Comptel at TM Forum Live! 2017: Showcasing Sponsored Data and Predictive Customer Journeys

Posted: May 15th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Events, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Comments Off on Comptel at TM Forum Live! 2017: Showcasing Sponsored Data and Predictive Customer Journeys

Follow the customer, not the competitor. That’s the way it should work.

However, many operators struggle to find the right service, marketing or monetisation strategies to engage and excite their customers. Customer-centric strategy is now more important than ever, at a time when consumers demand better levels of service, attention and instant gratification from their operators across their whole customer journey. Customers are always on the journey and operators should be able to provide a personalised and consistent customer experience.

Comptel is working to help operators solve key customer challenges to improve customer experience at every touch point of their omnichannel journey, and we’ll demonstrate the fruits of our efforts at TM Forum Live! 2017 in Nice, France, 15-18, May 2017. We are proud to once again contribute to two TM Forum Catalysts, which are proof-of-concept initiatives that bring together large and small digital and communications service providers and other ecosystem players to develop innovative solutions for common industry challenges.

Both Catalysts provide strategies that help operators meet customer demands and add new revenue opportunities through improved engagement. If you’re in Nice for the event, we encourage you to stop by the Catalyst Theatre to learn about both initiatives. Here’s a preview.

New Business Models with Mobile Sponsored Data

Championed by Orange and NTT, this Catalyst also includes Datami, CloudSense and Sigma. Building on the success of our 2016 presentation, we aim to give operators the detailed blueprint they need to turn current sponsored data trials into complete market offerings.

Customers love using their mobile data for ecommerce, stream videos and play online games, but they’re afraid to engage in such activities that eat up their data plan. By allowing a third party to pay for data access, sponsored data programs remove the financial barriers that prevent mobile users from engaging. It’s a great incentive to improve customer engagement, build loyalty and drive revenue.

The Catalyst on Sponsored Data will take place at 16:30 pm on Monday, May 15 in the Catalyst Theatre.

Maximising Engagement with Predictive Customer Journeys

Championed by Orange, Ncell and ArtofArc, Comptel creates predictive customer journeys together with Salesforce, Vlocity, Huawei, Teavaro and Comarch. It’s important for operators to engage with customers at every level and channel of the buying journey, especially those customers who engage self-service shopping. Customer journeys are inherently omnichannel by nature, thus we need better insight into the real-time customers’ digital moments to find the right context to engage.

Customers crave this type of service – our recent research survey found 55 percent want more personalised engagements from their mobile carriers. Our Catalyst will provide the blueprint for operators to reach and motivate customers with those personalised, customised offers.

The Catalyst on Predictive Customer Journeys will take place at 15:00 pm on Tuesday, May 16 in the Catalyst Theatre.

We received so much positive feedback from last year’s Catalysts, and our Sponsored Data partnership was even recognized by TM Forum as the “Most Innovative Catalyst – Commercial Applications in Communications Industry” in its 2016 Catalyst Awards. We hope to make a similarly big impact this year, and look forward to sharing our ideas with guests in Nice.

Visit TM Forum’s Catalyst Theatre to see these demonstrations in action. To arrange a meeting with Comptel at TM Forum Live! 2017, email [email protected]

Download a copy of the Comptel research report “The Power of Personal” to learn more about changing consumer attitudes toward personalised services.


Around the World

Posted: August 12th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Around the World | Tags: , , , , , | Comments Off on Around the World

Computer Business Review…

Mobile Network Operators Face Surging Data Delivery Costs: Study

According to Juniper Research, mobile data delivery costs could go up to $370 billion by 2016—a sevenfold jump from $53 billion in 2010. The analyst firm reported that mobile network operators can reduce costs with Wi-Fi network build-out, femtocells and network sharing initiatives.  Juniper also suggested that mobile network operators in developing countries transition to renewable energy for off-grid networks.

