BIMS Daily Digest – Conference Day Three!
Hello from the third and final day of BIMS 2008!
Here we are at the last day of BIMS 2008. The exhibits are gone, but there are still a large number of delegates ready for the last round of presentations. Today’s streams covered a lot of big topics – Customer Experience Management, Strategic Change and IT Transformation, Third Party Relationship Management and even more BSS Implementation Case Studies.
Undaunted by the transport strikes, the delegates turned up, stayed awake, and continued to ask lots of intelligent questions. In introducing Stream A – Customer Experience Management, George Huitema of TNO reminded us that revenue is at the heart of all business models. Furthermore billing and charging does affect the customer perception, perhaps more than we realise and must be taken into account in evaluating the total customer experience.
The case study sessions were kicked off by Pannon’s Attila Paskuj. A Telenor company, Pannon is now the second largest mobile operator in Hungary. Paskuj described how Pannon’s billing strategy plays a part in the customer experience and helps their to win and retain customers.
A key part of the strategy is to “convert usage charges into recurring charges” by the use of simple and understandable flat-rate billing plans. This has achieved a high level of customer acceptance, with more than 80% of customers opting for a simple billing plan. However Pannon offers customers many options for customising their plans, with “digital home” deals, closed user group plans, daily/weekly tickets, birthday discounts and so on.
In achieving a balance between simplicity and complexity, Pannon’s aim is to make tariff plans simple “on the outside” (easy to understand) while handling sophisticated charge schemes “on the inside” of systems so as not to confuse the customers. According to Paskuj, this requires “a flexible rating engine … capable of any pricing differentiation along any combination of event and customer attributes”.
After the morning refreshments we were joined by Peter Somos of Magyar Telekom. Majority owned by DT Magyar is Hungary’s biggest multi-play operator. Somos explained that the history of Magyar Telekom resulted in a very complex organisation structure, with a highly fragmented customer experience. So in 2008 the company embarked on a large reorganisation, dividing the company into units focused on customer segments (business, residential, wholesale) rather than on products. The different units share common support units. The new organisation has enabled simplification and unification of retail outlets, call-in arrangements, web self-service, and bill presentation.
However to serve this new streamlined organisation there is a need to rationalise the systems environment too. The “Candy Model” provides some immediate benefits without having to rebuild the entire environment – a unified customer view, and the ability to create a single bill (if requested by the customer).
The morning continued with another solid case study, this time it was the turn of 3 Austria’s Alexandra Ehrenhöfer to share their experience. She briefly described 3’s customer web portal – Inside3 – which is accessible from 3’s mobile devices as well as through other internet terminals. It provides a complete range of ordering and management options to customers. The rest of the presentation focused on 3’s initiative to migrate customers from traditional paper-based billing to a new e-bill environment. 3 used to send out around 480,000 invoices per month. Invoices included all call/message details and customers were receiving five or more sheets per invoice, and some up to 100 pages. In Austria, customers like paper invoices and there was a big resistance to change. Previous opt-in incentive schemes had not succeeded in transferring large numbers of customers. In 2007, the company decided that the potential cost savings were so large, that a more aggressive opt-out approach should be tried.
Ehrenhöfer went on to describe how to successful the project was and detailed the techniques and strategies employed to migrate customers in just two months, rather than the four that had been planned. She also explained how they managed to exceed the 65% conversion target and actually achieved an 85% conversion rate!
A little way down the hall and also unperturbed by last day exhaustion and transport strikes, delegates in the Strategic Change & IT Transformation stream were also keen to learn from the final set of case studies. Led by Timo Kaisla of Ixonos the stream explored three major initiatives undertaken by three very different operators. First up was Gautam Shah of Sprint’s wholly owned subsidiary, Boost, which offers pre-paid cellular services. He described the challenge of consolidating Boost customers into a new IT environment specifically for prepaid services as “changing air planes in mid air”. Adding to the challenge was the fact that their parent company was also engaged in its own major IT upgrades at the same time. The Boost project was successful thanks to the focus and commitment of the team, and some important decisions including running the new and the old environments in parallel.
Next up was Joost Eringfeld from Swisscom. The first challenge addressed by Swisscom was cultural. Bringing together business units and stand alone companies to become one group is always problematic. By focusing everyone on the transformation from Network Centric to Customer Centric, Swisscom has made major strides in creating a uniform and coherent new culture. With the new consolidated team in place, Swisscom is now working on designing and implementing a “One Billing” environment.
Wrapping up this section, we heard from Dr. Thomas Weishäupl of Telekom Austria, who are focusing their transformation around a Product Factory. Telekom Austria has been able to rationalise 800 products into 40 “basic” products, with a further 80 additional products. By combining these products components, Telekom Austria is able to quickly assemble a wide variety of products. An important enabler of the up to 70% improvement in cost and time to launch is the careful alignment of product components to the service delivery components in the network. This project is in early stages just now, so watch for updates on their progress.
