SERVICE PROVIDERS OSS/BSS: Apply the Litmus…

Even as political pundits begin deliberating on the not-so-unpredictable
outcome of the 14th general elections, telecom subscribers in the country have
already announced their mandate clear and loud: let the dominance of fixed-line
services draw to an end, and let mobile take over. It’s only a matter of time
now, perhaps a few more months, that mobile subscribers will outnumber
fixed-line subscribers.

The promise of freedom–and not of coverage, quality-of-service, et al–is
the key force that’s helping mobile do the magic crossover. Rising
competition, falling prices, and ever-new network rollouts only duly manifest
the phenomenon.…

So far carriers have found it good to ride the popularity wave, wonderful in
fact. But as the market matures to the next level, one senses the need to
deliver not just basic mobility, but also newer services, preferably on the fly.

As that happens, the role of OSS/BSS systems as engines of service delivery,
billing, fraud management, and network management becomes critical. Carriers are
not oblivious of the impending need and will want to be free of the shackles of
the legacy OSS/BSS systems that are genetically disinclined to innovative
service provisioning.

More than anything else, telcos today want to use OSS/BSS solutions as
differentiators in the game of competition. Consequently, the new areas that
have emerged or some old areas that have been given a boost are service level
management, revenue assurance, and inventory management. These solutions are
expected to take data from the network, leverage the capabilities of each other
and present a holistic picture of the network, and improve the top line, bottom
line and quality of service of the operators. OSS/BSS solutions are all set to
take the centerstage from now on.

Technology Trends

Contemporary solutions are equipped with high-quality, robust and scalable
components. Their speed and reliability in handling large volumes of complex
processing would certainly have been impossible for legacy systems of
yesteryears. They use proven technologies with a futuristic design. They also
use open standards, middleware and APIs to smoothly integrate with other
business components. It is very easy for an independent software vendor (ISV) or
a partner application service providers (ASP) to interact with billing products
using middleware or APIs.

Vendors are shifting towards evolved, modular and flexible architectures that
comprise a host of modules for performing various functions. However, as
technological developments continue to be driven by market needs, the solution
offerings constantly evolve and adapt to the ever-capricious OSS/BSS
requirements.

l Towards Centralized Systems:
Carriers are fast moving from a circle-centric approach to centralized
billing systems, with most of the large operators having already taken the
plunge. Earlier, telcos were focused on building silos within their networks
with respect to operations and processes. This spiraled into huge
interoperability issues across the network, leading to lack of understanding of
the business and usage of data across the operation. Telcos seem to have woken
up to the problem and are making efforts to sweat as many of their network
assets as possible as they address the interoperability issues. This means that
the shift is towards platform type solutions (and not point solutions anymore)
so as to address many problems on a network-wide basis.

This necessitates a large centralized infrastructure with a disaster recovery
option and a robust billing platform.

The last few months have also seen the emergence of IUC
regime. To cater to the requirements of this, a good interconnect solution
becomes mandatory.

l Convergent
Solutions: One of the biggest challenges for service providers in billing
customers has been in the area of data services and value-added services. While
some SPs have been charging an ad-hoc amount, others are grappling with
introducing new value-added services, other than P2P SMS and MMS. A lot has been
discussed in the last few months on convergent solutions for billing to cater to
both postpaid and prepaid services. The most active proponents of this type of
solution have been the major vendors.

l More Focus
on Revenue Assurance: On the fraud management part of BSS, the trend is
clearly to expand the scope of the fraud management solution to encompass a
wider scope of revenue assurance. Most of the SPs are looking at ways and means
of not only clamping fraud but also stopping leakages from whichever source it
is emanating. A critical requirement of such a solution is the capability of
rating call data records (CDRs) and then taking corrective actions. A typical
revenue assurance solution is customized using existing or new fraud management
solution, a BI solution that provides a 360-degree view of the customer and a
robust mediation system, which is the glue to interact with the various
components of the enterprise.

l Service
Quality Management: On the OSS front, clearly the standard fault management
solution is becoming the baseline on which the rest of the solutions will be
built. While large operators are looking at an integrated services management
(ISM) type of environment, others are looking at performance management,
inventory management, and configuration management type of solutions. With
subscribers having a surfeit of SPs to choose from, quality of service is
becoming a key differentiator of services being provided. Thus, the requirement
for service quality management (SQM) is becoming all the more necessary. There
are some innovative solutions from some key vendors in this area.