The bottom line though: data usage is outpacing operators’ revenues. This only continues to underscore the need to strike a balance between encouraging service use, controlling resources like bandwidth and ensuring maximum payback. Policy control gives operators the levers to manage mobile data delivery and monetise the services.

Alcatel-Lucent Blog

Customer Experience Management and the Thieves of Time

Did you know that it costs about five to ten times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to retain an existing customer? As Alcatel-Lucent’s Vincent Kavanagh notes, unfortunately, “money talks”— and most companies typically end up incorrectly distributing their marketing spend. They’ve also ignored the fact that happy customers have proven to stay longer and spend more, and not made customer experience management (CEM) a priority.

Luckily, operators are paying greater attention to CEM. They are being increasingly conscious of customers’ time and interacting with them more over multiple channels including social media. One important area that they have yet to tap into though is their OSS and network data, to gain a holistic view of subscriber activity. By doing so, operators can open up a myriad of possibilities and turn them into something that can be monetised.

TYN…

Cloud Computing: Latin American Market Will Be 69% in Five Years

IDC recently conducted its Cloud Solutions Roadshow in Argentina, and after meeting with various Latin American company executives, one of the research firm’s vice presidents, Ricardo Villate, has dubbed 2011 as “the year of the cloud.”

IDC survey results have shown that 14.5 percent of Latin American companies with more than 100 employees have implemented cloud services. This is nearly three times more than in January 2010, and the market is expected to continue this steady growth pattern, reaching 69 percent in five years.

It’s exciting to see barriers to enterprise cloud adoption like security and performance management being broken down, much like Comptel demonstrated through several TM Forum Catalyst initiatives.


Readying for Management World 2011 in Dublin

Posted: May 19th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , , , , | Comments Off on Readying for Management World 2011 in Dublin

Time has flown by since I wrote about the stress of moving—we’re now only a few days away from traveling to Management World 2011’s new home of Dublin. And yet again Comptel is pleased to have such a packed agenda! Here’s a snapshot of what we’ll be up to in the convention centre next week.

CTO Gareth Senior and Stratecast’s Nancee Ruzicka will be presenting a TeliaSonera case study as part of TM Forum’s Enabling Service Innovation Summit on Wednesday, May 25 from 12:15 p.m. – 12:45 p.m. It’s a worthwhile presentation that will discuss the operator’s unique “you get what you pay for” approach and use of policy control, to better manage its customers’ mobile Internet usage and meet the European Union’s data roaming regulations.

As my colleague Greg Scullard mentioned, we’ll also be giving live demonstrations of the Enhanced Cloud Service Management Catalyst in Forumville. Comptel’s mediation and policy control solutions were used in the proof-of-concept, which explores how communications service providers can develop, monetise, and assure access to new revenue streams and markets with hosted unified communications and collaboration services.

Lastly, Comptelians will be manning booth #49 in the expo hall and are on hand for demos of the Comptel Dynamic OSS, covering catalog-driven service fulfillment, dynamic SIM management, mediation, charging and policy control. We’re particularly looking forward to showing how our solutions can help operators deliver a superior customer experience, from customer acquisition through to service delivery, and to customer retention.

Should you wish to share any thoughts from the event, Comptel invites you to leave a comment here. We look forward to seeing you in Dublin!


TM Forum Catalyst Explores the Monetisation of Cloud-Based Collaboration Services

Posted: May 10th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Behind the Scenes, News | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Over the past several years, Comptel has participated in a number of TM Forum Catalyst projects (most notably, the Product and Service Assembly initiative). And in the run up to Management World 2011, we’ve decided to team up with BT, Cisco and Progress Software again and build upon the Inter-Cloud Service Management Catalyst. A press release was distributed today announcing the latest proof-of-concept and the addition of Amartus, InfoVista and MetraTech to it.

I am particularly excited about the Enhanced Cloud Service Management Catalyst, as it is the first to involve Comptel’s mediation and policy control solutions. Last year, we were primarily focused on fulfillment, with being responsible for orchestrating the delivery of hosted unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) services. Now, in the second phase, we’re also taking a key role in the monetisation of these services by capturing and rating usage and performance data from the infrastructure. It’s great to have this year’s project leveraging most of our software assets, and thus completing the Comptel Dynamic OSS loop.

