Analysys Mason Recognises Comptel Among World’s Top Mediation Players

The analyst firm Analysys Mason has released a new Comptel Company Profile, recognising Comptel as one of world’s leading data processing vendors. The report also lists our DATA REFINERY software suite as a top-six mediation solution when ranked by worldwide marketshare.

The report, titled “Comptel: digital transformation,” analyses Comptel’s overall product portfolio, 2015 financials and strategic direction. DATA REFINERY is based on Comptel’s award-winning EventLink technology, providing a software suite for convergent mediation, roaming management and enterprise data processing software products. It provides a comprehensive and productised data integration solution with over 1,000 off-the-shelf online, real-time and offline interfaces.

Across the world, 150 operators trust Comptel’s data processing to turn massive amounts of raw data into valuable, purpose-driven, real-time actions. Operators of all sizes and volumes rely on DATA REFINERY, including India’s Bharti Airtel, Indonesia’s Indosat, Argentina’s Telefonica, Saudi Arabia’s Mobily, Denmark’s TDC and The Netherlands’ Ziggo. In all, Comptel processes more than 20 percent of the world’s mobile usage data through our software solutions.

DATA REFINERY plays an important role in supporting the Digital Customer Journey, which is all about applying better technologies and data-driven business strategies and models to improve the way telcos engage and serve their customers in a personalised and contextual way.

Within that journey, DATA REFINERY provides a layer of intelligent fast data to enable real-time decisions and actions. The software has the capacity to capture and process vast amounts of raw data in-stream. As a totally vendor, technology, and service agnostic solution, DATA REFINERY captures data of any type and from any source, including social media, apps, connected devices, networks, locational data and services. It then refines that data with important contextual information and sends it on to the next stage of its journey – all in real time.

As a result, DATA REFINERY allows telcos to build a 360° profile of their customers based on diverse data sources. That profile is then available for other business systems, allowing telcos to craft intelligent, individualised service offerings, customer programs and more. Additionally, DATA REFINERY hides all technical complexity between the network and OSS/BSS layers through a unifying processing layer.

To provide a perfect, personalised Digital Customer Journey, DATA REFINERY’s intelligent data fabric works seamlessly with two other pillars of that journey: FASTERMIND™ for customer engagement automation and MONETIZER™ for agile service monetisation. All three software suites rely on the same EventLink technology platform, benefiting from common capabilities such as a broad online and offline interface library, programmed and automated fast data processing, operational intelligence, business and operations reporting and a Software Development Kit (SDK).

Together, the solutions within the Digital Customer Journey help telcos take advantage of a rapidly changing landscape, one in which the customer is in control. Our solutions allow telcos to compete and win on the basis of customer engagement, with personalised and contextually relevant content, offers and services.

We’re proud to be recognised by Analysys Mason alongside other top players in the mediation market. To learn more, download “Comptel: digital transformation,” a company profile from Analysys Mason.

Service Orchestration Overhaul Helps Mobily Optimise for Mobile’s Future

Like their counterparts around the world, Saudi Arabian consumers are hungry for mobile services. The most recent available government data showed that the country had a mobile subscription penetration rate of 176.9 percent in 2013, and that figure is only expected to grow.

Mobily, for one, now stands to benefit from this mobile service appetite after improving its service architecture. As we described in our new book, Operation Nexterday, Mobily successfully addressed several back-office inefficiencies, enabling the operator to capitalise on the demand for mobile services.

The company embarked on an ambitious plan in 2011 to re-engineer its entire service architecture for better flexibility, improved cost efficiency and faster time-to-market.

Complex Architecture Bogged Down Service Potential

Mobily has enjoyed steady growth in its customer base since launching in 2005, boasting 18.2 million mobile subscribers in its 2013 annual report. As we cover in Operation Nexterday, today’s consumer wants a multi-channel, automated, personalised, instantaneous digital buying experience. Generation Cloud wants services that move at their speed, and acknowledging this reality, Mobily decided to evaluate its back-office infrastructure to ensure it was well-positioned to serve these customers.

Mobily historically had developed its operation and business support systems (OSS / BSS) internally. In-house departments often developed applications independently of other parts of the company, which could sometimes result in out-of-sync design principals, inconsistent process terminology and redundant applications. This could complicate new products or services launches, which encouraged Mobily to seek out a simplified service architecture.

