June 2012

Forensic Fossils: Is Your Revenue Assurance Shop Fit for Display at a Natural History Museum?

interview with Jim Marsh

The telecom business is easy: just find some investors, buy a network, install a B/OSS, hire some revenue collectors, and rake in the money.

That’s a pretty naïve statement, isn‘t it? Yet a lot of very smart people were fooled into this kind of thinking. I refer to the ones who formed and invested in many of the CLECs that emerged in the last 90’s and early 2000s in the U.S. market.

You know the rest of that story. The vast majority of those first generation CLECs eventually became extinct. Their fatal flaw? A belief that old industry models could serve telecoms in a new era. Combine that myth with the fact that their business processes and systems were very rigid. They simply couldn‘t evolve to a different model than the one they originally put down on paper.

Surprise. Telecom is not a dinosaur museum piece after all. Rather, it’s a living, new-age Pterodactyl that’s been digitized and operates by organic laws, not robotic ones. It’s a business where assumptions must be regularly challenged and where the book of “what works” gets rewritten every day.

So what about your revenue assurance shop? Were its current operating rules conceived in the Jurrasic Age? Is your RA or fraud software merely monitoring old problems? Are the tasks you perform at your job today the same ones handed down to you by your predecessor four years ago?

Without the continuous guiding light of seasoned revenue assurance leaders, even the best teams of RA professionals, technology, and business processes can fossilize and lose their vitality.

Jim Marsh is one of those RA seasoned leaders and we’re pleased to interview him here at Black Swan. Currently a Lead Transformation Consultant at Wipro Technologies, Jim has had many interesting RA and fraud management roles at operators as diverse as MCI, Williams, PCS and Qwest. In the interview he gives us plenty of nuggets to chew on in subjects as diverse as margin assurance, purchasing management, staffing, third party partner management — even fraud management as a marketing weapon.

But the key message he brings is that you can‘t just flip a switch and expect to run an RA or fraud department on auto-pilot.

	Dan Baker: Jim, the large carriers have plenty of RA and fraud experts on staff, but it’s at the small- to mid-sized firms where consultants like you can deliver great value. Where do you typically begin in your consulting with these operators?

Jim Marsh: Dan, the problem most of the small- to mid-sized carriers have is they often have no assurance specialists on staff. They know that protecting revenue is key, but they care less about margins than they should. Very often they need to think more strategically about their products, risk, and their payment processes.

Purchasing is a good example of an area that deserves more attention. Early on, a small service provider will strike deals just to get its business rolling, such as entering an agreement to process credit card purchases. The problem is the small/mid size operator will not go back and re-look at those contracts. After a period of time, they should look strongly and say, “What am I actually paying for and can I get a better rate?”

The key is to introduce controls to make sure you are routinely reviewing all your expenses. Do you have the proper accounting in place to manage telco expenses and external partners?

In the fraud area, if you pull your contracts together, you may also find that one of your contracts pays $5,000 a month to the sister of somebody in the purchasing department.

	Plenty of expense management firms are out there to help find leakage and earn a commission on what’s recovered.

Yes, the expense management firms focus on RA because it’s lucrative for them. But I would urge caution.

Some of those firms will earn their 30%+ commission and come back to you a year later knowing full well that the processes that caused the original leakage were not fixed. But if you watch how the expense management firm works, you’ll know whether they are simply patching things up to earn a future commission or truly fixing the underlying process.

Part of their methodology is to schedule a follow-up return visit, say in 18 months, to “see how well you are doing.” If they are lucky, the operator will have a change of management or staff, which means they may not even have a copy of the report from the previous engagement. All of this is wonderful repeat business for the consultant.

	What about billing and other services suppliers? How should those firms be monitored?

Well, I’ve been amazed at the savings that can be achieved by simply holding vendors‘ feet to the fire.

At one service provider we had three billing providers and nobody had bothered to change contracts in six years. So the first thing I did was go to the billing companies and say “You know, we have increased our traffic to you, and you have charged the same rate for six years, so what kind of discount can I get?”

