August 2013

Harvesting Big Data Riches in Retailer Partnering, Actionable CEM & Network Optimization

interview with Oded Ringer

If you’ve been reading his Journal, you’ve read many interviews I’ve held with experts at relatively small telecom analytics firms.

But in this article we take a departure because we’re interviewing HP, the largest IT vendor in the world with about $120 billion in annual revenue and 332,000 employees.

So what gives? How can the analytics market sustain both small startups and global giants?

I think it all depends what you’re looking for. Do you need: 1) a quick ROI program requiring only a modest investment and having very little impact on existing processes; or 2) a large scale program having many moving parts and requiring complex, highly-coordinated processes.

The fact that forty or more small solutions vendors are out there shows there’s plenty of room for adding value through a turnkey service or cloud/licensed solution.

Fine, if you can basket 20% of the low-lying fruit on the apple tree by hand, that’s good business, but that still leaves a good 80% of apples on the tree you can‘t reach. And that’s where the scale and experience of a firm like HP provides a ladder — particularly for tier 1 operators — to harvest the higher, less accessible fruit. And for HP that includes a number of things: consulting, synchronizing complex B/OSS processes; and tackling new use cases that are beyond the scale or integration capabilities of smaller firms.

We are joined now by Oded Ringer, HP’s Worldwide Solution Enablement Manager of Communications Solutions, who gives us a nice overview of HP’s analytics programs for the Telco industry.

	Dan Baker: Oded, it would be great if you could tell us where the telecom analytics team sits in the larger HP organization.

Oded Ringer:Happy to, Dan. I’m part of HP Communications & Media solutions (CMS) business unit, where 3,000 services people work on our full portfolio of products and services. Our solutions span core transport, service enablement, service delivery, analytics, API exposure, value added services, BSS and OSS, subscriber data management and content delivery.

	What are the challenges and opportunities telecom operators today where analytics can help?

Well, there’s no question that telecoms face many challenges. For one, the ARPU for many operators is declining, especially in developed countries: the costs to earn a dollar of revenue are also going up.

So the first problem analytics needs to address is an operational one: provide the intelligence to better use existing assets and optimize network investments.

Secondly, telecoms clearly need more insights on what their customers want and an ability to act on those insights to produce happier customers and a more personalized experience.

Third, several business models are coming into play that bring fresh revenue streams to CSPs. And these are things the CSPs can either do on their own or through partnering with the Over The Top (OTT) and cloud players.

What we know for sure is that the older generation of BI solutions — running batch queries and analyzes against a big database — are simply not enough anymore. In fact, the total amount of customer data that lives in structured databases today is relatively minor compared to the huge amount of unstructured voice records, emails and so forth. And rather than run queries against a database, today you are analyzing a live stream from the wire.

Finally, there’s practically no other industry that keeps such huge volumes of data as telco — and none that maintains as many interactions with the subscriber as we do.

	How does HP bring it all together?

Well at the core of our telco analytics offering is HP’s Smart Profile Server or SPS (at the center of the diagram below). The job of the SPS is to collect data from many sources: customer experience data, static subscriber data from a CRM, and also data from the applications the person is using.

Once collected, two kinds of analytics are applied: one for structured and one for unstructured data. And here, as you may know, HP has made huge investments in product assets which line up with HP’s belief that Big Data will be one of three major focus areas for the company up until 2020.

One solution we acquired is Vertica, which powers our database analysis. So the idea is to use the Vertica platform to look at structured data -- who is the customer, where are they located, and what’s their tendency to buy?

The second acquisition was Autonomy, the market-leading solution for analyzing unstructured data. Why is unstructured data so important? Because unstructured data is often the key to determining what information a mobile user is interested in right now. A tremendous amount of relevant data can be gleaned from unstructured documents such as emails, SMS, call center conversations, and social networking websites, etc. Autonomy can also detect the urgency of customer’s needs — even their emotional attachment to the subject.

Now as you can imagine, the trick is to manage all this information properly. It’s very sensitive and needs to be wrapped with tight privacy controls. The data is anonymized so you never recognize the customer by their real ID.

HP Telco Big Data and Analytics Blueprint

	I guess the best way to see how it works is through a couple of examples.

Yes, I actually have three cases to discuss with you, Dan:

Real-Time Advertising & Retailer Partnering

This first case shows how a carrier can exploit its big data in a retail setting.

To begin, we know that operators maintain a great deal of intelligence on their customers — including the subscriber’s age, gender, phone brand, etc. Plus we are constantly collecting and analyzing mountains of unstructured data on customer behaviors.

Now to make this use case more interesting to tell, I’m going to use a hypothetical person named Pam. In reality, of course, Pam’s identity is totally hidden so that people looking at the data can‘t associate anything with a real person.