A Game Plan and Platform for Success

Mobily committed to a service overhaul in 2011. The operator relied on TM Forum standards as a framework to document its existing process flows, gaps and redundancies, which made it easier to develop a strategy to address those weaknesses.

That was followed by a switch to a new Comptel service orchestration platform, which offered a consolidated, simplified and automated operational back-end. After the revamp, Mobily was able to reduce operational and support costs and ensure faster time-to-market. Execution timelines for new product launches were reduced from two days to 30 minutes, and fulfilment order processing shrank from 15 minutes to 10 seconds.

The initiative unlocked $95 million in direct operational savings, but most crucially, it allowed Mobily to establish a more flexible foundation for service development. Today, Mobily is in a much better position to address the needs of Generation Cloud and profit from a dynamic digital buying experience.

Download this case study from Analysys Mason to learn how Mobily re-engineered its service architecture with Comptel OSS Solutions.

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Reduce Order Fallout to Compete in Complex Network Environments, Says New Analysys Mason Whitepaper

With enterprise customers contributing a considerable portion of revenue to CSPs – even up to a third of total revenue for some Tier 1s – telcos’ focus on the business services segment is greater than ever before. As CSPs look to the B2B arena for new revenue growth, creating and maintaining a positive customer experience is becoming a key driver for their success.

In a recent whitepaper, analyst firm Analysys Mason explored one of the most common barriers to achieving an optimal customer experience: order fallouts.

Specifically, the firm notes that the impact of order fallouts most often comes to bear on customer service. It especially affects the “Join” and “Onboarding” touch points, when orders are captured, processed and provisioned, and services are set up and paid for. Resulting prolonged service delivery can frustrate many customers, even leading them to cancel orders completely, despite all efforts by the operator to resolve the issue.

Plus, it’s not just diminished customer service (and, consequently, a diminished overall experience) that is at stake. Order fallouts can hurt CSPs in other ways too, for example, by increasing their operational costs and creating longer lead-to-cash cycle times.

Analysys Mason outlined some of the top factors contributing to order fallout propensity, one of which is the complexity and newness of a service. For service offerings that have existed for many years (like POTS), CSPs have established a good understanding of how to accurately capture orders, validate them, and design and deliver them at minimal costs. But as newer services like Ethernet, IP VPN, unified communications and VLAN increase in complexity, the volume of failed orders steadily increases in kind. Now, imagine the service complexity and ensuing order fallouts that CSPs will see as they transition to virtualised environments like SDN and NFV!

The top reason for order fallouts, Analysys Mason determined, is poor order quality. Order entry systems typically rely on standard templates without consideration for things like specific configuration requests, or up-to-date information on the availability of network and IT resources. As a result, a gap emerges between what the system thinks can be delivered, and what can realistically be delivered.

Exacerbating the issue, this kind of validation technique is often applied later in the order orchestration process, causing duplicated efforts and even further delays, and ultimately damaging the customer experience – something CSPs cannot afford.

Clearly, there is a strong need for CSPs to deploy more robust order validation techniques, especially during the earlier stages of the order capture process, to reduce order fallout potential.

Joining forces with cloud-based solution providers Salesforce and CloudSense, Comptel is fulfilling this by offering a service order validation solution, which improves order quality and reduces order fallouts with real-time, pre-order service design feasibility and validation via the cloud. Bringing enhancements like this into order management systems will be essential as network services continue to evolve towards virtualisation, and accurate and efficient service order orchestration becomes a primary competitive differentiator.

Want to learn more about order fallouts? Download the Analysys Mason whitepaper, “Reducing order fallouts: Key to success with business services.”

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How Chorus New Zealand Cut Fibre Provisioning Time by 40% with Comptel

If the telco industry will remember anything from 2014, it will be the decisive move toward disruptive technologies. With Over-the-Top (OTT) services and IPTV eating away at traditional sources of revenue, communications service providers (CSPs) are working hard to differentiate in an increasingly competitive and commoditised landscape.

A growing number of fixed broadband providers are turning to automated fibre fulfillment systems to stay ahead. Fibre deployments have been largely impractical for many CSPs, because of cost considerations and logistical reasons, but the need for disruptive tactics may change that trend. After all, ultra-fast broadband connections will be a unique offering in many countries. Pyramid Research estimates that only 35 percent of households worldwide will have a broadband connection this year.