And without any pushing, we were immediately given a discount. So don‘t be afraid to negotiate. It’s like the many telecom consumers in the U.S. who are still paying 18 cents a minute or more for their long distance service — they have never bothered to research whether they could get a better deal.

Another issue: billing service bureaus often charge on a subscriber basis, then layer other charges on top. For example, credit card processing might be billed at a transactional rate and a percentage. Unfortunately the biller can make a killing here because as your volume increases, the biller’s cost to provide credit card processing goes way down (based on volume) while you are still being charged the original contracted rate.

So at one operator, I moved that transactional cost plus percentage to a straight flat rate cost. By also bidding that process out, we saved over a million dollars a year.

	Margin assurance is getting much attention these days. CenturyLink and TEOCO, for example, teamed to create a data warehouse to measure margin assurance.

I’m not familiar with that case, but I know that a full-blown data warehouse like that won‘t be effective unless a solid margin assurance culture already exists at the firm.

You need an on-going program to ensure you are protecting margins on your products. And those margins can quickly erode due to bad debt, expenses and cost to the business. So you must either lower your costs or migrate customers into new products that have healthier margins.

As long as you can achieve and protect a margin you are comfortable with, business success is assured. But as soon as that margin slips from your grasp, then you’ve got to ask: “What’s going on here?”

If the team gets totally focused on margins and taking steps to maintain them, you’re building a healthy margin assurance culture. By the way, it also helps to sometimes jolt people with a bit of business reality like: “If we can‘t protect our margins over the next six months, we may need to lay off 10 people. So who wants to be in that lucky 10?”

	Jim, what I’m hearing from you now goes beyond mere business controls to creating new ways to grow the business. But should RA be in the business of pushing new products?

Dan, whether RA and fraud experts recognize it or not, their broad knowledge of the business puts them in an ideal position to recommend new product strategies that marketing can run with.

At a service provider I worked for, we faced a crisis because most of our revenue was coming in via postpaid billing. When you factored in the acceptance of credit card payments, postpaid was earning us only 70 cents on the dollar. However, in a prepaid environment, we knew we could earn 92 cents on the dollar.

So RA pushed for a strategy to swap that around — turn most of our revenue into prepaid instead. Another benefit of moving to more prepaid was cash flow. Instead of waiting 90 days for all my money to come in, I have most of my money within 48 hours.

The trick was how to transition subscribers to prepaid and make it smooth. Our strategy here was two-fold. Number one, we invested in a very good Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Number two, we improved our website to make payments a lot easier. Finally, we marketed the heck out of it explaining to customers why it was easier and simpler.

Even though the cost of the IVR system at the time was $100,000, when you laid it all out, it was a great investment. We did a cost benefit analysis and discovered if we didn‘t have a good IVR, my call center staff costs to handle the increased prepaid volume were $875,000 a year. It turned out to be simple math.

	What about fraud management? Are there ways you can turn fraud management into some sort of business opportunity.

Actually, we were able to accomplish exactly that on the wholesale side.

It’s routine practice for a wholesaler to send call records to the reseller at the end of the month. But if you do that, the fraudsters would go after those resellers like crazy because they know they had no controls and the underlying wholesaler was providing no protection.

That’s one of the things I changed at a couple companies. Williams was set up as a wholesaler, but I created a fraud management organization which became a marketing tool for them to offer fraud protection to resellers at a time when no one else was doing it.

As a wholesaler, you may not know who the end user is but you can detect an abnormal amount of traffic, so we informed the reseller saying, “you need to look at this customer because it’s very suspicious.”

Now normally a telecom shouldn‘t be giving away a production service like that for free, but the end game was — if you didn’t provide it to the reseller, he was going to go out of business and wouldn‘t be able to pay your wholesale bill anyway. So it you provide protection, he pays your bill and remains a customer over the longer term.

	Mobile operators are living in a totally new world these days. Profitable areas such as SMS are steadily being encroached on by free messaging on smartphones. Then there’s a corresponding requirement to maintain a partner ecosystem.

The watchword for mobile these days is “revenue optimization”. This action does not pertain to voice or SMS, as that’s usually billed at a flat rate. Today, operators need to ensure they are part of the transactions on the data side — from the apps.

