April 2013

Make Business Assurance Progress Every Day: How to Set Goals, Automate, and Energize Your Team

interview with Kathleen Romano

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw, English Playwright

The software tools and best practices needed to tackle operational problems are getting better all the time. Yet whether or not a carrier organization makes actual progress depends largely on the resourcefulness and drive of a few dedicated business assurance (BA) professionals and teams.

Striving for operational excellence is not an easy road however. BA warriors are up against a lot because the larger organization usually has other, “more urgent” priorities to spend money on.

Yet I’m convinced that our industry’s climate change towards higher service complexity, fresh business models, and a greater reliance on analytic skills is a perfect environment for BA professionals to thrive.

Not convinced? I’ll admit that the opinion of an industry observer like me is at best second-hand, but when the career of a telecom executive kind of proves the point, well, that’s much more convincing.

When we last interviewed Kathy Romano, she had the very challenging job of heading up revenue assurance for Verizon’s FiOS service. Under her direction, Verizon broke new ground in RA by proactively catching and resolving errors in the narrow window between the billing cycle’s end and the actual sending of invoices to customers.

But last year, Kathy left her RA post to head up Verizon’s Payments. Always one to love a new challenge, she got her wish because the new job is an awesome responsibility that cuts across the entire Verizon business: wireless, wireline, consumer, business, everything.

Learning about the many operational challenges in Payments is a key take-away from this interview. But just as interesting, I think, is hearing Kathy’s insights on setting goals, leading her team, and making critical decisions. These are lessons that apply to a host of back office problems. Enjoy.

	Dan Baker: Kathy, it’s great to connect with you again. It would be wonderful if you could first give us some insight on some of the key challenges in the payments area.

Kathy Romano: Dan, it’s actually a fascinating area because most people think payments are so simple, but they really aren‘t.

In my world, I’ve got payments coming in from hundreds of different sources whether it be somebody mailing a check, paying on our website, paying on their bank’s website, paying at a Verizon retail location, or maybe walking up to an independent third-party collection agent.

So as these payments come in from all different directions, there’s a myriad of systems those payments need to get to. At Verizon, you’re talking multiple billing systems, some with multiple instances.

Now if the customer gives us a payment stub or document with the right account number on it, fine, it’s pretty straightforward. But anything else is a guessing game to some extent because you are trying to figure out what the customer intended.

On the backend, if something happens and the payment doesn‘t get applied in the normal course of business, the next best action to be taken is to initiate a payment investigation and apply the payment correctly, and as quickly as possible.

So, we are looking to manage all these processes. The other side of it is recurring payments. For instance, a customer sets up payments to be taken out of her account every month. The way it works in our system is that flows off an order. So, just like in revenue assurance, if the order process was flawed, incorrect information can have a ripple effect.

	I can imagine that there are lots of moving parts in the payment area: lots of opportunities to improve processes, but tell me: is there a particular area you’re been really keen to focus on?

Well, certainly one of the big initiatives I’m driving is a more flexible front-end payments platform that makes movements between billing systems more efficient.

Here’s the issue. Historically when a payment is received, it’s matched to a particular system and a lock box address is set up saying that payment X is meant for billing system Y.

Now the complications come because we are a big company with many different businesses. Our customers view each business unit at Verizon as seamlessly connected with Verizon the parent company. So they will often mix their payments methods and send us payments without account IDs, convinced that Verizon can easily figure it all out.

And I guess that’s the price of being a big company. We can‘t expect our customers to understand the complicated processes going on behind the scenes. But, if anything, the variety of payment options will increase, not decrease, in the future, so we need a better way to allow customers to pay us any way they like, and for us to be able to identify and get payments to where they belong.

Take our large business customers as an example. They will make a single payment that’s meant to be applied across, say, three or four billing systems, but in today’s world when the payment comes in, it’s applied to only one lock box. Then, later on, somebody needs to go in manually to separate the payments and send them to the correct places.

That method doesn‘t work for me. That is not the way we want to operate. So we have designed a system that will be built over the next couple of years that takes the payment processing out of the billing systems and raises it to an upper layer so that the payment can come into that level and go to whatever billing systems it needs to without having it first mapped to an individual billing system.

This approach gives us much greater flexibility. We will no longer need four people doing manual hand-offs that reverse it in one system and then journalize it in the other. The new system will basically dip down, pull something out, and drop it down into the next room of this common platform.

And it gives you better visibility to see every payment that’s been taken in across the business. That’s hugely powerful because when there are customer issues around payments, you can do automated searches instead of having people look through a bunch of systems to figure out what happened.

	Kathy, a lot of Black Swan readers are in revenue assurance. And knowing that’s where you hailed from, I’m sure many of them are curious how transferable your RA skills were to payments.

To me, I’m more or less filling a similar role. Having a skill and background in revenue assurance brings two key things to the table. First, you understand systems, how they work, and where the risks are inside the system processes.

