionable use cases, Social Links can also provide additional information for the operator to build their actions and portfolio utilising methods such as segmentation, social network analysis and demographics prediction. The differentiation by portfolio becomes more important when the traditional network and services assurance related customer needs have been fulfilled. Advanced analytics help the CSP to meet customer needs, respond to changing market conditions, innovate for advanced offer management, personalised promotions and enhanced offer portfolio and pricing. VP: How does Comptel Social Links provide superior customer engagement results? MA: Comptel’s event-analysis-action strategy and related solutions provide the CSP with a holistic way of collecting all the necessary data from different sources such as the CDR (call detail record), subscriber information, subscription data, service usage and recharge histories. All this data can be processed into intelligence by our analytics capabilities and can then be further translated into automated and operational actions based on defined business decisions utilising predictive analytics, allowing the CSP to act on the subscriber in a timely fashion. Social Links utilises Comptel’s high-power processing platform and in-house built state-ofthe-art algorithms, selected and developed for optimal performance on the use cases. This allows Social Links to be a predictive analytics solution ready to trigger real-time context-specific advanced analytics driven actions. With such methods, the customer experience can truly be brought to the next level, while making, business figures of CSPs more beautiful.

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT

CEM needs specialists to extract maximum benefits from systems If customers are your lifeblood, then any competitor in a brutal battle for market supremacy risks heavy losses. A CEM system could stem the flow but do you have to be a doctor to apply it, asks Nick Booth? The thing about customers is you can never do enough for them. For finance directors this is a curse, but for customer engagement specialists it becomes a vocation. There is a clear financial logic in buying a customer experience management (CEM) system, but getting the most out of it is another challenge. This being a new discipline, the choice of system and the personnel to run it is difficult. Araceli del Rio Sastre, Nokia Siemens Networks

Ironically, studies into the customer experiences of the CEM market indicate there is room for improvement all round.

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

The problem for all CSPs, mobile operators included, is that it has never been easy to have a clear idea what’s going on with the subscriber base. The nervous system of CSPs have always been pretty primitive, with intelligence being discretely stored in separate silos of billing

Consumers have no loyalty as they feel their

service providers don’t care, according to a study by Vanson Bourne in January 2012, which quizzed 2,000 subscribers. The research firm reports that 72% of consumers in Europe and the US said they’d stay with their mobile operator if they’d just apologise or offer to compensate for poor quality of service. This simple response is too much for many CSPs however.

records, network outages, tariffs, payments and so on. Until these were brought together, there were no immediate sensations of pain when an important customer was being treated badly. The pain would only be revealed later, when subscriber numbers plunged. “The costs of customer acquisition and retention play a crucial role in a CSP’s future so they should focus more in engaging with their customers in real time,” says Matti Aksela, vice president of analytics at Comptel. The problem with subscribers is that they are all different. French mobile phone users are the most likely – in 77% of cases – to appreciate personalised customer engagement, yet more than half of their German counterparts would hate this. Young people like interaction with their mobile operator, while older ones don’t and contracted customers want more interaction than prepaid subscribers. “Customers want services that respond to their individual needs, meet their individual price level and are suitable for their current usage level,” adds Aksela. If the customers get the right offer at the right time, their relationship with the CSP will improve. The reverse is also true, he warns. However, the success of a CEM system depends on many different factors. Much depends on who make the purchasing decision because their perspective and skillset will determine whether they get the most out of the set of tools they are purchasing. According to Nokia Siemens Networks’ head of marketing and customer engagement, Araceli del Rio Sastre, the person in charge of CEM can vary dramatically. “In the bigger operators they have specialised customer experience. But in other cases, the person responsible can be the CIO, the CTO or the CMO.” The fact that customer experience management is still seen as a subset of CRM (customer relationship management) is something of a drawback. The relationship described by CRM sees everything from the seller’s side, which led to it being lablled a customer stalking system. Customer experience management, on the other hand, tries to see everything from the subscriber’s point of view. In that case, CRM and CEM are diametrically opposite. Another challenge faced by all purchasers of CEM systems, whatever their job title, is that this is a relatively early stage discipline, where every vendor tries to differentiate itself, making things confusing for the buyer. “A lot of different companies have different ideas about CEM,” warns del Rio Sastre.

