Comptel at #MWC16: It’s Time to Take Action and Transform Telco

Posted: February 19th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , | Comments Off on Comptel at #MWC16: It’s Time to Take Action and Transform Telco

There’s no bad time to visit Barcelona, but the Comptel team is especially excited to head to Spain for next week’s Mobile World Congress, which runs from 22-25 February. The reason why? We have big plans to follow up last year’s show with even more transformative announcements for operators, and you can learn all about them by visiting our booth – stand 5G40 in hall 5.Mobile World Congress 2016

MWC 2015 was a significant show for Comptel, because it’s where we debuted “Operation Nexterday,” our framework to help digital and communications service providers transform their businesses and thrive in the post-digital era. We launched a book, threw a party and shared our vision for new sales, marketing and service playbooks with the world.

Operation Nexterday took off. It inspired our first anti-seminar, Nexterday North, and we’ve seen how it’s changed the way our customers and partners talk about business opportunity in the era of digitalisation.

At MWC 2016, we want to keep our foot on the gas and build on that momentum. We’ve declared 2016 as a year of action and execution, when telcos take the Nexterday concept a step further and commit to transformation. We’re ready to help our customers and partners take action. Here’s how:

Nexterday: Volume II

Our first book introduced readers to the four factors creating the need for digital transformation: evolving buyer expectations, new monetisation strategies, advancements in telco infrastructure and the need for rich data insights.

This year’s sequel – a hard copy of which you can pick up at our booth, stand 5G40 in hall 5 – explains exactly how you can tackle each one. It also includes even more contributions from experts and visionaries both within and outside telco, including economist Dr. Kjell Nordström, business experts Stefan Moritz, Mark Curtis and Jeetu Mahtani, and analysts Stewart Rogers, Fredrik Jungermann, Caroline Chappell and Steve Bell.

#Nexterday Party

What’s a trip to Barcelona without a party? We’re hosting 400 people for a #Nexterday party on Wednesday 24 February starting at 7 pm CET. This isn’t the usual cocktails and canapes affair – we’ll have live performances, a DJ, superhero nitro cocktails, an open bar, bus transportation to the city centre and plenty of networking opportunities. You can pick up an exclusive ticket at the Comptel booth or at the stands of one of our partners: Salesforce, IBM, Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra, CloudSense and Hitachi.

FWD

Nexterday Party 2016Operators who stop by our booth can get a first-hand look at Comptel FWD, our disruptive digital sales and marketing channel for operators that creates a faster, convenient and more personal mobile buying experience for consumers. It’s a radical new way for operators to sell mobile services, and it’s how operators will connect the next 2 billion internet users to the Web.

Industry Blueprints

We’ll feature guides to help operators complete their digital business and IT transformations. Topics include cloud transformation, NFV service orchestration, IoT, agile elastic portfolios and automated contextual engagement.

Multi-Touch Demo Wall

Our demo wall will visualise how real-time data sources can be seamlessly connected with content and customer profiles, and then instantly turned into contextual, omni-channel actions for better business outcomes.

For Comptel, MWC 2016 will be about celebrating a year’s worth of progress and issuing a challenge for operators to take action. We invite you to join us in transforming for the better in 2016.

To book a meeting with Comptel at Mobile World Congress 2016, contact your Comptel account manager or send us an email at [email protected]. And be sure to stop by our booth, stand 5G40 in Hall 5, to pick up your copy of Nexterday: Volume II and get a ticket to the #Nexterday party.


Looking Back On a Transformational Year for Comptel

Posted: February 12th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Industry Insights | Tags: , , | Comments Off on Looking Back On a Transformational Year for Comptel

We’re only one month in to 2016, and already the team here at Comptel has been busy on multiple fronts. We’re putting the final touches on our follow-up to our successful book Operation Nexterday. You’ll be able to get a full hard copy of Nexterday Volume II at this year’s Mobile World Congress, and we’ll also have a download link on our soon-to-be-launched website, Nexterday.org.Nexterday North

We have much more in store for this year, but before we get too far ahead of ourselves, it’s worth taking a quick look back and the progress Comptel made in the past 13 months. As it turned out, 2015 was a hallmark year for Comptel. We’ve been an important player in this industry for 30 years, working hard to deliver solutions that keep our telco customers competitive.