Fibre fulfillment systems will be key differentiators for CSPs, as they will enable more efficient, seamless service delivery to see through customer demand. Comptel customer Chorus New Zealand was one such company that saw the benefits that could be realised – and this week, we were recognised with a Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award for our work together!

The Fibre Future

Chorus is New Zealand’s largest telecommunications infrastructure company. In late 2012, the business was looking for a modern fibre service fulfillment system that offered order management, large-scale logical inventory and activation capabilities that would help establish the company as a standalone entity from Telecom New Zealand. Chorus had recently been awarded a number of ultra-fast broadband contracts and set the goal of delivering a “best-in-class” fibre broadband experience to more than 830,000 New Zealand homes. That’s where we came in.

“Instead of undertaking a major OSS transformation that promised to be cumbersome and costly, Chorus New Zealand elected to pursue an ‘intelligent evolution’ project,” stated Dr. Mark H. Mortensen, author of the Analysys Mason case study. “The major benefit to doing so was it allowed them to provide a fully automated stack based on Comptel’s industry standards-based framework. As a result, Chorus experienced a 40 percent reduction in the time required to electronically provision a fibre connection to a customer’s premises.”

Through such an intelligent OSS evolution, the traditional barriers to fibre deployment fall away. By almost reducing the time of fibre provisioning by half, Chorus guaranteed that the ROI from fibre would be apparent much earlier in the deployment lifecycle. In turn, both the business and customers started to see the benefits of ultra-fast broadband sooner.

The service agility, operational flexibility and rapid time-to-market made possible can become serious differentiators for CSPs in the coming years. The companies that successfully deploy and deliver fibre, supported by automated, catalog-driven fulfillment and by undertaking an end-to-end approach, will pull out ahead of the competition. It also opens up the opportunity for more innovation and better customer service that will generate new streams of revenue to counter the risks of commoditisation.

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Informa’s Policy Control & Real-Time Charging Conference: A Sneak Peek

Here at Comptel, integrated policy control and real-time charging is one of our core areas of expertise. I couldn’t be more excited to explore this topic further at an Informa conference next week in Amsterdam. It’s always great to network and share ideas with communications service providers (CSPs), analysts and others across the industry. Plus, this time, I have the opportunity to give both a presentation and participate in a panel discussion at the show.

To give you a brief preview, I’ll first be leading a session titled “Exploring End-User Appetite for Buying Bandwidth Boosts and the Real-Time Charging Mechanisms Required to Support These Policies” on Tuesday, 24 April at 16:10. In this presentation, I’ll show how CSPs can use policy control to offer customers more personalised service packages and create upsell opportunities. I’ll provide an in-depth look at why CSPs should focus on interacting with customers in real time upon the point of usage rather than concentrating on the point of purchase or point of complaint.

A bit later in the day, at 16:35, I’ll join Zain Kuwait’s Monther Alomani and Tekelec’s Joanne Steinberg for a panel discussion on “What Policy 2.0 Enabled Services Are Delivering Incremental Revenues for Operators Today? Success Stories and Future Possibilities”. Moderated by Analysys Mason’s Glen Ragoonanan, we’ll debate how CSPs can effectively use traffic management technology to increase ARPU, and share what innovative services we are seeing generate interest and revenue from subscribers today.

Will I be seeing you at the upcoming conference? What policy control and real-time charging issues are you looking forward to discussing?

If you cannot make it to my presentation or panel session, I hope that we can connect at Comptel’s booth in the exhibition hall.

Around the World

Broadband Traffic Management…
Analysys Mason: MNOs Need a New Approach to Compete with OTT VoIP
A report from Analysys Mason forecasts that third parties could account for as much as 16 percent of mobile service revenue in Western Europe by 2017. Consumer interest in over-the-top (OTT) mobile VoIP applications, such as Google Voice and Skype, are forcing operators to address the issue of how to charge for these types of services. Principal analyst Stephen Sale and research director Tom Rebbeck state that short-term measures like blocking or charging a premium for OTT services fail to address the issue in a sustainable manner, and operators should instead use a scenario-based approach to engage with longer-term market developments and effectively compete. As the report notes, common themes across each scenario include the need for operators to use policy control to manage the price and value of third-party applications, along with the need for them to pay attention to customer behaviour.