The same principles are in play as existed in the old 900-number or pay phone days. If the third party is charging $2.00 for an app and you’re not collecting the money, how do you know that you’re getting your cut of that two dollars?

How do you audit the number of apps a subscriber downloads? How do you know what is being downloaded? How do you gain revenue yourself if you are not the biller?

So telecom is going through a shift right now. You’re moving from the direct collection of money on a pure transactional basis such as voice to getting a commission from a third party app provider. In the old days, the operator provided the commission as they collected the money. Regardless, the key is to follow the money.

So that is the revenue maximization piece. But how do you handle that? How do you manage your margin? How do you ensure that you either bill for everything that transverses your network, or keep a proper accounting of the processing so you can be paid by the third party partner. At least you should be able to determine if the third party’s payment to you is close to being right.

In the U.S. there are quite a few small, mobile virtual network operators who are reselling service from Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T. So how do these resellers know what’s going on when they have no control over the network? There are many ways to handle that but it requires a knowledge and expertise in how the revenues and usage flows.

	Jim, we know that an RA team can‘t be effective unless it’s supported by the wider telecom organization. So what’s your advice for managing the people side of the practice?

What’s lacking most at small- to medium-sized operators is an ability to drive a strategy down to the lowest individual. Complicating matters is that Directors and VPs wear multiple hats and are focused on silos within their groups.

Often, by setting a goal of say, dropping costs by X percent, you can begin to pull together the wisdom of the organization to meet your goals.

One way to do that is to initiate roundtables and brainstorming sessions with different groups such as customer service, operations, and billing. RA’s job is seek out these people and get them interested. Pulling people together achieves two things. First, it makes them feel a part of your overall mission. Second, you get perspectives on issues that an RA person may be totally clueless about. Someone has an insight and says, “What if we did this?” Then you suddenly recognize, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea at all”, so you add that to your to-do list.

	Jim, thanks for these wonderful insights. Any final thoughts on the issue of staffing an RA department?

Dan, staffing strategy really depends on how big a company you are and what expertise is available.

A large company has more options. I have found that people who have a process background with a technical and finance slant are often very successful in RA. Initial staffing should focus on areas of major concern. The best path to success is often to identify the greatest impacts to the company and reassign knowledgeable staff at first to seed the organization.

Once success is felt, growth can come with new personnel, either internal or external. The key is to gain that initial success by prioritizing on critical areas and gaining the respect of the organization.

Staffing RA in a small- to mid-sized telco faces an entirely different order. It’s the whole tendency to say, “this new function will require another person be added to our group,” which very often is a totally unrealistic expectation. It really becomes even more important to create cross-functional communication channels to get everyone out of the weeds and prioritize. If a person is responsible for 30 little processes, they then need to get focused on doing the important ones first. Every time a new issue crops up, you can‘t go out and hire somebody new.

Jim Marsh

Jim Marsh is a Lead Transformation Consultant at Wipro Technologies. In addition to his broad knowledge of revenue and fraud assurance issues, Jim regularly consults telecoms and equipment manufacturers on a wide host of strategic issues. Jim is located in Phoenix and can be reached at: jim.marsh@wipro.com

Wipro Technologies is an IT services and IT hardware firm with over 130,000 employees and clients across 54 countries. Contact Jim via