OK, so who is Pam? Well, she’s a married, 32-year old woman who uses an iPhone, lives in Miami, and whose family income it projected to be in the top 15% of households. That’s the kind of structured data that lives the database we maintain on Pam.

Now if we dig deep into the unstructured data, we discover from Pam’s browsing history that she’s in the market for an iPad. And network data also shows she experienced 6 dropped calls yesterday. Finally, Pam began looking at baby accessory websites within the last 3 months. And at this moment, Pam has just arrived at a large shopping mall.

OK, so let’s delve into our big data and turn Pam’s seemingly meaningless arrival at a shopping mall into money for the operator.

First of all, the analytics system predicts from behavior that Pam’s going to have a baby in a few months. And since Pam is shopping in a mall where there’s a Baby World franchise store, suddenly we have a significant event because Baby World, a national retailer of baby accessories, has a marketing agreement with the operator. So a discount coupon for buying something at Baby World is immediately sent to Pam’s iPhone and should she make a purchase at Baby World, the operator uses the coupon number to bill Baby World for a commission.

This is an example of how big data analytics can monetize the intelligence that the operator has on its customers. Now while this example may sound far-fetched, actually an HP customer — one of the largest operators in Canada — is operating such a service today.

So what is HP doing for the operator? Well, first of all there are many processes to be integrated, such as with the billing system since we are offering a coupon. Second, we are getting a feed on Pam’s location. So these are just two examples of many processes that need to be coordinated. It’s not as easy as running a query against a database: a B/OSS workflow is what’s triggering the database.

Actionable Experience Management for Video Streaming

A second opportunity is what we call “actionable experience management” and this is a use case where HP got involved with three Telefonica operators in South America.

The use case begins by scoring the video quality of streaming video on either a mobile device or landline network. If the score is below a certain threshold, we correlate that fact with other data we know about the subscriber, for instance his tendency to buy things and many other factors. The result is we go with one of three actions:

Offer a Two Hour Quality Upgrade. If the quality is not very good and we know the user frequent enjoys videos, maybe we offer an upsell: “Would you like to watch this episode in much better quality? Well, the cost is only 99 cents.” If he says “Yes” — and the uptake is very high on these low cost offers — the user gets a great value for the next two hours watching the video because we deliver the best quality we can.
Loyal Customer Gets QoS Improvement for Free. If we recognize the user as good and loyal and realize we have not given him the level of quality we feel he deserves, we give him the best video quality free of charge by changing our QoS policy.
Network Operations Does the Best it can — Finally, if we realize that the quality cannot be improved because of problems in the network, in that case we turn the intelligence over to network operations to handle the issue the best they can.

So this use case, I think, provides a good example of real-time analytics and integration with the B/OSS, subscriber profiles, and real-time triggering of a network process to improve quality.

Network Optimization

So many of these analytics use cases are new and we can‘t really predict how successful they will be in the long run.

However, a safe bet is that network experience optimization will be a winner because it’s a capability all the operators must have. On one side, they need to give the customer a great experience. On the hand they can‘t afford to beef up the network everywhere. So they need to come up with more insightful approaches.

We know who the good customers are and we can afford to be generous to them. On the other hand, others need to pay for higher quality. We cannot upgrade the network across the board. So knowing what a specific customer wants and expects is the only way to beef up your network in a prudent way.

The operator needs to decide, very granularly, who gets a higher priority over limited network resources. Others may get less bandwidth —the best available perhaps — but you can‘t afford to offer the best to everyone.

	Oded, thanks for these very interesting use cases. There are certainly are a lot of things operators need to think about as they roll out analytics and big data.

Yes, and when there are a great many things to do, you need to set priorities. For instance, what are you most interested in doing? Optimizing the network? Improving the customer experience? Selling more things? Doing better marketing?

HP actually conducts an in-depth business advisory workshop with an operator where we come in, analyze their situation, and identify a few use cases that make sense to start with. The workshop is conducted by a global team: our Telco Big Data experts go in and sit together with all relevant stakeholders in the operator environment. These typically include IT leadership, Marketing management as well as Customer retention and Service experience arms.

Oded Ringer

As manager of solution enablement, Oded Ringer is responsible for bringing together: Products, Business, Operations, Sales and Marketing into a coherent Go-To-Market Strategies, across all regions, countries and market segments.

Oded has many years in the telecom industry at a wide variety of technology, business and management roles. Before joining HP, in 2007, Oded had leadership positions in Companies like Alcatel-Lucent, TTI-Telecom, Ness technologies and Goldman Sachs.