However, we recognised the playbooks that we – and the industry as a whole – have relied on for so long are broken. We used last year to pioneer change in the way that this market serves its customers, embracing digitalisation and helping operators learn how they can become the perfect digital company.

Along the way, we developed product innovations that support our vision of Nexterday, partnered strategically and are proud to have been recognised for all we accomplished. With that in mind, here are a few highlights from Comptel’s transformative 2015:

Operation Nexterday

Last year we launched Operation Nexterday – a mission and framework encouraging operators to redefine their sales, marketing, technology and service approach to better suit the demands of the tech-savvy digital natives that make up Generation Cloud.

We wrote a 150-page book explaining how the evolution in B2B and B2C buyer demands is challenging the telco industry, and outlining steps to achieve Nexterday – from perfecting the digital buying experience and monetising new services faster, to orchestrating network functions from ground to cloud and utilising intelligent, fast data.

The book compiled insights from industry experts within Comptel and across the digital and communications landscape, including analysts and academics. It was published at Mobile World Congress 2015, with more than 5,000 copies distributed since.

Nexterday North

The success of the book led us to launch our first “anti-seminar.” In November, we held the inaugural Nexterday North event in Helsinki, Finland, as a side event to the global startup conference Slush. The event focused on digitalisation and motivating operators to think about the telco world with a non-traditional mindset. Nexterday North brought together more than 500 Comptel customers, partners, key industry players and futuristic business thinkers from around the world to examine digital services as the next major revenue stream for telcos.

Product Innovations

Our product teams kept their foot on the gas and worked tirelessly to develop solutions that would help our customers succeed in Nexterday.

FWD ComptelMONETIZER™, brought to market in July 2015, is an industry-first business policy and charging toolset enabling digital and communications service providers to innovate and design rich service offers instantly. With MONETIZER™, you can create, configure, launch and modify dynamic, contextual packages – and profit from consumers’ data usage – in minutes instead of months.

At Nexterday North, we launched FWD, an easy and contextual solution for operators to sell and market time-based mobile data directly from a smartphone. The FWD app makes buying mobile data fast, convenient and personal for consumers, while giving operators an easy-to-manage digital sales and marketing channel to maximise data revenues.

Industry Collaboration

We also extended our work with partners in our industry in an effort to help shape the future of telco.

We launched a four-month-long program with long-standing customer Saudi Telecom Company (STC) to develop the next generation of IT talent in Saudi Arabia. The program educates young Saudi professionals on communications networks, strengthens their knowledge of Comptel’s technologies and enables them for future leadership positions within STC.

Comptel also joined a partnership with Pivotal to market their solutions together in the Asia-Pacific region. The partnership enables operators to immediately act on data with easy, quick access to Comptel’s packaged data analytics applications via the Pivotal Big Data Suite.

Industry Recognition and Accolades

We achieved several proof points of excellence in 2015, including recognition by CIO Review as one of the 20 most promising M2M Solution Providers in 2015, and the Best Performing IT Team by TDC. The Comptel Operational Intelligence Model won OSS Innovation of the Year in the TelecomAsia Readers’ Choice and Innovation Awards, and the company’s work to evolve Chorus New Zealand’s fulfilment system was honoured with a Global Telecoms Business Award. Congratulations to my colleagues here at Comptel for earning this prestigious recognition!

We’re Only Getting Started

It’s fine to pat yourself on the back once in a while, and I’m certainly proud of what our team was able to achieve last year. However, in an industry that’s always evolving, we always want to be moving forward. Last year showed what Comptel is capable of, but we’ve only scratched the surface. In 2016, our mission is to execute on the ideas we introduced last year and turn those concepts into action. We’re challenging operators to create perfect digital companies for and with their customers. We invite you to join us on our journey toward Nexterday and to start transforming your business as well.