Tech Central…
The State of Telecoms in Africa
Africa is quickly moving to high-speed broadband, yet the continent’s ability to offer more Internet services and data access could be hindered by the inability of operators to deliver reasonably priced, fast and reliable bandwidth. Russell Southwood, head of African telecom consultancy Balancing Act Africa, says migrating to LTE may be the solution needed to overcome this roadblock.

Despite the challenges outlined in the article, Africa’s fastest growing sector is the telecoms industry, as noted in previous highlights, which gives hope that operators will spur innovation through continued expansion and better service and greater rural coverage. In addition to LTE, what game-changing technology do you think is needed to achieve a high-speed Africa?

Pipeline Magazine…
Analysts Weigh in on the Customer Experience
Stratecast, Yankee Group and Infonetics Research discuss the customer experience management (CEM) craze and agree that defining CEM can be difficult. The bottom line though: increasing revenue and reducing costs do not automatically equal a better customer experience. However, working on customer experience first and implementing the right “technologies that allow you to do a better job of understanding your customers,” as Nancee Ruzicka of Stratecast says, “[can] reduce costs. They do improve revenues. They do have all of those positive money effects. Then you start to see your business case.” What do you think of the analysts’ points on CEM?

Around the World

FierceTelecom…
Putting Policy Control to Work
Editor-in-chief Sue Marek explains the current trend of policy control, as operators shift their business models and start implementing tiered price plans to keep revenue and bandwidth aligned.  Although policy control tools are available, some industry experts believe that policy control is an afterthought for operators, and that we may not see a more sophisticated use of the OSS solution until carriers deploy LTE networks.  Sue believes tiered pricing packages will probably be the mainstay for awhile, but eventually we will see “policy control 2.0 techniques”, which include real-time transactions and the ability to activate or de-activate new services on the fly.  Whatever the implementation, policy control tools will certainly continue to be a hot topic of discussion in the coming months and possibly years ahead, as more operators migrate from 3G to 4G.

European Communications…
Telecoms Bounces Back in 2010
Anne Morris reports on two recent studies from Ovum and Analysys Mason that indicates improved growth for the telecoms service sector in 2010.  Some of the reports key highlights include:

• The worldwide telecoms market is poised to resume higher growth rates following the difficulties created by the economic slowdown—principal analyst, Roz Roseboro forecasts that worldwide telecoms revenue will grow at a CAGR of 6% between 2009 and 2014. – Analysys Mason
• John Lively, chief forecaster shares a similar assessment: In 2010, China and India alone will add 329 million new mobile phone connections.  This is equivalent to more than the combined total population of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK. – Ovum
• Fixed-line services will continue to decline, although fiber connections for broadband services will increasingly be important for telcos.  Overall, the number of fixed lines worldwide will fall from 1 billion in 2010, to 871 million by 2014.  Fixed-line services revenues will also fall from around $350 billion to $283 billion, for the same period. – Ovum
• Mobile phone connections will increase from 5.3 billion in 2010 to 7.1 billion in 2014, with the emerging markets of Asia and Africa contributing much of the growth. Revenues from mobile phone services will increase by nearly $100 billion in the three years to 2012. – Ovum

Given these reports and the significant growth CSPs are expected to experience, it will be critical to support data traffic, while recognizing customer’s needs.  Operators need to realize that the traditional way to influence customer behavior—through pricing plan and charging options—is not sufficient enough in today’s dynamically changing market.

Mobile Europe…
Mobile Broadband, Content and Data Services Are Key to Helping Operators Combat Falling Retail Revenue, Says Report
According to a recent Analysys Mason study, retail telecoms revenue in Western Europe will continue to decrease by five percent between 2010 and 2015; however, operators can strengthen their positions by concentrating on two main growth areas: mobile broadband and data services.  The widespread adoption of flat-rate pricing models has led consumers to expect that their bills will not increase, and created a climate in which it is increasingly difficult for operators to derive more value from new services than they lose from legacy ones.  Yanli Suo-Saunders, senior analyst and leader of Analysys Mason’s mobile broadband research programme, states that the “demand for these services will grow as a result of increased service adoption and usage, as content and handset functionality improve. Tiered pricing structures will enable operators to monetize their higher-end smartphone users while also encouraging entry-level service adoption.”  The report indicates that a few important new revenue streams have yet to appear, but customer loyalty and trust—and the use of vastly more customer data—will be at the center of those that do emerge.