Black Swan Solution Guides & Papers

Expanding the Scope of Revenue Assurance Beyond Switch-to-Bill’s Vision — Araxxe — How Araxxe’s end-to-end revenue assurance complements switch-to-bill RA through telescope RA (external and partner data) and microscope RA (high-definition analysis of complex services like bundling and digital services).
Lanck Telecom FMS: Voice Fraud Management as a Network Service on Demand — Lanck Telecom — A Guide to a new and unique on-demand network service enabling fraud-risky international voice traffic to be monitored (and either alerted or blocked) as that traffic is routed through a wholesaler on its way to its final destinations.
SHAKEN / STIR Calling Number Verification & Fraud Alerting — iconectiv — SHAKEN/STIR is the telecom industry’s first step toward reviving trust in business telephony — and has recently launched in the U.S. market. This Solution Guide features commentary from technology leaders at iconetiv, a firm heavily involved in the development of SHAKEN.
Getting Accurate, Up-to-the-Minute Phone Number Porting History & Carrier-of-Record Data to Verify Identity & Mitigate Account Takeovers — iconectiv — Learn about a recently approved risk intelligence service to receive authoritative and real-time notices of numbers being ported and changes to the carrier-of-record for specific telephone numbers.
The Value of an Authoritative Database of Global Telephone Numbers — iconectiv — Learn about an authoritative database of allocated numbers and special number ranges in every country of the world. The expert explains how this database adds value to any FMS or fraud analyst team.
The IPRN Database and its Use in IRSF & Wangiri Fraud Control — Yates Fraud Consulting — The IPRN Database is a powerful new tool for helping control IRSF and Wangiri frauds. The pioneer of the category explains the value and use of the IPRN Database in this 14-page Black Swan Solution Guide.
A Real-Time Cloud Service to Protect the Enterprise PBX from IRSF Fraud — Oculeus — Learn how a new cloud-based solution developed by Oculeus, any enterprise can protect its PBX from IRSF fraud for as little as $5 a month.
How Regulators can Lead the Fight Against International Bypass Fraud — LATRO Services — As a regulator in a country infected by SIM box fraud, what can you do to improve the situation? A white paper explains the steps you can and should you take — at the national government level — to better protect your country’s tax revenue, quality of communications, and national infrastructure.
Telecom Identity Fraud 2020: A 36-Expert Analysis Report from TRI — TRI — TRI releases a new research report on telecom identity fraud and security. Black Swan readers can download a free Executive Summary of the Report.
The 2021 State of Communications-Related Fraud, Identity Theft & Consumer Protection in the USA — iconectiv — This 49-page free Report on communications-related fraud analyzes the FTC’s annual Sentinel consumer fraud statistics and provides a sweeping view of trends and problem areas. It also gives a cross-industry view of the practices and systems that enable fraud control, identity verification, and security in our “zero trust” digital world.

cSwans of a Feather

LATRO’s Tips for Launching a Successful Revenue & Fraud Assurance Program for Mobile Money Operations in Developing Countries — interview with Don Reinhart — A company building mobile money RA/FM tools and managed services gives a concise, but detailed tutorial on how the Mobile Money Ecosystem works. Revenue assurance pros will get tips on what to look for in analytics/assurance tools, controls, and professional services.
PrologMobile’s Simple and Brilliant Plan to Save US MNOs Billions a Year in Recovered Phones & Retained Customers — interview with Seth Heine — An expert in the mobile phone reverse supply chain explains how MNOs — via a neutral third party information exchange — can recover their original phones on the used market and save huge sums in multi-year customer retention.