Comptel will be in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2016 (Hall 5, Stand 5G40). We’ll launch our latest book, Nexterday Volume II, and host a #Nexterday party on Wednesday, 24 February at 7 p.m. CET. To book a meeting, contact your Comptel account manager or send us an email at [email protected].


Comptel’s Strong Start for 2015!

Posted: April 24th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: News | Tags: , , , , | Comments Off on Comptel’s Strong Start for 2015!

Comptel’s net sales and profit grew significantly during the first quarter of 2015, which continued the trend from the second half of 2014. Our European operations especially continued strong sales in Q1. Our FlowOne Fulfillment solution continued, as in the last year, to be our main growth driver.

We were also awarded a deal with a new customer in Indonesia, together with our strategic partner, Tech Mahindra. Strategically, this was an important deal, as Indonesia is defined in our strategy as one of our target growth markets. Our backlog continued to be strong with a 32.3% increase compared to the previous year.

In Q1, we invested in development areas as defined in our updated strategy. Despite our investments, profitability continued to improve, and our operating results grew 55.7% year over year. During the first quarter, we secured three significant orders, valued over EUR 0.5 million. A few Q1 forecasted orders were delayed to the beginning of Q2.

Business Review of Q1 2015

Comptel’s net sales increased in the first quarter by 16.3 per cent from the previous year, to 21.0 million (18.0). The net sales increase was due to the strong backlog at the end of the year. European sales continued with strong growth as in the second half of last year.

The operating result for the period was EUR 1.5 million (1.0), which corresponds to 7.1 per cent of net sales (5.3). The profitability improvement is all attributable to the growth in net sales.

The result before taxes was EUR 0.8 million (0.8), and the net result was EUR 0.29 million (0.15). Net profit improved by 92.3 per cent. Earnings per share for the period under review were EUR 0.00 (0.00).

The Group’s financial income/expenses were EUR -0.7 million, which is a result of US dollar long-term strengthening. The tax expense for the period was EUR 0.5 million (0.6), of which EUR 0.3 million were withholding taxes related to double taxation (0.7).

The Group’s order backlog increased from the previous year and was EUR 55.8 million (42.2) at the end of the period.

Comptel Strategy

Life is digital moments. Digital demand will be driven by “Generation Cloud” customers and enterprises interacting with millions of digital applications. The Internet of Things with billions of connected devices will further accelerate digital demand, leading to exploding data volumes. Future mobile and fixed networks will provide hyper speeds and undergo a transformation from hardware to software. Network functions will be virtualised. Mounting complexity will require orchestration of business flows and virtualised resources.

Comptel’s mission is to perfect digital moments and translate them into business moments by connecting digital demand and supply.

The Comptel strategy focuses on providing solutions for digital and communications service providers in two major areas – Intelligent Data and Service Orchestration. The Intelligent Data business delivers solutions and services to customers for monetising data and turning Big Data into intelligent, automated actions. The Service Orchestration business area provides solutions and services for business flow orchestration and mastering the digital buying experience.

Comptel’s strategic target is to establish itself as a leading software vendor for connecting digital demand and supply.

Strategy execution is based on six strategic objectives: solutions with unique value, thought leadership, customer excellence, new markets, leverage by partners and inspired people.

Comptel´s marketing strategy strives for industry thought leadership on carefully selected themes and topics which are: the digital buying experience, monetising more with less time, orchestration of service and order flows from ground to cloud, and intelligent fast data. The essence of Comptel’s thought leadership is captured in the book, Operation Nexterday, that was launched at Mobile World Congress in March 2015.

We expect 2015 net sales to grow compared to the previous year, and we expect operating profit to be in the range of 8-12%, excluding one-time charges.