What’s also interesting to note about this Catalyst—the same core set of applications traditionally used to manage mobile networks is being applied to UC&C in the cloud. For instance, just like the mobile world has gone through many changes in terms of the way subscribers pay for services, customers of UC&C solutions will be looking for pricing that accurately represents their usage levels—whether its billing for video and call usage per minute or per second, blended pricing where video usage doesn’t incur charges for the audio that accompanies it or different pricing for the host and participants. To achieve this service differentiation, operators of UC&C services can exercise flexible policy control and charging capabilities.

Management World 2011 attendees, if you’d like to demo the project, email [email protected] or visit the Enhanced Cloud Service Management Catalyst booth in Forumville.

For those unable to make it to Dublin, a whitepaper with more information on “The Criticality of Effective Service Management in Monetising Cloud-Based Collaboration Services,” is available for download.


What to Expect at Management World Americas

Posted: November 8th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

Comptel will be exhibiting at this year’s Management World Americas, taking place in sunny Orlando, Florida from 9-11 November.  The week is shaping up to be a busy one—Comptel will not only be present at TM Forum’s conference in the U.S., but also at AfricaCom in Cape Town, South Africa.

As for Management World Americas, this year’s theme is “Beating the Revenue Crunch: Smart Pipes, Smart Services, Smart Business”.  And, TM Forum has put together an impressive keynote program that will debate the business and technology decisions communication service providers (CSPs) have to make in today’s world, where traditional voice and messaging services are declining and the explosion of data offerings is failing to deliver matching revenue growth.

Some of the questions that will be tackled by highlighted speakers including our partners IBM and Alcatel-Lucent—where, how and when should our industry reposition itself, and to what?  Is the future one where today’s CSPs become service-enabling ‘smart pipes’ and deliver an array of new retail brands, or is there still a strong role for telcos as retailers?  What would that change entail?

Supporting this theme will be four summits, 80 sessions and more than 100 presenters from CSPs and vendor companies worldwide.  The Cloud Summit, New Services and Business Models Summit, Operational Excellence Summit, and Customer Experience Summit will explore the current telco industry challenges and opportunities through case studies, panel discussions and executive roundtables.  Comptel and Mexican CSP Axtel will be presenting at the Operational Excellence Summit tomorrow, 9 November at 3:00 p.m. on the operator’s multi-phase OSS consolidation project, to roll out WiMAX and other next-generation network technologies and introduce new services to its customers.

Also on tap for Management World Americas, like in years past, are Forumville and Catalyst demonstrations.  Forumville will feature five themed zones showcasing nine live proof-of-concept, collaborative projects, including the Cloud Service Broker Catalyst.

For those going to Orlando, we hope you’ll swing by booth #28 and say hello.


Podcast: Potential of Cloud Services for CSPs

Posted: August 13th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Behind the Scenes | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments »

I recently had the pleasure to speak with industry analyst Teresa Cottam of Telesperience for her latest podcast episode—Telesperience 15—on cloud, managed services and outsourcing.  The focus of our conversation was the potential of cloud services: both to increase operational efficiency and as a new revenue stream for communications service providers (CSPs).  I was also able to share with her Comptel’s participation in three TM Forum Catalyst programs, which we have been showing at various TM Forum Management World events in Nice and Orlando.  The Catalysts involved were:

After four successful iterations of the Service Model Catalyst, we are happy to share that we’ve achieved all of the results we’ve set out to accomplish.  As for the other two Catalysts, we will continue to explore these further over the next few months—we’re really seeing the Cloud Service Broker Catalyst working as a potential business model for CSPs.

Podcast Options:

Download MP3 file

Play streaming audio: v2 Microsperience- Greg Scullard- July 2010.mp3

Follow the conversation via Twitter: @TeresaCottam, @Telesperience, @ComptelCorp or #BSSOSS.


