Customer Service and Billing Hubs

Implementation issues and Business benefits for Communications Service Providers

E X E C U T I V E B R I E F

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This edition published March 2012

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

The next goal – what the customer wants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Planning a single view solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

An added challenge – keeping up with developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Deciding on the solution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Getting the Board on board – a case study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ……………...9

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Executive Summary

For several years there has been a trend in the communications industry towards achieving a single view of the customer.

Most operators will claim to have this capability, whether they got there through seamless and elegant integration and

consolidation projects or whether they got there through a series of bolt on solutions and a lot of technical work-arounds.

Sometimes it is better not to ask.

The crucial issue is that to achieve any level of customer visibility and understanding means combining disparate data

sources reflecting the many types of transaction, interaction and relationship an organisation has with their customers.

This need for data integration means juggling with changing data sources from different and ever changing operational

systems all in different formats and being able to manage and monitor the acquisition process without impacting the

function of the operational systems. For all the investment made in acquiring data its value is only as good as its

accessibility.

The next goal – what the customer wants

Having achieved the goal of greater customer visibility and while the industry begins to believe that it is ready for the

deluge of data that is on the way, we should spare a thought for the customer.

Is it not time that customers get a single view of all their services? Not just consumers but, importantly and urgently, the

large corporates that account for the majority of most operators’ profits. Leveraging their experience of billing customers

for small amounts based on a variety of criteria, operators have an opportunity to become billing ‘hubs’ – as long as

operators can extract and manage many different data formats.

Take as an example a Large Global Corporation (LGC) which manufactures and distributes sugar and synthetic sugary

products. It has operations around the world. It is a large Telco customer and uses the services of a number of

Communications Service Providers ( CSP’s ), although its prime contract is with a major European carrier. Although vital

to its business, LGC’s telecoms bill is about one percent of its bill for raw materials - but it still runs into the millions.

Because its telecoms bill is such a small line item, there is simply no incentive for it to delay payment, argue incessantly

about costs and generally be anything except fully co-operative with its CSP’s. Conversely, LGC is a significant customer

for the European CSP.

The Telecoms Manager at LGC used to dream of accurate bills but now understands that none of his telecoms bills will be

100% accurate, they never have been and probably never will be. He does not mind, up to a point. He also used to dream

that his CSP would keep track of the inventory in use – and more importantly not in use – in his company.

His recurring dream is about the invoice format and he still believes that one day it will match his internal audit system.

Sometimes he is tempted to believe that this dream is coming true. If he could view his bill in the same format that he uses

to analyse it, his job would be easier, his auditing faster and his sign off quicker. After all, his job is far more complex than

it was even five years ago. Now employees want smartphones and iPads (current research indicates that 20% of all CXOs

now use them) and his job is more and more about control and cost management. He needs to find ways of defining

personal usage as opposed to company usage and somehow get the sales guys to abide by the rules. He is concerned

about the trend of mobile payments and carrier billing and suddenly having to deal with a host of mobile online

transactions that should be posted under subsistence or entertainment, not telecoms. He also needs to manage multiple

sources and multiple uses of data, for a global workforce.

One of his more recent dreams is, he believes, beginning to become a reality. To have one view of all his services, one

console through which he can place orders and monitor and track trouble tickets for all these services - as supplied by a

host of different global and local operators around the world. This would make his life so much better.

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Planning a single view solution

Leaving the Telecoms Manager to dream and his

salesmen to blur the lines between corporate and

personal smartphone usage, it is worth just assessing

the challenges involved in designing an integrated

reporting system for corporate customers.

This new challenge for the CSP is set against a

background of huge subscriber growth, new products,

mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and the

knowledge that mergers often result in systems that

are not compatible. The customer has defined a new

opportunity for the CSP, not just articulated a step

forward in its customer experience.

The list of objectives and challenges can be

summarized as:

Objectives

Provide a simple, single source for

corporate customers to view and analyse all

service usage, orders, trouble tickets, etc.

that are provided directly or through partners

Find a method of extracting, converting and

transferring large amounts of differently

formatted data, globally.

