January 2012

Gratifying Ghana: Why Listening to Operators Trumps Vendor Technology and Size

interview with Ludvig Lindqvist

Company size is a highly overrated success factor in telecom software companies. History shows that companies large and small can find their niches in the B/OSS market.

A few years back when IBM, HP, EMC, and Computer Associates swooped in to acquire leading players in the OSS/service assurance business, people figured the gig was up for the smaller assurance vendors. But we soon discovered that the market was too dynamic and entrepreneurial to be dominated by a few technology giants. Instead, several small-to-midsized players have emerged in the telecom service assurance market who are innovating and adding value in areas that many of the big guys didn’t foresee or chose not to address.

And in addition to company size, I would count technical excellence as another overrated success factor. The software can be truly groundbreaking, but if it’s not marketed or implemented right, the effort to build a better mouse trap is all for naught.

One vendor attribute that will never go out of fashion, however, is being in synch with the customer’s business, capabilities and unique needs. And that, in a nutshell, is what Basset does far better than many of its competitors, particularly in the telecom fraud market.

The Stockholm-based provider of fraud, interconnect billing and RA software has fewer than 100 employees. Yet that small cadre serves an amazing 70 operators in 65 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. In business since 1996, two of its founding-year clients are still customers of Basset.

In 15 years, fraud and billing technology has gone through monstrous changes, but according to Ludvig Lindqvist, Basset’s vice president of business development, the key success ingredient of this small company is not technical brilliance, but an ability to thoroughly engage with clients and support their unique business challenges. Here are edited excerpts from our discussion.

	Dan Baker: The telecom fraud software market has been anything but stable in the past decade. Too many solutions have turned out to be throwaways and operators ended up shopping elsewhere. What’s gone wrong?

Ludvig Lindqvist: Dan, in many cases, it’s a simple case of the vendors not keeping close to the customer’s need for addressing new types of fraud. Many times we’ve seen a system that is practically dead from neglect because the vendor has not been present or been there to serve the new requirements.

A new solution should also be able to support the new ways a fraud team is working and organized. For instance, today you have revenue assurance and fraud teams merging quite a bit, and that’s a new development that happened in only the last two years.

Another problem is that operators select a vendor who is on site for 3 months, 6 months, and suddenly a year has passed before getting operational with the fraud system. Here Basset gives confidence to the operator because we are able to deliver a solution very fast, within a few months’ time.

	What do you mean by “keeping close to the customer“?

The primary point is to understand the operator’s business. It’s not so much any customization or technical finesse. We as a vendor must make sure that we exactly understand their business. We try to be an advisor for the long run.

The main focus in the very beginning is to really sit down, discuss, understand and document the customer, their surroundings, their business processes, everything that’s needed to understand how we should configure, train or put this system live in the best possible way.

Smaller operators require plenty of advice along the way. Mature operators, on the other hand, already have processes in place where if you don’t understand those processes, you can’t deliver something that works in their environment. Always, you have to be humble so you do not push something new on to the operators that they are not willing to accept.

Just as we cannot override the customer’s requirement, the customer has to be willing to accept us as well. No operator’s requirements are mind-blowingly unique, but all customers look a little bit different when you examine their operation up close. So, to be able to put our knowledge, our experience, our systems in place, we need to understand them and talk their language.

You can win a sale and deliver what’s required on the contract, but that doesn’t mean you really understand what the operator does and how they do it.

	What about Africa? What are the major issues the operators face there, especially in fraud?

Well, one of the biggest issues in African markets is to keep competence within the company and maintain good product knowledge and an understanding of customers.

In the fraud area specifically, perhaps the biggest issue is bypass fraud via SIM boxes, though they also face threats from internal fraud and international revenue share.

Africa suffers from many telecom difficulties, but in other ways they are actually moving faster and ahead of other countries. For example, mobile money is stronger there because they don‘t have any infrastructure for taking care of money transactions as we have in Europe or America.

	In recent years some of the fraud-management vendors are strongly pushing managed services in markets like Africa. What’s your assessment of that?

I can see the point in managed services, which is to make up for high staff turnover, but I think removing the fraud-monitoring function from the operator is a mistake. You need to fully understand all processes of an operator. And remote monitoring and remote workforces don‘t do that.

Let me give you an example. I was in Ghana about eight years ago and the local fraud investigator saw something suspicious. He told me: “Look at this. Have you seen this before?” And he showed me the user’s calling pattern. But I looked at the data and saw nothing strange. Then he explained to me that a user being on the phone for three or four minutes was highly unusual because in Ghana the custom is to make calls that are 10 or 15 seconds, long enough to give directions where to meet to discuss in person.

So this points to the importance of having local knowledge of a market. A person like me with European eyes will find it hard to investigate potential frauds in Ghana because I don‘t really know their exact behavior and what I should look for.

	That’s a great story. Is that still the case, today — calling for only 10 or 15 seconds?

No, the situation is very likely to change over time as customers adapt to the market such as rate plans, economy and even the political situation. That’s why it’s not recommended to manage a fraud department from another region. And a more practical fraud example here is fraud bypass through SIM box. SIM-box fraudsters are no longer using the same techniques they used in the past. If they hadn’t changed their pattern, then would have been defeated again and again. But SIM boxes are alive and well, costing operators millions of dollars every month.

	Please tell us a little more about the SIM-box threat.

First of all, in many countries it’s not a serious crime to run SIM-box operations; however, the SIM box user is violating the terms and conditions for having the prepaid card which prohibits call reselling.

In other words, it’s not authorized, but you can’t be put in jail for using a SIM box. A contributor to the issue is that so many Africans have moved to the U.S. and Europe, so a huge amount of international minutes are calling into a country like Nigeria every day.

The problem for the operator is that people are routing traffic through an Internet line connected to an array of 10, 20, 100 or more prepaid SIM cards. The SIM cards are national on-net calls, making free calls and therefore bypassing, say, the Nigerian operator’s terminating charges. Often this leads to a congested site causing bad call quality. So it becomes both a monetary and call-quality issue.

	Ludvig, thank you for these great insights. Speaking of international business in Sweden, a few years back on a trip to visit Ericsson I went to a very fine Thai restaurant in Stockholm — one of the best I’ve ever been to.

Yes, I think a lot of Americans would be surprised. We live in a Nordic country but we are not all blue eyes and blonde hair. And especially here at Basset it’s a real melting pot. We have people speaking Spanish, someone from the Congo, and Asian backgrounds too. But for us, it’s all part of good business. Understanding the cultures and business conditions of our clients is why we’re able to serve them for many years.

This article first appeared in Billing and OSS World.

Ludvig Lindqvist

Ludvig Lindqvist is vice president of business development at Basset Global, headquartered in Sweden,.

Basset Global is a software and consulting services vendor that focuses on revenue assurance/fraud and interconnect billing solutions. Established in 1996 is self-funded and part of the Kinnevik Industrial Group.

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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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