MTN Agility: Mastering Exponential Technologies in Revenue/Fraud Assurance and Beyond — interview with Danie Maritz & Tony Sani & Luke Taylor — An in-depth look at RAFM operations and innovation at the MTN Group. Topics discussed include RA/fraud control challenges, strategies, and MTN’s journey to exploit exponential tech (AI, robotics, and ML) in its RAFM program and support of internal non-telco businesses.
From Byzantine Software Contracts to Simple & Flexible RA Managed Services — interview with Philippe Orsini — Is the way B2B/enterprise software is sold and delivered today progressive — or is it Byzantine in the age of cloud? An expert lays out the case for managed services in RA and billing verification.
WeDo Hosts Revenue Assurance & Fraud Management Conference in Washington DC — by Dan Baker — Black Swan is pleased to announce what looks to be a first class revenue assurance and fraud management conference being put on by WeDo Technologies, on October 1st and 2nd in beautiful Washington DC.
Migrating systems or launching LTE next year? Don‘t forget transformation assurance & optimisation — by Efrat Nissimov — System transformations and network migrations are major revenue impacting events and they should raise a big red flag. Why? Because data integrity issues are bound to crop up as CSPs move vital data from a legacy system to something new. It’s time for transformation assurance.
Make Business Assurance Progress Every Day: How to Set Goals, Automate, and Energize Your Team — interview with Kathleen Romano — Business assurance (BA) skills have wide applicability outside the revenue assurance and fraud mangement domains. In this article, a telecom executive explains how she’s applying her BA skills in the Payments area. In addition to discussing the key operational challenges in Payments, the interview also provides keen insights on setting goals in business assurance, leading a team, and making critical decisions.
LTE Rollout: Make it a Smashing Success with Risk Assessment, Controls, and Marketing Offer Analytics — by Gadi Solotorevsky — LTE brings splendid new capabilities to mobile users. But like 2G and 3G deployments before, operators can only make money if they successfuly plan, coordinate, deploy fast, and pay attention to pricing plans and the customer experience. This article lays out a 3-phase tactical guide on how revenue analytics professionals can add value in LTE service risk assessment, controls, and marketing offer analytics.
Precision Clockworks: How Revenue Assurance Synchronizes with the Business at Swisscom — interview with Marco Pollinger — An expert revenue assurance department is one whose work dovetails well with the lines of businesses it supports. In this interview you’ll learn how Swisscom manages its revenue assurance function for maximum effect. The article discusses: the operator’s innovative RA organization, the screening and RA approval of new services, its pre-production bill audits, and its coordination with corporate risk management.
Bringing Strategic Planning & Value Engineering to Revenue Assurance — interview with Maged Fawzy — Engineering and architectural techniques have a role in revenue assurance. This interview with a top Egyptian RA consultant explains how continuous risk assessment and long range — yet flexible — RA planning can sharpen a carrier’s RA program and lead to better use of revenue assurance software and integration services.
Forensic Fossils: Is Your Revenue Assurance Shop Fit for Display at a Natural History Museum? — interview with Jim Marsh — Without the continuous guiding light of seasoned revenue assurance leaders, even the best teams of RA professionals, technology, and business processes can fossilize and lose their vitality.
Revenue Assurance: The Magical Market Cap Multiplier — by Van Howard & Curtis Mills — Many operators today consider revenue assurance yesterday’s opportunity. But this article shows why significant revenue and cost leakage can still go undetected, even in companies with dedicated RA departments. Also discussed are the benefits of a broader or more “forensic” approach to revenue assurance, an approach that boosts the bottom line regardless of the automated tools already in place.

