Powering the digital marketplace

Commercial Migration Fuelling Business Growth in the Digital Marketplace March 2015 Whitepaper

Table of Contents Introduction 3

The CSP challenge 3

All BSS projects are not equal 5

Simplify your path to digital customer experience 7

BSS Express overview 8

> Customer management & self-care 8

> Product catalogue 9

> Subscription management 9

> Real-time charging 10

> Billing 10

> Adjunct modules 11

Conclusion and recommendations 10

3

IntroductionThe digital age has changed the way we communicate and interact with our family, friends, peers

and colleagues. Digital technologies and online services are changing our lifestyle patterns and the

speed at which we embrace digital change is a real challenge for communication service providers.

Customers demand better end-to-end customer touchpoint experiences, frequent online interactions

and full control over their services. These digital capabilities have been key to the revenue success of

OTT service providers who have been instrumental in shaping the digital needs and expectations of

customers. As a communication service provider, you must lead this business transformation to meet

your customers’ needs and pursue the development of new revenue streams in order to compete in a

more dynamic digital marketplace.

The CSP challenge Leading this business transformation is not for the fainthearted, and it has been a daunting task for com-

munication service providers. There has been many fl avours to BSS transformation projects: brownfi eld

overlay approaches, big bang IT infrastructure replacement programs, greenfi eld transformation and

evolutionary BSS approaches but all have faced similar challenges.

Most of these business transformation projects are IT led investment projects that focus on future IT cost

control, performance and cater to mass market needs. In reality, a lot of these large scale programs fail

due to lengthy, often multi-year implementations, feature parity paralysis, scope creep. In turn this leads

to a number of workaround, temporary stopgap solutions and a demanding customisation environ-

ment being introduced to an already stressed customer facing and business support process system.

4

Many diff erent BSS vendorsFrom how many vendors do you have solutions

present in your current BSS environment?

37.5 % Between 3 and 5

Less than 2

Too many to count, I don´t know

Between 6 and 10

Between 11 and 20

23.4 %

17.2 %

14.1 %

7.8 %

Even more detrimental, these lengthy IT led projects place a stranglehold over a CSPs’ commercial strat-

egy as plans to launch new products and services continually hit the same technical roadblocks - frag-

mented applications, siloed BSS systems, legacy technologies, ineffi cient service confi gurations that fail

to meet the business process agility and real-time customer centricity required. As a result, the business

case for new services falls completely fl at as the costs and level of business and technical change re-

quired outweighs the benefi ts.

As if these challenges weren’t enough, intensifying competition is heightening the game. CSPs are un-

der increase pressure to deliver to the market new services quickly and frequently to refl ect latest trends,

apps and social network based behaviours. And we know that the race to the bottom on price is not the

answer. So, you need to fi nd new ways to enable this digital world and ensure that your customers will

remain with you for many years to come.

Now, if we consider the step-by-step manner in which new services have been brought to market by

BSS transformation projects, we can begin to understand the key methods and delivery models needed

to bring about the level of change to create a sustainable agile culture within a CSP BSS environment.

5

All BSS projects are not equal There is ample research to prove that not all BSS transformation projects are created equal. Many run

late, others experience cost overruns and this is not talking about projects that never complete.

For those that complete, an interesting KPI to look at is the actual Return On Investment (ROI) of the

project. How much money are you actually making for what you’ve spent?

ROI calculations, we all know, are not easy to do. Hence, it is interesting to take a look at a piece of re-

search that was completed by the Standish Group. Based on a study of some 77,000 BSS projects over a

15 to 20 year period, the larger proportion of projects that achieve average ROI were new BSS develop-

ments, while the proportion of projects that achieved higher ROI were BSS projects that were aimed at

modernising what is already in place as the table below shows.

Before we consider the implication of these fi ndings, there are a number of aspects that can aff ect the

ROI of a project. Complexity is one; the number of vendors you are dealing with is another. Often as-

sociated with project complexity and poor ROI are other factors like the manner in which the project

is scoped. In other words, to maximise your chances to achieve a higher ROI, a lot of eff ort needs to be

put into ensuring that the project scope is tightly defi ned. This means that you only include in the scope

what is absolutely essential for your business to run. Not only will this reduce risks, but it will also guar-

antee that the project completes sooner - generating revenue for your company months before more

complex projects would. That is, if they don’t fail!