What’s on at Management World 2010: Inter-Cloud Service Management Catalyst

Posted: May 21st, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Over the past three days at Management World 2010, a lot of time has been spent in Forumville, where Catalyst participants gave demos of their collaborative projects.  Comptel took part in three of the four integrated cloud management scenarios, namely the Cloud Service Broker, Service Model and Inter-Cloud Service Management Catalysts.

As briefly mentioned in Olivier Suard’s Wednesday post, the latter initiative, championed by BT, aimed to demonstrate a unified service delivery framework for managing distributed inter-cloud services (specifically unified communications voice).  Comptel contributed service fulfillment solutions and a customer order portal to the project.

To give credit where credit’s due, Qwest acted as the cloud service broker exposing the product and service catalog into the cloud, while Cisco Systems brought the domain managers for infrastructure and voice applications as well as a service management portal.  Progress Software was responsible for the data interoperability with standardization and mapping, and managed services provider T-Systems integrated the customer self-care portal.

Management World 2010 attendees, if you had time to walk through Forumville, what did you think of the Inter-Cloud Service Management Catalyst and the others on display?  How might you like to see this particular initiative evolve (e.g. the addition of service assurance or billing components)?  Or, what other types of Catalysts should be considered for Management World Americas in Orlando in November?


What’s on at Management World 2010: OSS and Managed Services

Posted: May 19th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , , , | Comments Off on What’s on at Management World 2010: OSS and Managed Services

Yesterday evening, Comptel’s very own CTO, Gareth Senior, and Ralf Jaeger of Cisco Systems gave a talk on leveraging OSS for managed services as part of Management World 2010’s Successful Business Transformation Summit.  They focused on virtualized unified communications services and how the cloud environment is becoming a critical differentiator for service providers—especially in terms of guaranteed quality of service and combining assets in the network.  (If interested in seeing a copy of the presentation, contact [email protected]).

Some of the key OSS points made: it’s critical to have a full-service suite that offers a high degree of functionality out of the box.  The solutions should encompass not only the traditional elements, such as activation, order management, provisioning and inventory management, but also newer components like catalog that are important for next-generation business models, for example, Telco 2.0.

Wrapping up, Gareth and Ralf gave the Inter-Cloud Service Management Catalyst as an example of traditional OSS (service fulfillment) being applied to a brand new space.  The initiative involves the ability to run services between multiple clouds, partition networks into slices and provide end-customers with the tools they need to manage their use of on-demand cloud services.  But, more on the Inter-Cloud Service Management Catalyst coming up!

Leveraging OSS for managed services—and providing end-customers with the ability to make changes as they like—can certainly give service providers an edge (including time- and cost-savings as a result of automation and integration) over those that don’t know how to do it.


Q&A: BT's Gary Bruce on the Cloud Service Broker Catalyst

Posted: May 13th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Behind the Scenes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Got your head in the cloud?  There will certainly be a lot of discussion around the challenges and opportunities cloud services present next week at Management World 2010 in Nice.  For conference attendees wanting to experience key cloud management concepts, and forward-looking collaborations among communications service providers (CSPs), technology suppliers and enterprise customers, Forumville is a must!

Gary Bruce, Catalyst lead and project champion at BT Innovate & Design, answers a couple of questions about the Cloud Service Broker Catalyst (CSB), which will demonstrate a trusted, governed cloud management platform, to simplify the delivery of complex, cloud services to enterprise customers.

Q: How is the CSB Catalyst addressing the barriers to cloud adoption for enterprise customers?

A: Although cloud services offer many attractive benefits, enterprises are naturally concerned about losing control over IT governance.  Issues, such as maintaining application performance, delivering adequate security, preventing runaway costs and complying with regional or sector regulations, create significant barriers for cloud adoption.