The focus of afternoon sessions moved on to Third Party Relationship Management, CRM and PRM. As telecom operators take an increasing interest in content delivered over their networks, they need to build lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with partners who own and manage the content their customers want to buy.
Andy Harrower, Head of Licensing at MCPS-PRS (the alliance of the UK Mechanical Copyright Protection Society and the Performing Rights Society) provided a timely and highly relevant overview of the intricacies of copyright, royalties and licenses related to recorded material distribution over carrier networks: downloads, streaming, or webcasting.
To handle the special requirements of online distribution, the industry needs to create new licensing models and Harrower provided examples of these licenses, including arrangements for accounting, usage reporting and audit. Finally he provided a brief account of current developments in pan-European licensing arrangements. He reported that the industry is gradually becoming more relaxed about the stringent application of DRM in response to the demand by (paying) customers for flexibility in the way they use their purchased material.
Working hard as ever Boost’s Gautam Shah returned for a second presentation, this time providing a perspective on Advanced Loyalty Management.
The US mobile market is evolving rapidly with a continuing trend towards prepaid schemes. It has become clear to Boost that today, the traditional price/value equation is not enough to maintain loyalty and that data services are not a compelling differentiator. Boost Mobile’s “Advanced Loyalty Management” approach provides users with relevant rewards based on service usage, in order to stimulate target usage. Rewards are provided as the customer is actually using the service or in a “contextually correct time” thereafter.
Down the hall du’s Yasser El Tanbouli delivered the last of the case studies, detailing their recent convergent billing implementation. Tanbouli talked about the careful planning required to get the project off on the right footing. Despite a well-developed and executed plan, once again, the most challenging part of the project was data cleansing and migration.
The track round up and wrap up was led by IIR Telecom’s Hugh Roberts. As always, Hugh provided the audience with much to consider. Perhaps most importantly, he suggested that Business transformation and IT transformation happen on such different time scales as to constrain the success of either. Yet, despite the disruptive choices available to operators (stay a “bit carrier”, become an eco-partner, or become a movie studio?), every one of them involves customers buying services…and that means that bills must go out and revenues must come in.
Another big thank you to my faithful reporters Barbara Lancaster, President and Trevor Hayes, Strategic Specialist of LTC International.
Don’t forget to look out for the post-show wrap up tomorrow!
With warm regards from Amsterdam,
Mindy Emsley
Conference Producer
IIR Telecoms
memsley@iir-conferences.com
| BIMS Media Partner Insights: It’s neither core, nor access… it’s the customer! |
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Not so long ago, network evangelists were split into the ‘core’ and ‘edge’ schools of thought. Opinion was divided on literally everything, from where to invest to what was the ‘end-state’. The ‘edge’ fans won the intelligence argument, whilst the ‘core’ fans claimed victory in the speed debate, but no one could agree on what element should come first. This ‘chicken or egg’ argument could have gone on forever had customers not stood up and cried foul! Customers watched this argument play out without anyone involving them in it. Customers, understandably, grew tired of the ‘tech bake-offs’, and started demanding a change in the rules of engagement. They insisted on a focus upon their needs - applications that drive business and employee efficiencies, returns on their technology investments and an understanding of the total cost and related merits of owning these technology assets. Customers were just not concerned about the technology-based arguments It’s not just about buying technology Of course, technology is important - as are the technology-specifications and contracts. These days most customers have to deal with multiple suppliers and products. Over and above that, there is the design, flexibility, seamless integration, inter-operability as well as the management of the networks. In a converged world just about every piece of hardware has to be able to talk to every other piece. This is a concern of customers in search of connectivity, interoperability and scalability - and looking carefully at much more, including maintenance issues and service contracts, SLAs, service level agreements, and financing agreements. Of course, customers recognise this. Their purchasing of IT and telecoms, though, is prompted by budgetary constraints, a desire for more joined-up solutions and the need for an all-important ROI (return on investment). Also, increasingly, the ‘green agenda’ is forcing companies to think of the environmental impact of their purchases and looking at suppliers to ensure they meet certain criteria. No one is talking ‘core and access’ any more! Buyers are far more aware of what they want and of the competing solutions on offer. Customers are better prepared to deal with suppliers and IT-savvy buyers put suppliers under much more pressure. Today’s knowledgeable buyers are tougher to negotiate with and are demanding more for less. Still, even IT-savvy buyers have got to make a judgement at some point, because an organization that gets its IT wrong will be in real trouble. Certainly with larger IT projects, customers are not just buying hardware, software and the cables to link them all together; they are buying a relationship with the supplier to ensure that the system works, that it stays working, and that it meets future needs. Changing the industry CIOs are looking at two things from their network service providers. First, how can network elements be optimised to deliver the performance needed to empower their employees to better serve their customers? CIOs want service providers to be their partners, to