Another requirement that has come up in the last few months
is the creation of a centralized network operating center (NOC) to manage the
telecom environment as well as the data environment from the same center. This
becomes a very effective tool for management when the overlaying technology on
which the solution is underpinned supports both the IP network as well as the
SS7-based telecom equipment and switches.

Buying Tips

Telcos must seriously look at interoperability of the products that they buy.
Other equally critical aspects are scalability and performance of the products,
credibility of the vendor, financial stability of the vendor, support
infrastructure of the vendor etc. While investing in these products, telcos must
carefully study and document their real requirements and assess the products
against these requirements. Extensive vendor and product evaluation, complete
with reference checks and site visits, must be instituted. OSS/BSS products must
be procured to bring a differentiation with competitors, to sweat the network
elements further, among other things. More specifically, telcos should evaluate
solutions against the following parameters:

• Ability to Address Problems: Today,
  telecommunications operators must do more with less. Despite drastically
  reduced budgets, they must continue to deliver new services, build customer
  loyalty and improve operational efficiencies. They must find ways to
  incrementally increase their profits while also keeping churn rates at bay.

In order to ensure that operators maximize revenues in the
current climate, vendors must simply, transparently and seamlessly address the
complexities of today’s emerging business models as well as the business
models of the future.

• Vendor’s Responsiveness: One of the most
  important attributes of a billing solution is to be agile when responding to
  new and changing requirements. Persistent innovation and rapid
  time-to-market have always been major challenges. It is important for the
  billing solution provider to be very closely tied to the service provider,
  to understand their current and future requirements clearly, including any
  regional implications. Perhaps to the extent of having a say in planning of
  services and guiding the service provider towards future services.

• Best-of-suite Solutions: The Yankee Group says
  that the best-of-breed software products are being replaced by best-of-suite
  applications in the complementary BSS and OSS areas. By providing a common
  architectural framework that requires little up-front work or investment to
  tie the billing and customer care systems together, operators can lower
  operational costs while having the ability to handle a wide range of tasks–from
  providing customer support to billing the customer to generating new
  revenues. This is one dominant trend where operators want to be assured of
  the depth of functionality and breadth of options and at the same time
  ensure ease of integration and interface to third-party systems. So
  operators should look for integrated ordering and customer management,
  billing and balance management, and revenue enablement coupled with an
  extendible and flexible architecture.

• ntegrated Approach: The platform should seamlessly
  link three main solution sets together.

Customer management solutions–Front-end customer
care applications should be visible within the platform that focuses on
increasing customer satisfaction and retention as well as the value of each
customer.

Billing engine–At the core of the framework should
reside a billing engine that’s able to rate and bill for any service offered
in the telecommunications industry.

Revenue enablement–In order for providers to capture
revenue streams from evolving next-generation services, they must be able to
manage complex multi-party content and partner agreements as well as provide a
single view of the customer to deliver quality service.

Connecting these three pieces with the overarching framework
brings together the power of the platform. Placing the business logic directly
into the framework allows for easy and low-risk integration when adding new
solutions to the platform. As such, billing and customer care vendors can take
the initiative to step up into the service providers’ enterprise so that the
enterprise doesn’t have to step down to them. Providing a clear, single view
of the customer–from the billing to customer care perspective–service
providers have the advantage to speak to their customer in the language they
demand.