Having successfully delivered your initial BSS project and proven to your board of management that you

can achieve a return will make it easier to seek additional funding and develop new features (essential

ones only remember) as per your commercial needs.

Typical opportunities to reducing scope are when you are asked to replicate legacy system features on

the new platform or when you are asked for a range of customisations that in actual fact may never be

used. And this is where complexity tends to increase resulting in lower ROI. Eff ort is put into developing

features that may never be used. This is a well-documented fact and refl ected in the following diagram

(Source: The Standish Group).

EXPECTED ROI

HIGH AVERAGE LOW

11 % 11 % 23 %

34 % 57 % 9 %

52 % 37 % 11 %

Develop new BSS

Customise purchased BSS

Modernise BSS currently used

6

Features usedThe Standish Group estimate of features

used in custom applications

50 %

20 %

30 %

Often

Infrequently

Hardlyever

80% of customisationhardly ever orinfrequently used

7

Simplify your path to digital customer experience Time is of the essence if you wish to capture new revenue opportunities and meet the needs of your

customers in the digital marketplace. The pressure is clearly on you, the CSP, to deliver services that of-

fer signifi cant market uptake and new revenue opportunities. To act on this, you need to tear up the

traditional BSS transformation project rule book. Taking a leaf out of OTT and digital service providers

business models, you need to take a diff erent approach to your transformation strategy and begin the

process of embedding agile and digital capabilities into the heart of your business processes. But as a

CSP, where do you start this process and how do you know where to focus?

The commercial migration approach that we recommend at Tecnotree is to devise smaller agile projects

that deliver end-to-end capabilities to minimise the level of integration required between systems, and

to keep focused on delivering new attractive commercial off ers and products, quickly and eff ectively,

to the market. The fi rst step in this journey involves understanding the core processes that make your

business tick, and consolidating these processes on a pre-integrated stack to drive major economic and

time to market gains for new services.

By examining what are the required end-to-end capabilities and implementing fi t-for-purpose product

functionality, it allows the implementation to be fast and economical and, in the long run, you benefi t

from reduced project transformation risk, a simpler systems environment and lower TCO.

In a study conducted by PWC, they also put forward the case for product simplifi cation (with variation

of 30% and 70% product reduction in overall operator product) in the context of BSS transformation, as

it helps reduce project timelines, eff ort and implementation risk.

From a business perspective, by simplifying your end-to-end capabilities means you are able, from day

one, to create new bundled off erings, capture new customers, charge and bill for the services consumed

as well as allow your customers to manage their own services themselves. All the while your care team

will be able to provide a one stop shop service to all your customers. Furthermore, by assessing your BSS

capabilities needs from a business angle, you can plot a more adaptive and iterative approach to guide

future actions on your transformation needs. Using the commercial migration approach, you can elevate

IT and business teams to move their focus from low value, tactical day-to-day operations to driving busi-

ness leadership that focuses on innovation, service diff erentiation, customer experience and support for

lean streamlined operations.

Process for assessing opportunities to simplify products

SIMPLIFY: Simplify and rati onalize product variati on to reduce complexity

RATIONALISE: Exit low service and revenue products

Number of customers per unique product

IMMEDIATE OPPORTUNITY

Product #N

Product #1

Uni

que

prod

uct

Customers0

MAP: Limitedimmediate opportunity for simplifi cati on

8

BSS Express OverviewSIMPLIFY, EMPOWER, GROW

As we have established, the key to achieving stronger ROI for your BSS transformation projects is to

utilise a commercial migration approach that enables fast delivery. To achieve that you need to reduce

complexity, and to scope tightly with a strong end-to-end governance model. You need to focus on

the core business functionality, minimise customisation requirements by agreeing on business KPIs and

consolidate key order-to-cash business processes to quickly meet your marketplace needs.

The good news is that with BSS Express, Tecnotree has already done a lot of the work for you. Whether

you are looking to foray into new service domains, bring new commercial off ers to market quickly, or to

modernise your existing BSS, our pre-integrated stack comes with all the essential features you need to

create the impetus your project needs as well as prove your business model.

Tecnotree BSS Express Value PropositionBSS Express accelerates your business transformation and growth strategy

BSS Express reduces complexity and improves deployment timelines with a pre-integrated order to cash

solution that meets CSPs’ product management, convergent billing, charging and customer manage-

ment requirements for a range of communication and digital services.