Tokopedia, Indonesia’s E-Commerce King, Partners with 11 Million Merchants; Adopts Multi-Cloud to Drive Innovation — interview with Warren Aw & Ryan de Melo — Indonesia’s Tokopedia, founded in 2009, has grown to become one of world’s leading e-commerce players. Read about its success, technology direction, and multi-cloud connectivity adoption.
Bridge Alliance: Knocking Down Regional & Mobile Connectivity Barriers so Connected Car Markets Get Rolling in Asia — interview with Kwee Kchwee — The CEO of an Asian consortium of mobile operators explains how they help simplify and harmonize their members‘ operations in support of multi-national corporations. This integration is enabling two huge industries to come together in Asia: auto manufacturing and telco.
Epsilon’s Infiny NaaS Platform Brings Global Connection, Agility & Fast Provision for IoT, Clouds & Enterprises in Southeast Asia, China & Beyond — interview with Warren Aw — Network as a Service, powered by Software Defined Networks, are a faster, more agile, and more partner-friendly way of making data global connections. A leading NaaS provider explains the benefits for cloud apps, enterprise IT, and IoT.
PCCW Global: On Leveraging Global IoT Connectivity to Create Mission Critical Use Cases for Enterprises — interview with Craig Price — A leading wholesale executive explains the business challenges of the current global IoT scene as it spans many spheres: technical, political, marketing, and enterprise customer value creation.
Senet’s Cloud & Shared Gateways Drive LoRaWAN IoT Adoption for Enterprise Businesses, Smart Cities & Telecoms — interview with Bruce Chatterley — An IoT netowork pioneer explains how LoRaWAN tech fits in the larger IoT ecosystem. He gives use case examples, describes deployment restraints/costs, and shows how partnering, gateway sharing, and flexible deployment options are stimulating growth.
ARM Data Center Software’s Cloud-Based Network Inventory Links Network, Operations, Billing, Sales & CRM to One Database — interview with Joe McDermott & Frank McDermott — A firm offering a cloud-based network inventory system explains the virtues of: a single underlying database, flexible conversions, task-checking workflow, new software business models, views that identify stranded assets, and connecting to Microsoft’s cloud platform.
Pure Play NFV: Lessons Learned from Masergy’s Virtual Deployment for a Global Enterprise — interview with Prayson Pate — NFV is just getting off the ground, but one cloud provider to enterprises making a stir in virtual technology waters is Masergy. Here are lessons learned from Masergy’s recent global deployment using a NFV pure play software approach.
The Digital Enabler: A Charging, Self-Care & Marketing Platform at the Core of the Mobile Business — interview with Jennifer Kyriakakis — The digital enabler is a central platform that ties together charging, self-care, and marketing. The article explains why leading operators consider digital enablers pivotal to their digital strategies.
Delivering Service Assurance Excellence at a Reduced Operating Cost — interview with Gregg Hara — The great diversity and complexity of today’s networks make service assurance a big challenge. But advances in off-the-shelf software now permit the configuring and visualizing of services across multiple technologies on a modest operating budget.
Are Cloud-Based Call Centers the Next Hot Product for the SMB Market? — interview with Doron Dovrat — Quality customer service can improve a company’s corporate identity and drive business growth. But many SMBs are priced out of acquiring modern call center technology. This article explains the benefits of affordable and flexible cloud-based call centers.
Flexing the OSS & Network to Support the Digital Ecosystem — interview with Ken Dilbeck — The need for telecoms to support a broader digital ecosystem requires an enormous change to OSS infrastructures and the way networks are being managed. This interview sheds light on these challenges.
Crossing the Rubicon: Is it Time for Tier Ones to Move to a Real-Time Analytics BSS? — interview with Andy Tiller — Will tier one operators continue to maintain their quilt works of legacy and adjunct platforms — or will they radically transform their BSS architecture into a new system designed to address the new telecom era? An advocate for radical transformation discusses: real-time analytics, billing for enterprises, partnering mashups, and on-going transformation work at Telenor.
Paradigm Shift in OSS Software: Network Topology Views via Enterprise-Search — interview with Benedict Enweani — Enterprise-search is a wildly successful technology on the web, yet its influence has not yet rippled to the IT main stream. But now a large Middle Eastern operator has deployed a major service assurance application using enterprise-search. The interview discusses this multi-dimensional topology solution and compares it to traditional network inventory.
The Multi-Vendor MPLS: Enabling Tier 2 and 3 Telecoms to Offer World-Class Networks to SMBs — interview with Prabhu Ramachandran — MPLS is a networking technology that has caught fire in the last decade. Yet the complexity of MPLS has relegated to being mostly a large carrier solution. Now a developer of a multi-vendor MPLS solutions explains why the next wave of MPLS adoption will come from tier 2/3 carriers supporting SMB customers.
Enabling Telecoms & Utilities to Adapt to the Winds of Business Change — interview with Kirill Rechter — Billing is in the midst of momentous change. Its value is no longer just around delivering multi-play services or sophisticated rating. In this article you’ll learn how a billing/CRM supplier has adapted to the times by offering deeper value around the larger business issues of its telecom and utility clients.