Oded holds an MSC from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, and a BSC in Computer Science from the Bar-Ilan university in Israel. He lives in Tel-Aviv with his wife and 2 kids. Contact Oded 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

A Big Data Starter Kit in the Cloud: How Smaller Operators Can Get Rolling with Advanced Analytics — interview with Ryan Guthrie — Medium to small operators know “big data” is out there alright, but technical staffing and cost issues have held them back from implementing it. This interview discusses the advantages of moving advanced analytics to the cloud where operators can get up and running faster and at lower cost.
Telecoms Failing Badly in CAPEX: The Desperate Need for Asset Management & Financial Visibility — interview with Ashwin Chalapathy — A 2012 PwC report put the telecom industry on the operating table, opened the patient up, and discovered a malignant cancer: poor network CAPEX management, a problem that puts telecoms in grave financial risk. In this interview, a supplier of network analytics solutions provides greater detail on the problem and lays out its prescription for deeper asset management, capacity planning and data integrity checks.
History Repeats: The Big Data Revolution in Telecom Service Assurance — interview with Olav Tjelflaat — The lessons of telecom software history teach that new networks and unforeseen industry developments have an uncanny knack for disrupting business plans. A service assurance incumbent reveals its strategy for becoming a leader in the emerging network analytics and assurance market.
From Alarms to Analytics: The Paradigm Shift in Service Assurance — interview with Kelvin Hall — In a telecom world with millions of smart devices, the service assurance solutions of yesteryear are not getting the job done. So alarm-heavy assurance is now shifting to big data solutions that deliver visual, multi-layered, and fine-grained views of network issues. A data architect who works at large carriers provides an inside view of the key service provider problems driving this analytics shift.
The Shrink-Wrapped Search Engine: Why It’s Becoming a Vital Tool in Telecom Analytics — interview with Tapan Bhatt — Google invented low cost, big data computing with its distributed search engine that lives in mammoth data centers populated with thousands of commodity CPUs and disks. Now search engine technology is available as “shrink wrapped” enterprise software. This article explains how this new technology is solving telecom analytics problems large and small.
Harvesting Big Data Riches in Retailer Partnering, Actionable CEM & Network Optimization — interview with Oded Ringer — In the analytics market there’s plenty of room for small solution firms to add value through a turnkey service or cloud/licensed solution. But what about large services firms: where do they play? In this article you’ll learn how a global services giant leverages data of different types to help telcos: monetize retail partnerships, optimize networks, and make CEM actionable.
Raising a Telco’s Value in the Digital Ecosystem: One Use Case at a Time — interview with Jonathon Gordon — The speed of telecom innovation is forcing software vendors to radically adapt and transform their business models. This article shows how a deep packet inspection company has expanded into revenue generation, particularly for mobile operators. It offers a broad palette of value-adding use cases from video caching and parental controls to application-charging and DDoS security protection.
Radio Access Network Data: Why It’s Become An Immensely Useful Analytics Source — interview with Neil Coleman — It’s hard to overstate the importance of Radio Access Network (RAN) analytics to a mobile operator’s business these days. This article explains why the RAN data, which lives in the air interface between the base station and the handset -- can be used for a business benefit in network optimization and customer experience.
Analytics Biology: The Power of Evolving to New Data Sources and Intelligence Gathering Methods — interview with Paul Morrissey — Data warehouses create great value, yet it’s now time to let loose non-traditional big data platforms that create value in countless pockets of operational efficiency that have yet to be fully explored. This article explains why telecoms must expand their analytics horizons and bring on all sorts of new data sources and novel intelligence gathering techniques.
Connecting B/OSS Silos and Linking Revenue Analytics with the Customer Experience — by Anssi Tauriainen — Customer experience analytics is a complex task that flexes B/OSS data to link the customer’s network experience and actions to improve it and drive greater revenue. In this article, you’ll gain an understanding of how anayltics data needs to be managed across various customer life cycle stages and why it’s tailored for six specific user groups at the operator.
Meeting the OTT Video Challenge: Real-Time, Fine-Grain Bandwidth Monitoring for Cable Operators — interview with Mark Trudeau — Cable operators in North America are being overwhelmed by the surge in video and audio traffic. In this article you’ll learn how Multi Service Operators (MSOs) are now monitoring their traffic to make critical decisions to protect QoS service and monetize bandwidth. Also featured is expert perspective on trends in: network policy; bandwidth caps; and customer care issues.
LTE Analytics: Learning New Rules in Real-Time Network Intelligence, Roaming and Customer Assurance — interview with Martin Guilfoyle — LTE is telecom’s latest technology darling, and this article goes beyond the network jargon, to explain the momentous changes LTE brings. The interview delves into the marriage of IMS, high QoS service delivery via IPX, real-time intelligence and roaming services, plus the new customer assurance hooks that LTE enables.

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.