Secure the CSP’s position as prime billing

and service provider

Cement partnerships with other operators

and service providers for future billing

service provider business

Develop a strategy to address the massive

increase in data, usage and business (M2M,

Internet and Location based data sources)

Ensure the solution scales and is flexible

enough to manage the ever changing

multitude of different data sources and

formats

Provide an interactive invoicing format that

mimics customers’ internal systems

The biggest issue is possibly the different numbers of

platforms, formats and product descriptions that will be

used across the range of operators and service providers;

with many of them changing definition constantly.

The number of Customer Service and Billing platforms

creates a huge challenge in data extraction, conversion

and transformation. A host of different formats will be in use

at operators around the world. From Flat Files to

Unstructured Word, Excel and PDF documents and Semi

structured data such as ASN.1 based CDR’s to complex

XML network data files, it must all be extracted, converted

and loaded into a customer friendly environment. The

challenge of on-boarding or connecting new data sources

and then managing and monitoring the data transfer

process cannot be underestimated. When time means

money linking in your customers and getting access to the

data suppliers is critical to do accurately and swiftly,

however the opportunity makes this investment worthwhile.

The impact of regulatory compliance needs careful

management. Not only do individual countries have their

own rules, particularly when it comes to electronic billing,

but there are also pan European and US regulations that

need to be complied with. Some countries now insist that all

bills from all companies pass through Government systems

in order for the authorities to understand how much tax they

are owed.

The number of different services is now a problem for IT,

particularly billing. Fixed, mobile, IP, LBS services are now

delivering unprecedented amounts and variety of data. A

Tier 1 CSP can gather over four billion network metrics an

hour. This huge amount of data drags with it multiple tool

kits of analytics to make sure that the content is delivered;

that the network is operating at its optimum and now that

the customers are being offered the services that they want.

Any issues with Security compliance mean customers will

simply not use any compromised service and any lapses

will mean massive decreases in corporate confidence and

revenue. Therefore visible security management, access

control and auditability are prerequisites of any customer

data integration solution.

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Challenges

Managing different data formats for almost every billing and related customer support system

Extracting and standardizing this data into a single, usable format

Increasing range of services and subsequent huge scale of data to manage

Differing languages, currencies, tax regimes

Regulatory Compliance and Security – at local, national and international levels

Different IT platforms across partners, even within its own properties

No universal or centralized product catalogue, therefore no standard product definition

Smartphones and tablet usage driving data heavy content usage

An added challenge – keeping up with developments

No-one would claim that the communications market is standing still. The momentum of new, primarily data,

services is threatening to overwhelm the capacity of networks. Smartphones and tablets have revolutionized the

amount and type of data carried by mobile networks. Network analytics tools are being deployed almost

universally in an attempt to manage network capacity and configuration more efficiently. This is happening

alongside a similar trend in customer usage analytics. Whilst these tools are being deployed to manage the

growth in traffic, the side effect is the potential to improve the customer experience exponentially.

Alongside the growth in ‘human’ communications is the rise of machine–to-machine communications. Now that

Man is on the way to connecting everyone on earth, he is now embarking on the journey to connect everything

as well. The potential for those who do the connecting - and more importantly the provisioning, maintaining and

reporting of those devices - to make entirely new and very profitable businesses out of the opportunity cannot

be under-estimated.

The machine-to-machine market for corporates is already a large, diverse market. The potential for monitoring,

tracking and reporting on a host of devices is almost limitless. Everything from fleet management, security, ID

verification, virtual lunch vouchers, travel and accommodation could be sold to corporate customers – and

therefore must be scoped in any solution that involves providing the single point of view of multiple data sources

that the customer now requires.

Deciding on the solution

With such a variety of systems, formats and technologies, the only real solution is to extract the data from each

system and then input that data into a single view solution. Integrating these operational platforms for customer

intelligence lacks flexibility is hugely complex, impacts the operational systems performance and simply doesn’t

work. Even within one CSP group there are simply too many different systems and formats. To integrate the

amount of data from this many different sources and different formats – from text, ASN.1, relational and non-

relational databases - would require years of work. The key is to integrate the data not the operational systems

and provide automated management and monitoring.