And second, you learn to control the customer experience through those kinds of techniques. What we do is still all back office. So I am not worried about whether we are talking to the customer the right way. But what I am concerned about is responding quickly enough to a customer’s concern.

When a customer calls us with a problem that flows back to my back office team via a ticket, I want to be sure we keep the customer informed. But if we take 10 days to reconcile a customer’s issue and we don‘t inform him of the status as we go, you can bet the customer is going to keep calling back which costs the company money. So, if we can turn it around within a day and at the end, notify him that it is done, we’re not only delivering better service, we are actually saving the money we lose whenever the customer calls back repeatedly to find out the status.

	What about revenue assurance tools. Can you use those in Payments?

Yes, revenue assurance tools are very applicable in payments because we do a ton of reconciliation. When you get a payment in one place, you’ve got to look where to apply it to an account and you’ve got to look for it in your bank deposit. Anytime you are try to match record-to-record and look for exceptions, the revenue assurance tools are perfect for that.

Anything that is bottom-up, where you are trying to match record-to-record, the record gets to all of the places that you needed it to go. Those are the places where it makes sense to use the revenue assurance tools. Now at Verizon we’ve got tens of millions of payments every month, so with those volumes, RA systems make a lot of sense.

	I had a great interview with Eric Priezkalns recently with the title, Mishandle my Telecom Career and his point was that people need to stretch themselves a bit -- even add a little positive stress to their work environment to promote some professional growth. It’s another way of stating that Verizon motto I love: ‘Make progress every day.“

In any large organization, there are people who are afraid of change. Positive things are happening here at Verizon. The new attitude here is that change isn‘t negative. In fact, change can actually energize your organization to grow and make things better.

One of the big issues with change is that many of the issues seem too big — they look insurmountable. Yet I tell my team: consider the possibilities. Consider all these things you have been complaining about forever. Well, what if we can find a way to fix at least some of them, wouldn‘t that be great?

But even though you know the results you gain will be achieved step by step, you need to pursue a larger vision. You need to define what you perceive as an ideal cure to problems. Move as close to that ideal as possible, within reasonable cost constraints, of course.

You don‘t say: “Let me change a little bit here and a little bit there”. To me, you have to define your full vision. You have to define where you are trying to go because if you don’t, it’s not going to happen.

So I am very clear with my team that we will not spend money on little things. We are building towards the strategy. If there is a little thing that builds towards your strategy, that’s fine. But we are not going to waste money on little things that improve productivity in small amounts: we need to move toward the larger goal.

	How much of what you’re trying to achieve is around getting your hands on new systems and automating lots of things?

Automation and systems are a big part of what we do, but you also need to optimize your processes. You have to find that fine balance between where you need human beings involved and where you can do things systematically.

Let me give you an example. In this past year, we have replaced all the systems that process check payments received in the mail. Now the vendor we selected for the new system had a piece of software to automatically read the dollar amount on the check. And the idea behind this software feature, of course, was to reduce the number of people doing manual entry because the standard procedure was to key in the amount two times to increase accuracy.

So saving data entry people sounded great, but when we tested the automated check reader, we found that if the dollar sign on the check was misaligned, it would sometimes pick up the date number instead of the true dollar amount.

Now the vendor’s attitude was: “Well, in any automated system you are going to have some occasional error.” But I knew that using such a system could lead to major customer issues downstream. After all, the date has no relationship at all to the dollar amount so the discrepancies are liable to be huge.

Here’s the point. If I was only concerned with optimizing the check processing piece, a check reader that produced “occasional errors” may have been acceptable. But looking at the payment process end-to-end perspective, I knew it would have been a big mistake.

	Seems like that rule applies to many back office operations. Doing the right thing entails putting yourself in the shoes of the customer.

Yes, and I’m not saying our Payments systems and processes are perfect. Sometimes we don‘t always understand what the customer really intended based on what is sent to us. And data entry keyers make mistakes too. That’s why we key check entries twice, but if somebody can’t read it well the first time, it can also be misread twice. It happens.

The Payments area is like Payroll: if anything goes wrong, it turns into a big issue quickly. Conversely, when you’re doing your job well, nobody notices that you’re even there.

In the meantime, there’s a lot of optimizing work to be done, so I’m loving the fact that I’m busy and have a lot on my plate. It really is a lot of fun.

Kathleen Romano

As Executive Director — Bill Print, Payment and AR Operations at Verizon, Kathy manages the processing and application of incoming customer payments for both the Wireline and Wireless segments of Verizon as well as Bill Printing for Verizon Wireline.

In her prior role, Kathy was responsible for the complete planning, implementation and execution of Verizon’s Retail Revenue Assurance strategy.

During her 34 year career with Verizon and predecessor companies, Kathy has had a wide range of experience across the business in areas such as product line management, engineering, human resources, finance, IT, billing operations, revenue assurance and others, resulting in a significant knowledge base and industry leading vision especially in the Bill to Cash space. Kathy received her degree in Mathematics and Business Administration from Gettysburg College.

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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