So the name of the game now, in CEM purchasing, is to establish what you need to achieve and exactly how each vendor can prove they can produce those results. Every customer has a different state of readiness to yield useful information, every customer experience executive might have their own ideas about which information is relevant to them. Every CEM vendor has different ideas about extracting that information and CSPs all differ in how readily they can act on that intelligence too. NSN’s approach to information gathering involves data drawn from sources as diverse as technical KPIs (key performance indicators) and social networks, and points in between such as CRM and billing.

The ultimate goal is to fine tune the network to please the most valuable customers, so that high value VIP subscribers always get the best quality of service

The ultimate goal is to fine tune the network to please the most valuable customers, so that high value VIP subscribers always get the best quality of service. Meanwhile, the less ‘quality sensitive’ customers can be persuaded to yield the airwaves if they’re hogging the bandwidth. This automated class of service system can only work efficiently if two criteria are met. The quality of intelligence about customer experiences must be accurate and the tools to implement actions, the BSS/OSS, must be equally fine tuned. “We develop insights and you need to know what to select and reject,” explains del Rio Sastre. NSN has refined the process by creating hundreds of packages, based on its past experiences of customer feedback. These ‘customer projects’ are available on a portal and can be linked by clients to trigger actions. For now, with CEM complicated by so many variables, the best thing to do is simplify objectives and definitions. CSP Yoido is enjoying the fastest growth in Spain because it simplified its billing for subscribers, reports NSN. There’s a long way to go before all the complexities of CEM can be matched up and integrated with a CSP, according to David Ffoulkes-Jones, CEO at WDS, which advises CSPs on best practice in CEM. “While operators labour to meet KPIs on everything from dropped calls to complaint resolution, customers add an abstract, emotional layer to the mix that is far more difficult to manage,” he says. But in the meantime, instinct and common sense are pretty good starters. Keep communicating and keep it simple, he argues. An apology for bad service would work wonders. Manners cost nothing.

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

CEM

D ATA

EXPERT OPINION:

CEM addresses more than just customer satisfaction CSPs are acquiring new information about their customers every day; what services they use, when and where they use these services, and the capability of its network to support these interactions. As data traffic increases and networks become more complex, sometimes it’s difficult to judge what information to believe. Here, Freddie Kavanagh, vice president of Applications Solutions at Tektronix Communications, explains how CSPs can make the most of their CEM data. There are a couple of golden rules that a retailer needs to stick to if their business is going to survive and thrive. One is that ‘the customer always comes first’ and that ‘the customer is always right’. These same rules can be applied to a communications service provider (CSP), but while the satisfaction of the customer is of paramount importance to the CSP, the data it collects on the subscriber may not always be right; in fact in some cases it might be conflicting or misleading. The contemporary mobile network is a patchwork of different technologies, standards and protocols. Operators need a mechanism to collect and correlate, the huge quantities of data collected from the network into actionable information. They need a holistic view of the customer lifecycle, the services they’re consuming and their interactions with the network.

CEM is now a well-established term, but up until now the CSPs have only scratched the surface of what CEM is capable