Against this challenge of huge complexity and investment lies the universal customer imperative. Customers,

whether large corporates or impoverished teenagers, need simplicity, clarity and transparency from their service

provider.

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From both a cost saving and revenue generating point of view,

the opportunity of providing a single view console that allowed

customers to keep track of trouble tickets, verify bills and place

orders - which in itself would go a long way to solving the

problems with manual order entry – is too compelling to ignore.

CSP’s, whatever the press may say, are good at billing large

amounts of small and complex transactions. This means that

the solution can be rolled out as a global, interactive billing and

customer service hub, linking multiple supply points into a

single source.

The spins off benefits are improved cash flow by delivering bills

in a standard format that matches customers’ in-house formats.

It would also enable increased revenue from the ability to resell

this core business expertise and solution.

Getting the Board on board – a case

study

Two years ago a VP of Billing and Revenue Assurance was

appointed at a global carrier whose customers were exclusively

corporate. His initial role was to consolidate the number of

billing systems. Before he arrived he studied the business. His

initial assessment of the situation at the company was that too

little emphasis was being placed on the customer and the

customer experience, the company was still too technology

focused, whatever the press releases said. In addition, he

realized that customers had no end-to-end view of the services

they were buying.

His first goal was to get Billing on the agenda at Board

Meetings. He did this by showing that the company’s largest

customers put Billing in the top three issues that they had. He

made Billing into the bridge between the customer and the

Board. He then made Billing a company-wide issue. His

argument was that billing was about data integrity and about

giving customers the best overall experience possible, which

required integration of multiple sources of data.

By getting the CEO on board, and using the customer and his

requirements as tools, the VP of Billing and Revenue

Assurance achieved his goals of reduced bad debt, increased

cash flow and cost savings within half the time agreed at the

outset of his tenure. He never achieved a stated goal of

consolidating the number of systems down to one – which

turned out to be a good thing, but made Billing and Revenue

Assurance a key element in increasing customer satisfaction

and even as part of the new product development.

Poor data integrity has been a longstanding

problem in carrier environments that leads to

inefficiencies and expensive manual re-work

across the full range of operations such as

provisioning and activation, service

assurance, billing and capacity planning.

Historically seen as a problem for operations,

data is now seen as the fuel of an

organization, fuel that can help the

organization get the most out of its customer

information engines, or clog and choke that

engine. For this reason, the data must be

accurate, timely and accessible. To make

this work, it is vital that incoming data be it

from the network or partners must be

monitored, managed and in a format that can

be analysed not just as a feed for an

operational system. Data is the key

differentiator in many successful

organisations but no matter what investment

is only as good as its accessibility.

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Conclusions

Providing customers, whether Corporate or Residential, information in the format they want rather than the

format that is most convenient to provide them with increases customer satisfaction, retention and ultimately

profitability. To create a global customer service and billing hub for large corporate customers, the solution

needs to be able to extract and convert, at scale, a huge range of third party data, in online or batch mode. It

needs to be able to scale to the needs of truly global companies and be able to manage and monitor these

volumes of data. It needs to act as an information - specifically billing - hub, which can receive and send data

from anywhere to anywhere, enable data transformation from any to any format and must be able to include a

range of billing and customer service information. It needs to build and maintain a universal library of predefined

transformation routines that would be able to deal with the most common formats and use them as reusable

building blocks in any new project.

To provide customers with what they want is always an excellent goal – to fulfill their dreams more so. To create

a global opportunity out of the core CSP strength of billing and extending this to create a billing service provider

for global customers is surely a compelling conversation to have at the next Board meeting.

About the Author

Alex Leslie - Founder and CEO of the Global Billing Association (GBA), a trade body focused on the

communications sector (Now part of the TM Forum). During the 10 years of the GBA as an independent

association, he guided it through times of enormous change, challenge and opportunity for the communications

industry. He has actively provided a focus on the changing business models facing the industry, delivering

thought leadership, insight and direction. Contributing Editor, OSS/BSS for Connected Planet and Publisher of

BillingViews.

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