Driving Customer Care Results & Cost Savings from Big Data Facts — interview with Brian Jurutka — Mobile broadband and today’s dizzying array of app and network technology present a big challenge to customer care. In fact, care agents have a hard time staying one step ahead of customers who call to report problems. But network analytics comes to the rescue with advanced mobile handset troubleshooting and an ability to put greater intelligence at the fingertips of highly trained reps.
Hadoop and M2M Meet Device and Network Management Systems — interview with Eric Wegner — Telecom big-data in networks is more than customer experience managment: it’s also about M2M plus network and element management systems. This interview discusses the explosion in machine-to-machine devices, the virtues and drawbacks of Hadoop, and the network impact of shrink-wrapped search.
The Data Center & Cloud Infrastructure Boom: Is Your Sales/Engineering Team Equipped to Win? — by Dan Baker — The build-out of enterprise clouds and data centers is a golden opportunity for systems integrators, carriers, and cloud providers. But the firms who win this business will have sales and engineering teams who can drive an effective and streamlined requirements-to-design-to-order process. This white paper points to a solution — a collaborative solution designs system — and explains 8 key capabilities of an ideal platform.
Big Data: Is it Ready for Prime Time in Customer Experience Management? — interview with Thomas Sutter — Customer experience management is one of the most challenging of OSS domains and some suppliers are touting “big data” solutions as the silver bullet for CEM upgrades and consolidation. This interview challenges the readiness of big data soluions to tackle OSS issues and deliver the cost savings. The article also provides advice on managing technology risks, software vendor partnering, and the strategies of different OSS suppliers.
Calculated Risk: The Race to Deliver the Next Generation of LTE Service Management — interview with Edoardo Rizzi — LTE and the emerging heterogeneous networks are likely to shake up the service management and customer experience management worlds. Learn about the many new network management challenges LTE presents, and how a small OSS software firm aims to beat the big established players to market with a bold new technology and strategy.
Decom Dilemma: Why Tearing Down Networks is Often Harder than Deploying Them — interview with Dan Hays — For every new 4G LTE and IP-based infrastructure deployed, there typically a legacy network that’s been rendered obsolete and needs to be decommissioned. This article takes you through the many complexities of network decom, such as facilities planning, site lease terminations, green-safe equipment disposal, and tax relief programs.
Migration Success or Migraine Headache: Why Upfront Planning is Key to Network Decom — interview with Ron Angner — Shutting down old networks and migrating customers to new ones is among the most challenging activities a network operators does today. This article provides advice on the many network issues surrounding migration and decommissioning. Topics discussed include inventory reconciliation, LEC/CLEC coordination, and protection of customers in the midst of projects that require great program management skills.
Navigating the Telecom Solutions Wilderness: Advice from Some Veteran Mountaineers — interview with Al Brisard — Telecom solutions vendors struggle mightily to position their solutions and figure out what to offer next in a market where there’s considerable product and service crossover. In this article, a veteran order management specialist firm lays out its strategy for mixing deep-bench functional expertise with process consulting, analytics, and custom API development.
Will Telecoms Sink Under the Weight of their Bloated and Out-of-Control Product Stacks? — interview with Simon Muderack — Telecoms pay daily for their lack of product integration as they constantly reinvent product wheels, lose customer intelligence, and waste time/money. This article makes the case of an enterprise product catalog. Drawing on central catalog cases at a few Tier 1 operators, the article explains the benefits: reducing billing and provisioning costs, promoting product reuse, and smoothing operations.
Virtual Operator Life: Enabling Multi-Level Resellers Through an Active Product Catalog — interview with Rob Hill — The value of product distribution via virtual operators is immense. They enable a carrier to sell to markets it cannot profitably serve directly. Yet the need for greater reseller flexibility in the bundling and pricing of increasingly complex IP and cloud services is now a major channel barrier. This article explains what’s behind an innovative product catalog solution that doubles as a service creation environment for resellers in multiple tiers.
Telecom Blocking & Tackling: Executing the Fundamentals of the Order-to-Bill Process — interview with Ron Angner — Just as football teams need to be good at the basics of blocking and tackling, telecoms need to excel at their own fundamental skillset: the order-to-cash process. In this article, a leading consulting firm explains its methodology for taking operators on the path towards order-to-cash excellence. Issues discussed include: provisioning intervals; standardization and simplicity; the transition from legacy to improved process; and the major role that industry metrics play.
