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The conference  had a healthy mix of operators sharing their experiences from various transformation projects  on convergence,  cloud computing in OSS/BSS areas, operator and customer challenges resulting from data explosion, achieving operational excellence & service assurance and emphasis on the operating models to enhance revenues. The event started with the opening note address from Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO, Telus, on Customer Convergence. He shared his views on how his company has became a competitive powerhouse after moving to an all-IP based networks and is undergoing major OSS/BSS transformation. The second key note was addressed by Steven K Berry, CEO and Executive Director, Rural Cellular Association, who spoke about the challenges that rural and competitive operators are facing due to the rulings that have been made at the crossroads.

For the benefit of the reader community on LIVE WIRE blog of Infosys, would like to share my observations from  some of the key speaker sessions attended by me at the event
 
Topic: Full Scale Systems Consolidation
Speaker: James Dunlap, CIO, GCI Alaska.
 
This session detailed on How GCI consolidated more than 40+ systems into Single framework to achieve a single customer view.  GCI's current subscriber base is 4.5M global customers providing  Internet, Voice, Wireless, long distance and Cable services. They have the largest rural market share amongst all the telecom operators in that region. Prior to embarking on this transformation, Customer Service was re-injected into the system from Top to Bottom, so that this program did not impact the end users and customers. The Management knew that this was going to be  a large complex program and business was aligned to it. Sox Compliance and PCI related requirements added additional complexity towards product selection and delivery. Comverse-One was selected as the Single Billing System for all lines of business. Many other vendors were involved for complete delivery of this program along with Comverse. They very well understood during evaluation phase itself that no single vendor would be able to provide every solution required. In the entire program, business was completely focused on operations and marketing (Minimal impact of Program). Extensive business process redesign was performed for the new architecture and new approach of product bundling was selected without impacting the current customers. High amount of involvement, commitment, multiple discussions etc with all the teams (sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Care etc) to make various decisions resulted in the program being a huge success. There was a lot of manual work required in cleaning, moving/merging the AR and aligning the data required as per the new systems which was identified and performed well within the program timelines by the business. Bill cycles being every 5th day, staggered approach of migration was selected and cable customers were the first to onboard to the new platform. The complete migration of their cable customers was performed in 4 days (long weekend window). Some key history information was migrated with old systems still available in read only mode (6 months).
 
Key Highlights:
1.      Different vendor solutions across lines of business.
2.      Only one common billing and trouble ticket management system.
3.      Legacy was 100% custom, new applications are almost everything off the shelf (No customizations). Processes are modified to adapt the application in most of the cases. This decision was not so simple.
4.      Major culture change was seen in the company and the way business is performed (without any employee or customer churn).
 
 
Topic: Driving Revenue in Next-Gen Networks
Speaker: Humera Malik, Director Product Management, Redknee Inc
 
In this session, Malik wanted to communicate that in the new era of communications where data is exploding, operators will have to utilize this untapped opportunity for enhancing their revenue bracket by changing their current business models. They have to follow the models that are used by today's application and content providers additionally enhancing the relationship with customers by proposing them various beneficial plans or applications based on the analytics performed on their usage pattern and the profiles. It is identified that the revenue from Mobile applications will increase from $6.7Billion in 2008 to $29.5Billion by 2013 and net Mobile application download will grow from 4.5Billion in 2010 21.6Billion in 2013. Current trend from operators shows that since last few years the data revenue is flat, while its usage is growing exponentially. Industry experts say that this growth is estimated to be at a 31% annual increase in mobile data. In order to handle this increase and at the same time generate revenue, operators will have to come up with different business models that cater to network abuser (High traffic user), untapped segment (customers seeking same experience in mobile as broadband) and conscious users (Normal user). With the customer expectations, satisfaction and experience in mind, they will have to develop the necessary trust which will lead to a win-win situation for both by creating customer friendly offerings.

Following are the areas stated by Malik for the operators to focus on.
1. Deliver better and more meaningful end to end experience to the customers.
2. Come up with pricings that make sense to the customers. Some customers are always on the move and they may need more data specific plans, while others who are only at one place, may need a different set of plans. (Why would a customer pay for something more, if there are  cheaper ways to get the same service).
3. Deliver personalized promotions and services.
4. Better communication and pricing transparency. With data usage and billing, customer should be kept informed of his current usage, especially in the case of roaming as there are many customer complaints that arise due to excessive invoicing because of data usage in roaming, which they were not aware of.
5. Faster problem resolutions with more devices complexities being added.
 
Thus by building a transparent customer care relationship model, operators can use this data explosion to increase their revenues, but they have to be careful.
 
 
Topic: How Real-time Charging is changing Post-Pay
Speaker: Rafi Kretchmer, Director of Marketing, Revenue Management, Amdocs Ltd.
 
This session from Amdocs was mainly focused on the real-time charging requirements that are appearing in the post paid world and the increasing demand of Hybrid consumption models to be implemented for post and pre paid services to handle this situation. Strategy options like near real-time rating, convergence were discussed by Rafi in his session.

In the world of data, following are a few post paid challenges:
 1. Customer does not intuitively know how much data they have consumed and what they have to pay.
2. Confusion over data pricing and fair usage policies.
3. Potential bill shock as data usage grows (especially in roaming).
4. Lack of customer satisfaction with data experience.
5. Customers are getting more cautious about adopting new data services which result in slow response for new products launched by operators.
 
Amongst these challenges operators are still looking for creative ways of pricing and monetizing data that helps to resolve these challenges. Some of the solution options to reduce the challenges include.
1. Provide customer advice on charge spend.
2. Provide real-time data usage consumption notification.
3. Flexible and fair usage capping to be implemented in agreement with customer.
4. Dynamic pricing, based on data & n/w utilization and demand of service to be implemented. This will lead to a win-win situation for both the operator and the customer.
 
Thus the ultimate objective is to provide superior customer experience through immediate insight into data consumption. Since the post paid customers usage data is collected and rated after some time (offline), it causes delay in providing immediate response of usage to the customer. Also there is no real-time authorization performed for them, when they use the service. It is only known when it appears in the invoice or from selfcare by checking the unbilled usage (AT&T provides the bar calculator, but this is at a very generic level and not real-time). Even if the usage records are rated immediately (with some delay); the solution does not help. The only effective way to implement this is by using a HYBRID service model. In this case all post paid customers would be configured in a switch as pre-paid customers. Special plans/offerings are created such that the device behaves as postpaid, for the amount of usage that is capped to the monthly charge. Once this amount is crossed, the device behaves as pre-paid and customer has to pay OR agree to pay, before he can use it further. In this case the customer gets benefits of both the worlds. He can enjoy the special charging and discounts that are applicable for post paid, while also control the access and hence the budget creating win-win situation for both.

Following are the IT related requirements to handle this.
1. Need unified foundation across pre and post paid.
2. Single real-time engine across service offerings.
3. Unified customer data model.
4. Dynamic allocation of payment methods, based on business requirements.
 
The biggest challenge, which still remains unhandled, is the control of usage for customers  in roaming. Real-time tracking of customer whereabouts and change in the charging approach may help handle the situation, but still needs to be explored. Also there may be performance impacts and scalability issues when all the post paid and prepaid customers will be on same platform which needs to be evaluated and solutionized carefully.
 
Author: Lalit Yerpude, Principal Consultant, Billing and Customer Care Practice, Infosys Technologies