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

Understand the data package in depth Standard network monitoring offers an overview of the network from an operational perspective but provides insufficient data from a commercial perspective; data which can facilitate an appreciation of user behaviours. Most network monitoring solutions offer a broad view across the network and are therefore used to drive QoS enhancements. They typically lack the capability to chart, and interpret the user journey and provide a mechanism to evaluate how services can be delivered in a way that offers a pay-off for both subscriber and network operator. The optimal approach to arriving at an intimate appreciation of what the network is being used for is to understand the data package in depth. There’s no reason why dumb should get any dumber given the technologies and tools now available to underpin some truly revenue-focussed CEM. New developments in network analytics and diagnostics, for example in terms of probebased solutions, can offer unrivalled granularity. They can enable CSPs to gain a unique view of the customer experience by monitoring service usage, and detect and respond to customer events in real-time. The consumption of data services can be broken down by service, subscriber and device, even to the extent that operators can drill down to what peer-to-peer services – such as VoIP – subscribers are using. This sophisticated analysis offers a view of which services are consuming the most bandwidth over any specified time period, be it

of delivering

To do this effectively, they need to adopt a system that provides them with an end-to-end view of their network. Once they have this automated system in place they will be able to analyse data across multiple technologies and domains. They will have real-time data in their possession that can be used to make strategic business decisions based on user trends, traffic patterns and market conditions. Not only that, but the data will inform them how best to maximise their resources and optimise their networks. In short they will be able to use data collection and analysis to make money and save money. So what is the system called and what does it look like? It’s actually been with us for a number of years and it isn’t a single application, it’s typically a suite of products that are calibrated to perform all of the above; optimised to meet the specification of an individual network or group of networks. It’s widely known and accepted as a solution called customer experience management (CEM).

CEM is now a well-established term, but up until now the CSPs have only scratched the surface of what CEM is capable of delivering. The key to utilising CEM is to acknowledge that it can provide much more than subscriber intelligence – it’s a window onto the network itself.

daily, weekly or longer. Not only can operators monitor QoS at its most basic level, but they can also view how many subscribers are using a given service at a given time. Understanding the bigger picture On one level CEM allows the operator to identify heavy users of a service or the most frequently used devices and can also identify the worst affected subscribers, or worst performing devices, for throughput or latency. This approach will enable the operator to refine the network and service delivery to improve the end-user experience and to innovate with new services to address the needs of subscribers based on their consumption habits. Once the infrastructure is in place, the management of network services can be far more strategic. As an example, network data might enable an MNO to throttle peer-to-peer apps but not to throttle VIP subscribers. Operators can, therefore, recommend policies that give priority to monetized streaming services and create service tiers to fill usage gaps. Smartly gathered and intelligently used data can actually be lifted from network probes, warehoused and then interrogated down to the finest detail, to investigate where opportunities may lie. It can be used to drive revenue-capturing opportunities such as tuning the service experience based on the most popular devices and bundling device upgrades with new service offerings, not least keeping hold of roaming customers so they do not migrate elsewhere. With usage outpacing revenues, business models must evolve. Continual network tuning makes optimal use of existing network resources and accelerates the return on deployed assets. By prioritizing traffic based on performance and revenue recognition requirements CSPs can use new and costeffective charging models to encourage changes in subscriber behaviour. Seeing what the customer sees Building, or reclaiming revenue is clearly of prime interest to an operator. However, reducing costs through network efficiencies when combined with targeted service propositions makes for a very strong and compelling commercial model in any competitive environment. Customers experiencing persistent issues with network services will call customer care, give up using the service or possibly churn - in each case costing the MNO valuable time and

revenue. The circumstances triggering these reactions are often invisible to the MNO. An incorrectly configured APN on the handset, for example, will lead to the network blocking access to the user. Whilst it’s right for the CSP to take such an action, the user will perceive it as a disastrous system failure. The CSP receives no indication of customer dissatisfaction because the network is performing exactly as intended. Nonetheless, the customer who is trying to spend money on the network may simply give up in frustration. This inevitable cause and effect relationship can be readily understood through real-time Customer Experience Indicators which enable the CSP to implement corrective behaviours; automatically addressing customer experience issues within moments of occurrence, eliminating customer dissatisfaction, driving service uptake and reducing customer churn.