Wireline Act IV, Scene II: Packaging Network & SaaS Services Together to Serve SMBs — by John Frame — As revenue from telephony services has steadily declined, fixed network operators have scrambled to support VoIP, enhanced IP services, and now cloud applications. This shift has also brought challenges to the provisioning software vendors who support the operators. In this interview, a leading supplier explains how it’s transforming from plain ol‘ OSS software provider to packager of on-net and SaaS solutions from an array of third party cloud providers.
Telecom Merger Juggling Act: How to Convert the Back Office and Keep Customers and Investors Happy at the Same Time — interview with Curtis Mills — Billing and OSS conversions as the result of a merger are a risky activity as evidenced by famous cases at Fairpoint and Hawaiian Telcom. This article offers advice on how to head off problems by monitoring key operations checkpoints, asking the right questions, and leading with a proven conversion methodology.
Is Order Management a Provisioning System or Your Best Salesperson? — by John Konczal — Order management as a differentiator is a very new concept to many CSP people, but it’s become a very real sales booster in many industries. Using electronics retailer BestBuy as an example, the article points to several innovations that can — and are — being applied by CSPs today. The article concludes with 8 key questions an operator should ask to measure advanced order management progress.
NEC Takes the Telecom Cloud from PowerPoint to Live Customers — interview with Shinya Kukita — In the cloud computing world, it’s a long road from technology success to telecom busness opportunity. But this story about how NEC and Telefonica are partnering to offer cloud services to small and medium enterprises shows the experience of early cloud adoption. Issues discussed in the article include: customer types, cloud application varieties, geographic region acceptance, and selling challenges.
Billing As Enabler for the Next Killer Business Model — interview with Scott Swartz — Facebook, cloud services, and Google Ads are examples of innovative business models that demand unique or non-standard billing techniques. The article shows how flexible, change-on-the-fly, and metadata-driven billing architectures are enabling CSPs to offer truly ground breaking services.
Real-Time Provisioning of SIM Cards: A Boon to GSM Operators — interview with Simo Isomaki — Software-controlled SIM card configuration is revolutionizing the activation of GSM phones. The article explains how dynamic SIM management decouples the selection of numbers/services and delivers new opportunities to market during the customer acquisition and intial provisoining phase.
A Cynic Converted: IN/Prepaid Platforms Are Now Pretty Cool — interview with Grant Lenahan — Service delivery platforms born in the IN era are often painted as inflexible and expensive to maintain. Learn how modern SDPs with protocol mediation, high availability, and flexible Service Creation Environments are delivering value for operators such as Brazil’s Oi.
Achieving Revenue Maximization in the Telecom Contact Center — interview with Robert Lamb — Optimizing the contact center offers one of the greatest returns on investment for a CSP. The director of AT&T’s contact center services business explains how telecoms can strike an “artful balance” between contact center investment and cost savings. The discussion draws from AT&T’s consulting with world class customers like Ford, Dell, Discover Financial, DISH Network, and General Motors.
Mobile Broadband: The Customer Service Assurance Challenge — interview with Michele Campriani — iPhone and Android traffic is surging but operators struggle with network congestion and dropping ARPUs. The answer? Direct resources and service quality measures to ensure VIPs are indeed getting the quality they expect. Using real-life examples that cut to the chase of technical complexities, this article explains the chief causes of service quality degradation and describes efficient ways to deal with the problem.
Telco-in-a-Box: Are Telecoms Back in the B/OSS Business? — interview with Jim Dunlap — Most telecoms have long since folded their merchant B/OSS software/services businesses. But now Cycle30, a subsidiary of Alaskan operator GCI, is offering a order-to-cash managed service for other operators and utilities. The article discusses the company’s unique business model and contrasts it with billing service bureau and licensed software approaches.
Bricks, Mortar & Well-Trained Reps Make a Comeback in Customer Management — interview with Scott Kohlman — Greater industry competition, service complexity, and employee turnover have raised the bar in the customer support. Indeed, complex services are putting an emphasis on quality care interactions in the store, on the web, and through the call center. In this article you’ll learn about innovations in CRM, multi-tabbed agent portals, call center agent training, customer treatment philosophies, and the impact of self-service.
21st Century Order Management: The Cross-Channel Sales Conversation — by John Konczal — Selling a mobile service is generally not a one-and-done transaction. It often involves several interactions — across the web, call center, store, and even kiosks. This article explains the power of a “cross-channel hub” which sits above all sales channels, interacts with them all, and allows a CSP to keep the sales conversation moving forward seamlessly.
Building a B/OSS Business Through Common Sense Customer Service — by David West — Delivering customer service excellence doesn‘t require mastering some secret technique. The premise of this article is that plain dealing with customers and employees is all that’s needed for a winning formula. The argument is spelling out in a simple 4 step methodology along with some practical examples.

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