BSS Express signifi cantly reduces time to market

BSS Express, a pre-integrated BSS stack, provides you with a fl exible business architecture that empow-

ers your business users to fi nd the right real-time monetisation models that can adapt to changing

customer demands in your market.

BSS Express expedites your pathway to a digital service provider

To accelerate and achieve the transformation of your business models, BSS Express includes a prede-

fi ned suite of adjunct functionality that achieves the right balance between scope, availability and return

on investment.

In the following section we look at some of the key functionality and building blocks available with BSS

Express to get you operational in no time.

9

CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT & SELF-CARE

Strong customer relationships build loyalty and drive growth. The Customer Management component

is a telco-specifi c solution addressing the growing needs of service providers. The rich functionality avail-

able out-of-the-box is rooted in industry standards and best practices in order to avoid much of the

customisation eff ort needed with many of the generic CRM applications.

Built-in extensibility and BPM, while adhering to eTOM, this component comes with a pre-confi gured

set of telco specifi c business processes for off -the-shelf use and rapid implementation. It also comes

with the most common data fl ows for convenient adoption ensuring operational agility and fl exibility.

KEY FEATURES

Multiple access channels

User friendly interface

360° view of customers

Self-care

KEY BENEFITS

Gain and capitalise on customer insight

Strong integration capabilities including readiness to support business intelligence and analytics

Superior service level (higher fi rst call resolution rate) leading to improved OPEX

KEY FEATURES

Support bundle creation

Allow re-use of existing bundles to create new commercial off erings

End to end lifecycle management of products

KEY BENEFITS

Shorter time-to-market

Simplify product portfolio management

Empowered business users

Tailored bundles and personalised off erings for targeted customer segments

PRODUCT CATALOGUE

The Product Catalogue addresses the product lifecycle management needs of a CSP across product

lines, businesses and technologies. It drives reduced time-to-revenue for new off erings to meet the

challenges of a competitive marketplace.

The product catalogue architecture creates a clear separation between the underlying resources and

the commercial bundles and off ers they are aggregated within. It provides a feature rich and homoge-

neous user experience for CSP personnel to create dynamic off erings targeted to residential and corpo-

rate customers using a wide variety of eligibility.

SUBSCRIPTION MANAGEMENT

The subscription management module, fully integrated to our charging component, allows CSPs’ busi-

ness users to defi ne subscriptions for various types of data access, services, content and VAS while ensur-

ing that those services are charged for in a timely fashion.

The solution also caters for third party content providers/content aggregators subscriptions as such al-

lowing your subscribers to consume content from those 3rd party content providers all the while keep-

ing control over access based on funds available.

10

The subscription module is responsible for enforcing automatic renewal and expiry rules and can diff er-

entiate between prepaid and post-paid subscribers so that the amount to be deducted is done as part

the invoicing process or by deducting in real-time the subscribers’ balance on the real-time charging

component.

REAL-TIME CHARGING

The Real-Time Charging component delivers a highly fl exible and feature-rich rating and balance man-

agement solution allowing you to capture revenue from any service, independently of the payment

method and the delivery channel chosen by the subscriber.

The fl exible tariff confi guration capabilities combined with the Policy Management functionality allows

CSPs to gain back the control of the network usage and to off er intelligent data allowance bundles

quickly while allowing the addition of a variety of ARPU increasing “booster” packages.

The Real-Time Convergent Charging component also introduces the unique user-payer paradigm allow-

ing the user of the service to be separated from the payer. The user-payer relationship is confi gurable

and can be set e.g. to allow all calls from children to their parents independently of the balance available

on the child’s account. Combined with support for multi-level hierarchies and self-care functionality, the

solution empowers the head of the family to decide what, when and how much of the sub-account

owners’ (e.g. children) usage is paid for by the main account owner, allowing full control of communica-

tions expenditure of the whole family.

The same functionality can also be applied in a corporate context to limit the company’s exposure to

runaway usage of services by employees. In the enterprise context, the payer defi nition can be based

on call type (e.g. local, national, international), event type (e.g. SM MO, SM MT, MMS MO) and date or

time (e.g. national holiday, weekday/weekend, business hours/outside of business hours) among other

criteria.