The CSB Catalyst project starts to address these issues by developing a trusted interface between the enterprise and cloud service environments. This facilitates a secure, highly performing cloud-based environment for enterprise activity that operates in accordance with each organization’s own governance rules.

Using the CSB Catalyst, enterprises can benefit from cloud models, like pay-as-you-go, ‘OPEX not CAPEX’, and automatic scaling on demand, while retaining control and avoiding lock-in with any single underlying cloud platform.  The CSB also benefits cloud service providers by enabling them to offer services with transparent governance, and providing levels of control and assurance which would otherwise be difficult and costly to achieve.

Q: What will the demonstration scenario on display in Forumville entail?

A: The CSB Catalyst is acting on some of the primary requirements from TM Forum’s Enterprise Cloud Buyers Council, and explores the use of TM Forum standards to facilitate the cloud service broker function.  In particular, the CSB Catalyst employs the Product and Service Assembly (PSA) standard to facilitate automated interworking between each of the catalyst’s collaborators with respect to cloud service assembly and deployment.

The CSB Catalyst demonstration in Forumville will highlight:

  • Bringing a cloud product, including customer service level agreements, quickly and easily to market through the use of PSA catalogs to manage the service components and product lifecycle;
  • Fulfilling a customer order to meet both functionality requirements, and those for application performance, security, cost control and compliance, to the point of billing for the enabled product;
  • Responding to service quality challenges, for example, the dynamic creation of new capacity as a result of dips in application performance due to increased demand; and
  • Making status, activities, events and responses within the cloud service environment transparent and evident to both cloud service brokers and enterprise customers.

Q: How will the project takeaways help BT in the real world as a buyer and seller of complex cloud services?

A: Through the CSB Catalyst, BT hopes to make the provisioning of cloud services more easily accessible and viable for enterprises, and enable buyers to capitalize on the benefits of complex cloud services, while having the control they need over IT governance.

The initiative can also help cloud service brokers improve their customers’ experiences, by providing the best available resources at any given time, reducing service delivery bottlenecks and minimizing the effects of resource contention.

We hope that the Catalyst will encourage the adoption of cloud services, and open up new revenue opportunities for operators and cloud service providers.

To learn more about the CSB Catalyst, which also involves Comptel, Infonova, OpenNMS Group and Square Hoop, head over to Level 3 in the Agora 3 Mezzanine during the following hours:

Tuesday, May 18 from 12:30 – 19:00

Wednesday, May 19 from 10:00 – 19:00

Thursday, May 20 from 10:00 – 14:30


Will you be in Management World 2010 in Nice next week?

Posted: May 11th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Events | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will you be in Management World 2010 in Nice next week?

Can’t believe Management World 2010 is just a week away!  Comptel and our customers and partners have been quite busy preparing for it.  Here’s a brief overview of some of the key activities we’ll be involved in at the Nice event.

CTO Gareth Senior and Ralf Jaeger from partner Cisco Systems’ Worldwide Managed Services Team will be teaming up for a presentation as part of TM Forum’s Successful Business Transformation Summit.  On Tuesday, May 18 at 5 p.m., head over to the session, to hear about and discuss managed services’ vital role in enhancing the overall customer experience, maintaining competitive advantage and modernizing communications service providers’ (CSPs) systems to handle the ever-changing telecom environment.

Customer Telecom Personal Argentina will also be speaking at the show.  Kick off the Revenue Management & Profitability Summit with Leticia San Juan on Wednesday, May 19 at 10 a.m.  She’ll explain how the CSP was able to meet business goals, such as reducing the duration of the activation process duration, with an integrated self-service solution.

Don’t forget about the Catalyst stands in Forumville!  Comptel is participating in three of these collaborative initiatives at Management World 2010.  We’ll be on hand with our fellow participants to discuss the Inter-Cloud Service Management (from a service fulfillment perspective), Cloud Service Broker (from a service-layer active catalog and design studio perspective) and Service Model (from a federated product and service catalog perspective) Catalysts.

For those going to Nice, we hope you’ll swing by booth #21 and say hello.