l Differential
Billing: While there is an imminent need of a robust and scalable rating
engine, this has to be thought through very carefully as the ratio of prepaid to
postpaid subscribers is quite disproportionate (70:30). Clearly there is a
requirement of a differential billing platform and there are innovative
solutions from various vendors to cater to this. Other than the rating engine
this solution will also require probes for the IP network as well as mediation
system.

l The Currency
of Content: Content has created a new value chain where content providers,
advertisers, clearing houses and network operators all play a role and retain a
portion of a single transaction value. As such, a new business model has emerged
where the simple one-to-one operator-to-customer relationship is now a
many-to-many relationship. The business model that was based solely on
profitably processing customer contracts involving relatively static portfolio
tariffs and discounts has been replaced. Business now demands the management of
complex multi-party partner agreements with dynamic and partner tailored
agreements.

A business solution is needed which can manage these
agreements and settlements with the appropriate parties. This emerging business
model finds network operators responsible for the distribution of the shared
revenue to partners from a content event that occurred using its network.

Network operators are partnering with content providers,
content aggregators and portals. The portal is most often responsible for
creating and managing the agreements with the content providers while the
network operator manages the settlements system. If operators do not initiate
partnerships and arrange revenue-share agreements with content providers,
operators could get cut out of the revenue loop. Managing the end-to-end
agreements with all parties is key to the operator’s success.

l Electronic
Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) and Self Care: Two major business
drivers are seen to be the key towards an increased demand for EBPP and self
care systems–the continuous challenge to reduce operational cost, and the
market shift toward electronic lifestyle. EBPP and self care enable operators to
reduce cost of operations in generating paper bill and delivery of paper bill,
in routing more customers away from the call center into web-based customer self
care also improving the revenue collection. The rise of the electronic or
digital generation also meant the shift towards self care will put great
convenience and control into the hands of these customers as well as increase
quality of customer service.

l Dynamic
Balance Management: Dynamic balances as opposed to monthly bill will become
the order of the day instead of monthly bills. For example a subscriber may have
a credit balance on their mobile voice charges through an external loyalty
scheme, which could be offset by the debit on their mobile data charges.
Operators are known today to facilitate micro payments but there is a huge
opportunity for operators to capture the revenue pool via facilitating
macro-payments as well.

l Focus on
Prepaid Data and Prepaid Content: In most Asian Countries the growth of
prepaid subscribers has outgrown that of postpaid systems. The prepaid sector is
a very lucrative and powerful segment that cannot be ignored. The ability of
operators to be able to extend data and content services to prepaid customer and
capture those revenue would be critical.

List of Vendors

Most relevant trends for the Indian marketplace

The Indian market is poised for a steep growth especially in the prepaid
mobile segment where real-time billing would become critical for success. It is
also introducing smarter phones so data, content and enhanced services would
soon require a well formulated billing strategy. Indian Operators want billing
and customer care systems that have the ability to handle an enormous range of
tasks–from providing customer care support to billing the customer to
generating new revenues–while still preserving the freedom to add other
integrated or third-party applications that fit their business requirements as
it evolves.

Industry experts have highlighted this trend as one of the single-most
important for billing vendors to address. Global industry research firm Frost
& Sullivan recently highlighted the increasing importance of cohesive
billing and customer care systems, citing that "convergent and consolidated
billing solutions will represent a significant portion of future request for
proposals from telecommunication service providers." We definitely are
seeing Indian operators moving towards this directly demanding the depth and
completeness in the solution that could address their immediate requirements but
also a proven R&D path that would ensure the solutions meet their future
requirement as business evolves. Having a consolidated and convergent solution
would mean much greater efficiency in operations and ease of integration. CSG
believes that our continued success in India thrives on our ability to offer the
Best of suite solutions that can cater to the operators needs today but also
well position them into the future.

Other trends that are relevant to the Indian market includes the focus on
convergent billing, real-time prepaid billing, prepaid data & content
billing, and billing of broadband and enhanced services would be the major focus
areas for billing solution providers in the near future. There is also another
segment that CSG sees tremendous growth opportunity in which is the trend
towards self-care and EBPP.