The Perfect Digital Storm: Comptel Talks Nexterday on the NASDAQ CEO Signature Series

Posted: April 9th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: News | Tags: , | Comments Off on The Perfect Digital Storm: Comptel Talks Nexterday on the NASDAQ CEO Signature Series

We’re entering a new era in telecommunications – a “perfect storm” of technology capabilities that challenges digital and communications service providers to serve a more demanding type of customer, particularly those of “Generation Cloud.”

I recently discussed this with Kelsey Hubbard in an interview for the NASDAQ CEO Signature Series – you can watch our full conversation here. As I explained to Kelsey, consumers and businesses today are surrounded by a wide range of technological capabilities that never existed before – from hyper-connected smartphones, to smarter applications, to high-speed networks, to cloud computing, to Internet-enabled devices and much more.

With all of this technology at their fingertips, customers are becoming better connected and more demanding of the digital services they use. “Generation Cloud” expects to get the services they want right on time, love comparison tools that allow them to get the best price and value for these services, and discard any notions of mass segmentation in favour of highly personalised and targeted buying experiences.

Serving these customers effectively means overcoming a number of collective blind spots that persist within telecommunications. Operators must specifically answer a number of nagging questions: How do we win the hearts and minds of consumers in the digital era? How do we effectively monetise new digital service opportunities? With whom should we partner to reduce friction and enable faster speed-to-market and time-to-revenue?

Kelsey and I discussed how Comptel has repositioned itself over the past several years to better tackle these questions on behalf of our customers. We want to embrace the principles of Operation Nexterday, and our biggest strategic objective for the next few years is to better connect digital supply and demand, so our customers can turn emerging service opportunities into the “perfect digital moments” for their end users. Transforming these perfect moments into revenue-driving business moments will allow operators to develop stronger relationships with their own customers and reach greater heights.

How will we do it? As I explained, Comptel operates at the intersection of two major industry transformations:

Software-Defined Networks

The entire telecommunications market is steadily moving toward a type of network infrastructure that Comptel has long embraced: software-defined networks (SDN). We have traditionally provided software that allows operators to manage resources in the network and now in the cloud, and as a result, we believe Comptel is uniquely positioned to support the industry’s larger transformation now and in the future.

Intelligent Data

A big determinant of operator success in the coming years will be in their ability to turn intelligence into opportunities in real time. Having intelligent fast data will become critical. We’ve been a Big Data company for 27 years – Comptel currently collects 20 percent of all mobile data worldwide – which puts our company in a position to address that massive amount of data and provide analytics and other services on top of that.

Removing Complexity and Friction

I very much enjoyed the opportunity to chat with Kelsey about the unique challenges and opportunities that face not only Comptel, but telco as a whole. As Comptel sees it, every significant industry trend boils down to the need to eliminate inherent complexity.

We want to leverage our expertise to reduce friction points and make it easier for operators to give their customers exactly what they want at the right time on the right device, and earn revenue while doing it.

We think focusing on simplicity is the right course of action as telco steers its way through the perfect storm of consumer, technology and service trends.

Watch our full conversation with Kelsey Hubbard for the NASDAQ CEO Signature Series. Or, download a copy of Operation Nexterday to learn more about our vision for the future of digital communications


A Review of Comptel’s 2014 Business and 2015 Outlook

Posted: February 6th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: News | Tags: , , , | Comments Off on A Review of Comptel’s 2014 Business and 2015 Outlook

Comptel’s growth accelerated towards the end of the year. Our sales in Q4 grew by approximately 21% compared to last year, and  our order backlog grew significantly compared to the previous year.

During the second half of 2014, we won several new customers as well as several multi-year deals with our existing customers. In Q4, we won two new customers, both in South America. Looking at the full year, we doubled our new customer wins: to eight in 2014 compared to four in 2013.

Our new solutions grew almost 26% in Q4, as well. However, our full-year expectations for new solutions did not materialise as we had expected. Our current business was strong and grew by 5% in 2014 as a whole and compared to the previous year.