KEY FEATURES

User payer

Data subscriptions

Real-time rating & charging

Real-time cost control and access management

KEY BENEFITS

Combined with the Policy Management solution, provides an improved end user experience for data services

Enables the end user to control and manage their own usage or the usage of the group they manage

Enables CSPs to try and fi nd the most suitable monetisation business models in their market

BILLING

Taking the unifi ed data record feeds from rating, the BSS Express Billing component generates the data

needed for the invoicing of all post-paid accounts. BSS Express can produce a consolidated, single bill

covering all the customer products. The billing component also includes confi gurable billing cycles,

alerts notifi cations and supports for multilingual invoices. BSS Express invoicing capabilities collates and

aggregates all services and call details into a readable and predefi ned invoice template that makes it

easy for customers to view billing details.

11

ADJUNCT MODULES

Depending on your needs, Tecnotree off ers a number of additional modules that can be deployed

alongside our core BSS Express off ering. This includes a fi nancial module to manage account payables

& receivables, provisioning, mediation, inventory management, interconnect, roaming and content de-

livery solutions.

Conclusion and recommendations The range of new digital services enabled by LTE, new technologies and the proliferation of data centric

devices means that the range of products and off ers that need to be created and delivered quickly to

the market has intensifi ed. To exploit the abundance of new digital market opportunities, you need to

re-assess your business priorities to ensure that you build a BSS environment that can quickly support

critical business change, new monetisation models and new customer digital experiences and, all of it,

at a lower cost of ownership.

However, the standard and lengthy IT led approach to BSS projects where the focus is heavily on feature

parity in a modern system fails to deliver a target business environment with the right set of priorities to

build and gain a competitive advantage. If you take on the mindset of greenfi eld CSPs with an aggres-

sive launch schedule, even as a traditional CSP you can gain focus and better streamline your business

functionality.

Starting from the needs of the business, and not IT, analyse your existing business processes to deter-

mine if they are still fi t for purpose in a digital world. This will require that you strategically rethink and

simplify how you run your business, how you create and deliver products and how you can innovate

rapidly to better service your customers.

To simplify your business processes and match them to your digital services capabilities you will need to

rethink your IT and business architectures, systems and pricing fl exibility and assess the level of conver-

gence and sophistication required to simplify the management of your digital value chain.

With BSS Express, you can accelerate your business transformation and growth strategy by reducing

complexity and reducing deployment timelines. Through pre-integration, we help you improve on your

ROI, all the while reducing project transformation risks, by providing you with a solution that includes

all the must have functions (self-care, subscription management, real-time charging and billing, off er

bundling creation) to run a lean and effi cient modern CSP operation.

KEY FEATURES

Single bill for all services

Electronic bill presentment and personalized marketing messages

Intuitive billing operations dashboard to provide clear revenue visibility

KEY BENEFITS

Increase operational effi ciency and reduce staffi ng needs

Low invoice production cost

Fast bill run turnaround time

www.tecnotree.com/bss-express

About Tecnotree Tecnotree is a global provider of telecom IT solutions for the management of products, customers and

revenue.

We understand the challenges to deliver to the digital service needs of their customers as the the specif-

ics of digital services can greatly diff er depending on the complexity of the business model, commercial

off er and service innovation. Tecnotree helps communications service providers to solidify their position

in the digital market value chain and to uncover the business value that they can derive in the evolution

of the digital services market.

Our products and solutions have been developed specifi cally to empower CSPs to monetise service

bundles, provide personalised user experiences and augment value throughout the customer lifecycle.

An experienced and knowledgeable partner, we fi ne-tune our market ready approach to fi t your specifi c

objectives and ensure you deploy products and solutions that is required for all stages in the digital mar-

ketplace value chain.

BSS Express delivers all the critical business requirements that are needed to be a progressive digital

service provider by empowering your business users to fi nd the right monetisation models through

confi guration alone. As a result it enables:

Business Model Agility

> Rapid exploration of digital services and partnerships

> An ecosystem where you can look at the way to extend customer lifetime value,

try and fi netune the most suitable monetisation models

> Shorter time-to-market for new bundled off ers

Flexible CSP Support

> Greater operational effi ciency

> Business user empowerment in your organisation

> A path to evolve legacy BSS stacks starting with a smaller project focussed

on commercial deliverables (revenue) as opposed to IT deliverables (cost)

Extend Customer Lifetime value

> By providing real-time, online user experience

> By understanding customer behaviours and creating targeted bundles off ered in real-time