An integrated CEM solution can provide an end-to-end view of a CSP’s business and all of its assets

Combining customer experience data from the network with data from a range of sources within the CSP can create the foundations of sophisticated issue detection and resolution behaviours tailored to the needs of the individual subscriber. CSPs can start having a meaningful positive impact on the experience of the network users. Making the most of CEM An integrated CEM solution can provide an endto-end view of a CSP’s business and all of its assets. It can reveal the breadth and depth of a subscriber’s interaction with the network and a detailed and comprehensive view of the services they use. It can also provide a window onto the network, it can provide an operator with an inventory of its network reach and capabilities; identify hot spots, traffic congestion and data throughput, and then align resources accordingly. Apart from making informed business decisions, based on the analysis of subscriber usage and trends, to create new revenue opportunities, CSPs can use CEM to introduce efficiencies and make cost savings. With CEM operators can maximise their network resources, make the best of use of their existing 2G and 3G assets and gradually progress their 4G strategy. However, one key challenge remains and that is how will the carriers address the disparity between traffic and revenue, how do they close that gap? That involves a wider service assurance issue and one we can look at another time. For more information visit www.tektronixcommunications.com.

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

O P E R AT O R I N T E R V I E W

CSPs need a change of lifestyle to deliver on customer satisfaction promises Carol Borghesi is senior vice president of Customers First Culture at Telus, the Canadian CSP. Here, she tells George Malim about the company’s adoption of a customers first culture, what that means and what it has achieved. Borghesi who has worked with CSPs all around the world to enhance their customers’ experiences, admits the concept of customer service is always a challenge in telecoms. “Over the years I’ve seen that the best you can be is the least worst of the not very good,” she says. “There’s huge evidence that the industry is bottom of the league when it comes to customer service.” Carol Borghesi: Approaches to customer experiences have been like joining a gym after Christmas

Hotels and parcel delivery services routinely come top of indices that measure customer satisfaction such as analyst firm, Forrester’s Customer Experience Index. The gap between those at the top and those at the bottom is wide. Recently the telecoms sector has started to understand it has to raise its game. “While many in our industry would say customers are just too demanding, many others of us have clicked that in order to differentiate ourselves the customer experience must be improved,” she says. “Nine out of 10 CEOs across all industries have claimed that customer experience is top of their agenda but very few organisations put their money where their mouth is. It’s like joining a gym after Christmas but never going. Telus not only joined the gym but we decided what results we wanted to achieve and put them in place with the discipline to carry them out.” “It’s not a transformation, it’s not a programme, it’s a lifestyle change,” adds Borghesi. “Personal fitness is a great analogy because there’s only one way to achieve it – by eating properly and moving – but our industry has focused on the easy wins.” So, if customer experience initiatives resemble a get-fit-quick scheme, how do you bring a large,

S10

CEM SUPPLEMENT VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2012

former-PTT like Telus back to the fundamentals of customer satisfaction? “We identified the big goal among all the ways to measure and manage customer feedback as being to lead the likelihood to recommend category of customer satisfaction surveys,” she explains. “Secondly, we made that relative to the markets we serve and set timelines for achieving that leading position.” Telus decided to focus on customer experience two years ago and, in order to ensure the entire business bought into the pursuit of Borghesi’s big goal every organisation, silo and fiefdom within the company was brought into the lifestyle change. “We arranged for all the senior executives to spend an entire shift with customer service agents, installers, field engineers, salespeople and workers in our corporate retail stores. Our top 350 leaders spent a shift on the front line and they didn’t just sit next to our workers, we made them park their Blackberries and work shoulder to shoulder with them.” The results were eye-opening but Borghesi wasn’t finished. Workers were encouraged to extract a promise from the executive working alongside them that they would lobby for a specific improvement at a strategy meeting. The technology itself also didn’t present a significant challenge. “We had the opportunity to tackle issues in the process that did have systems impacts but almost all recommendations were not systems-related but collaboration and process related,” she says. “That’s an important message for our industry that our fascination with technology can be a limitation unless you stand back and consider what customers and want and what we promised we’d deliver. In the end doing that impresses customers a lot more.”

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