Regionally, Asia-Pacific grew throughout the year, Europe had a very strong second half, and the Middle East performed as planned in 2014. As previously stated in 2014, our challenges were in the South America region.

Our net profit improved also significantly from previous years due to some previously made tax changes in Asia and also due to some new decisions by the tax authorities. Going forward, we expect this to reduce our effective corporate tax rate.

We ended the year with a solid balance sheet and continue to be net cash positive. During 2014, we secured 26 significant orders, valued over EUR 0.5 million. In 2013, the comparable number of orders was 17. The Group’s reported order backlog increased from the previous year, from EUR 40.8 in 2013 to EUR 55.2 million at the end of the 2014 financial year. The company’s total backlog including multi-year orders beyond 12 months is more than EUR 70 million.

New Organisation

Comptel renewed its organisation in the beginning of 2015. The new organisation reflects the company’s focus on the two core business areas. Going forward, the two business units are: “Comptel Intelligent Data” and “Comptel Service Orchestration.” The Comptel Intelligent Data business unit includes Comptel Convergent Mediation, Comptel Policy and Charging Control and Analytics. The Comptel Service Orchestration business unit includes Comptel Provisioning and Activation, Comptel Fulfillment and Comptel Inventory.

Moreover, the company continues to have common sales and services organisations and corporate functions. In addition, Comptel established a new business unit, which will concentrate on new ideas and products in the early stage to develop them further.

Business Outlook and Markets

The business environment and industry of telecommunications operators is at a clear turning point, since new technologies and business competitors are entering the traditional telecommunications market. We expect the trend to continue in 2015.

While fundamental investments are targeted to high bandwidth, 4G and fibre networks, operators have a strong need to develop and launch new services and improve the quality of the customer experience, to gain the full potential of their investments in a heavily competitive market. Fierce competition inside the telecommunications industry and against the newcomers in the same market requires that operators improve their business processes continuously and pay special attention to their cost structure.

The significance and role of software in managing the telecommunications networks and in enabling more business for operators will further increase. We expect that the implementation of new network technologies and services will slightly increase the value of the software market and will create demand for larger software delivery projects. The operators will require both services and new project deliveries that create a strong basis for business growth. Network technologies will also be moving to software-based cloud environments at an increasing pace, and will bring new and more extensive business opportunities for our service orchestration and intelligent data solutions.

We expect the 2015 net sales to grow compared to the previous year, and we expect operating profit to be in the range of 8-12%, excluding one-time charges. Characteristically, a significant part of Comptel’s operating profit and net sales is generated in the second half of the year.


Comptel Had a Strong Third Quarter

Posted: October 24th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Industry Insights, News | Tags: , | Comments Off on Comptel Had a Strong Third Quarter

Comptel is pleased to announce that we had a strong third quarter in 2014 compared to last year, both in terms of quarterly growth in net sales as well as in terms of profitability

In the third quarter, our project and license revenue grew by 20 percent compared to the third quarter in 2013. Our growth came both through winning new customers as well as from new projects. Our new and current business areas grew in the third quarter compared to last year.

We also secured six significant orders, valued over EUR 500,000. Our existing customers in Saudi Arabia and India placed significant orders and we also won a new customer in Pakistan. Also our backlog strengthened significantly overall. In 2014, Comptel has won six customers compared to four last year.

During the past quarter we also signed a strategic partnership agreement with Hitachi. Our Japanese partner will be reselling our Comptel Policy Control solution globally. This new partnership enables us to enter the Japanese market and establish our presence there.


Comptel’s New Business Area Grew in the Second Quarter of 2014

Posted: July 29th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: News | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »

Comptel announced today our interim report for the second quarter. In the first half of the year 2014 we have won 5 new customers. For us this is a significant figure, especially comparing to year 2013 when the number of new deals was 4 in total.

We have also signed several significant new deals with existing customers. While market conditions continue to be challenging, especially in Europe, in this quarter we made some progress in Europe. In the first half, Latin America has been very challenging and net sales have decreased from last year.