help them to drive their business growth and achieve their business goals. Second, they looked at service providers that invested as much in people as in technology, infrastructure and applications, since it takes skilled professionals to leverage technology and deliver results. As a result, the network service provider business went through a change in pace, scope and scale. A business that had been a bastion of cost conscious price warriors became a business demanding service, speed and customer-focus. The future of the network was no longer about capacity and cost; it was about intelligent design, rapid implementation, efficient deployment and smart optimisation - all wrapped together at a level of service never seen in this industry. Suddenly, it is not just about linking points on a map, but about voice and video applications that make communications more efficient, content delivery tools that make training and sharing more effective, collaboration tools that allow employees across the world to share, learn and communicate and hosting and collocation solutions that streamline data storage and analysis - making businesses more intuitive to their marketplace. Suddenly, there is a significant change in our business. Customers are now looking for service providers who can deliver the service they signed on to deliver without compromise or exception. Service provider is not an oxymoron! Even today, it seems that a lot of telcos have forgotten the old definition of the purpose of a business - to create a customer. To borrow from Peter Drucker, “It is not the role of businesses to reform customers but to satisfy them.” Today, true service provider partners no longer fight their customers; they are helping them to accomplish their business goals by providing a supportive environment on their mission critical business networks. Welcome to the new world of great service, relationships and mutual investments. Enterprises realise that they need to invest in their service providers and encourage them to look ahead. Service providers, in turn, need to invest in their networks, deliver smart IP-based products and services and deliver appropriate levels of service to ensure that they deliver each and every customer email and log each and every order. Investing for the future The future of the network is seamless mobility and intelligent wireline connectivity - across multimode devices, giving uninterrupted access to, and services from, virtually any network or combination of networks. The lines between the edge and the core have begun to blur. This seeming network simplicity also brings complexity. In this new service environment, providers must support inter-connections, ‘intuitively’ understand the customer’s location and preferences and stay ‘always-on’. In addition, they need to support a wide range of content and applications provided by multiple partners on a standardised, end-to-end, highly secure and centrally manageable platform. Customers are the ‘core’ Let’s be honest - the telecoms industry has never had a sparkling reputation for customer service. Every time there’s a survey about customer satisfaction, phone companies - both fixed line and mobile - tend to be among the worst offenders. Ironically, this comes at a time when telecom services are becoming increasingly vital to the running of business. All too often, when communications are down, a business is down. Customer satisfaction - and the eternal quest to keep customers happy - is a perennial problem. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in the telecoms business the gap between what customers expect - and what companies provide - is actually widening. That is possibly because, today, customers expect to be the centre of attention of their service providers. In the telco business, one might say that the customers are the ‘core’ of the network now. They demand unfailing access to the information they need, when and where they need it. Improving customer service - improving the customer experience - in such a market is about changing the way a service provider runs their business. It’s about empowering staff to put the demands of the customer ahead of the internal processes that regulate a business. For the customer, there is nothing worse than bouncing from one department to the next trying to find the right person to handle your enquiry or being told that there is no one available to help. Moreover, as customers are becoming more knowledgeable about real business-related performance, the biggest change should not be what service providers do, but the way they do it. Indeed, service providers have long talked about being customer-focused, yet have paid more attention to their networks, product sets and rivals’ products than their customers’ needs. Customers need a service provider that is aware of what is happening in the network and can provide pre-emptive management - not just proactive management. Service providers have to be a step ahead and prevent accidents from happening - ever. Customers now expect predictive management capabilities and reporting! It’s about great service - finally! Telcos are communications service providers; they are not carriers - you get carriers at the supermarket. New-age service providers have to build connections with their customers based on trust, long-term commitment and a perception that the service provider puts the customer’s business first. That, and nothing else, is the core of the customer/service provider relationship. by Nick Lambert, President, Asia-Pacific, Cable & Wireless Europe, Asia & US
This article appears courtesy of Connect World.
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BIMS Sponsors Insights: Positive customer experience is key to future growth |
| Contacts |
Conference Programme: Mindy Emsley, Conference Producer, IIR Telecoms & Technology at memsley@iir-conferences.com For details of sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, contact Stephan Groves, Business Development Manager at sgroves@iir-conferences or Russell Bacon, Business Development Manager at rbacon@iir-conferences.com |
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| Strategic Change & IT Transformation Stream Sponsor | |||
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