Our investments into new business areas, according to our strategy, are showing positive results in this quarter with the new business growth. Comptel’s research and development (R&D) expenditure was mainly targeted at the service fulfillment automation of telecom operators and the management and real-time analysis of rapidly increasing data traffic. Comptel seeks global market leadership in these areas where key business challenges for operators and service providers will be solved. In addition, the company is developing an integrated software platform which will enable a cost-efficient and solution-based R&D.

In 2014, the company focuses on developing its offering within the Comptel Fulfillment, Comptel Policy & Charging Control and advanced analytics product areas. Three major software releases were launched in these respective product areas during the first half of the year.


Comptel’s Q1/2014 Results and Review

Posted: April 17th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: News | Tags: , , , , , | Comments Off on Comptel’s Q1/2014 Results and Review

At the end of the last year, Comptel stated that our main objectives remain largely the same as for the year 2013: we will continue to invest in the new businesses (Comptel Fulfillment, Comptel Analytics and Comptel Policy and Charging Control), drive the expansion to new countries and substantially increase our collaboration with partners.

Our order backlog increased from the last quarter and we won three new customers during the first quarter of 2014. We received a new Comptel Analytics deal with a leading Asian operator, Globe Telecom, a Comptel Fulfillment deal in Colombia and a Comptel Convergent Mediation deal in New Zealand.

During the quarter, we signed a strategic partnership with Tech Mahindra and also won our first joint project after the partnership agreement.

Our year-over-year net sales declined to 18.0 million (21.2 million) due to seasonality swings between quarters. We divested one of our legacy businesses that also contributed slightly negatively to our order intake and revenue.

Our profitability improved compared to the first quarter of the last year and our cost base is now lower due to earlier implemented cost saving measures. We maintained a strong cash flow (7.2 million) throughout the quarter and currently our cash exceeds our bank debt.


Comptel’s 2013 Results and Review

Posted: February 13th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: News | Tags: , , , , | Comments Off on Comptel’s 2013 Results and Review

Comptel’s main target for 2013 was to improve profitability. In the first half of 2013, we continued the cost-savings program that was started in 2012, with the aim to improve efficiency and the company’s cost structure. Our operating profit, excluding one-time items, increased to 8.8 per cent (-1.0) on an annual level in 2013. Support and maintenance sales continued to be strong in 2013.

As defined in our strategy, we continued our research and development investments into our new solution areas. Comptel Fulfillment, Comptel Analytics (where we won two new customers) and Comptel Policy Control sales grew by 22 per cent year over year.

During 2013, we won four new customers and secured 17 significant orders, valued over EUR 0.5 million. Geographically, our sales grew especially in the Middle East and the Americas. Finally, to wrap up, in the fourth quarter, Comptel entered a new market in Vietnam, where we closed a new Comptel Fulfillment deal, as well as won a new customer for the same product in New Zealand.

We look forward to what 2014 holds for Comptel!


Comptel’s Q3 Results and Review

Posted: October 17th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: News | Tags: , , | Comments Off on Comptel’s Q3 Results and Review

Comptel announced Q3 Interim Report on October 16th. We continued the successful execution of our main target for the year – the improvement of profitability. Our cost base is now notably below last year´s level which has significantly improved our ability to generate profit. We have also maintained significant investment level in our two main areas for the future which are the Comptel Fulfillment and Comptel Analytics.

We have received significant new orders from the fulfillment area during this year and the first next generation Comptel Fulfillment solutions have been taken into production use by our customers. Overall our fulfillment business has grown much faster than the market during this year. In terms of the Comptel Analytics solutions we continued the development activities as per our plans. The first Comptel Analytics solutions delivered have generated significant enhancements to the operator´s performance. We expect to secure new customers during the remaining months of the year and we anticipate business to grow next year.

We secured two significant orders from our fulfillment product area during the third quarter of the year. Comptel closed a deal valued at EUR 2.8 million in South America in July and received an expansion order from a significant operator in the Middle East during September.