Posted: December 5th, 2014 | Author: Ari Vänttinen | Filed under: News | Tags: automation, Comptel Fulfillment, fulfillment, order management, Telenor Norway | No Comments »
Comptel today announced a major order from Telenor in Norway. The four-year contract is a continuation of the long relationship between the companies. The deal amounting to eight million euros comprises Comptel Fulfillment software licenses and services.
The Comptel Fulfillment suite of products is specifically targeted to reduce the time it takes from the first customer contact until the billable service is delivered. If the network is pre-built, which often is the case for modern DSL and FTTx networks, service delivery can be done in a matter of seconds instead of hours and days.
Automation Is the Key
Comptel Fulfillment offers a combination of automated features, which can reduce most, if not all, of the back-office work, leaving only the field work as manual:
Order Management automates the process of capturing order information and distributing the tasks to systems and involved personnel.
Catalog automates the decomposition of products and services into reusable tasks for fast creation and delivery.
Resource Inventory and Number Management automate the allocation of the required resources, such as network device ports and IP addresses.
Activation automates the interaction with the network, pushing commands to network elements and service delivery platforms.
“We are really pleased to continue our customer relationship with Telenor in Norway. It is a privilege to be part of the Telenor Norway fulfillment transformation project for their fixed network,” said Juhani Hintikka, president and CEO, Comptel.
“Comptel Fulfillment has an important role in our long-term efforts to modernise and simplify products, processes and IT systems,” says Terje Foyn Johannessen, director of telephony & Internet, Telenor Norway. “We aim to significantly reduce operational expenditure and offer our customers improved experience with better quality and faster time-to-market for new services.”
Comptel’s Q1/2014 Results and Review
Posted: April 17th, 2014 | Author: Juhani Hintikka | Filed under: News | Tags: 2014, Comptel, Comptel Analytics, Comptel Fulfillment, Comptel Policy Control, Tech Mahindra | No Comments »
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: Juhani Hintikka | Filed under: News | Tags: 2013, Comptel, Comptel Analytics, Comptel Fulfillment, Comptel Policy Control | No Comments »
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!
Posted: December 20th, 2013 | Author: Steve Hateley | Filed under: Behind the Scenes | Tags: Comptel, Comptel Fulfillment, Comptel Social Links, contextual intelligence, Frost & Sullivan, Mobile World Congress | No Comments »
2013 has been full of good news and remarkable achievements by the Comptel team. We wanted to quickly recap five of the year’s highlights:
1. Mobile World Congress 2013
At the beginning of 2013, Comptel had a notable presence at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona. At MWC 2013, there was a lot of talk, from monetising LTE and ensuring privacy when it comes to Big Data, to efficiently using operational assets and enriching the customer experience – themes that are sure to carry over into 2014.
2. Comptel Survey Reveals Preferences of Mobile Consumers
To gauge consumer sentiment when it comes to mobile operators today, Comptel also conducted an extensive survey on customer experience, with the help of Vanson Bourne. Our survey showed that there’s a real need for better, more personal interaction between communications service providers (CSPs) and their customers—and that this can be fostered with contextual intelligence at every touch point.
3. Partnerships Forge New Paths
In keeping with our goals of improving the customer experience and “Making Data Beautiful,” we partnered with organisations that have those objectives in common. First, we partnered with Accanto Systems to help ensure that our customers are empowered with next-generation customer experience management capabilities. Second, we partnered with salesforce.com by integrating Comptel Fulfillment to revolutionise sales and service creation and delivery innovation.
4. Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific Recognises Comptel
This year, Comptel was awarded “Most Innovative Telecom OSS / BSS Vendor of the Year” by Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific. The analyst firm’s annual Asia Pacific ICT awards program is given to companies that displayed growth in performance and ground-breaking achievements. In addition to those metrics, Frost & Sullivan examined nominees’ major customer acquisitions, portfolio diversity and product innovation.
5. Comptel Social Links Wins Pipeline Innovation Awards
Another major victory for Comptel was winning a Pipeline Innovation Awards for Comptel Social Links. Pipeline’s annual programme honoured prominent telecommunications industry innovators for their advancements in technologies, products and deployments. The 2013 judging panel was comprised of key executives from leading CSPs around the world such as AT&T, BT, Cox, Intelsat, TELUS, Turkcell and Yota, as well as influential industry analysts.
To 2014 and Beyond
We’re proud of everything we’ve accomplished and can’t wait until 2014, which we’re sure will be just as good as 2013!
Posted: July 23rd, 2013 | Author: Steve Hateley | Filed under: Industry Insights | Tags: catalog, catalog-driven fulfillment, Comptel, Comptel Catalog, Comptel Fulfillment, concept-to-cash, fulfillment, product lifecyc, provisioning and activation, Service order management | No Comments »
Comptel is encouraged to see that Sigma Systems’ recent acquisition of Tribold further validates our lead in terms of championing catalog-driven fulfillment for communications service providers (CSPs). Comptel initially introduced the catalog-driven fulfillment concept in 2010, and affirmed our market leader position through the Comptel Fulfillment platform release in 2012, which is now in active deployment with customers appreciating the real value of the catalog-driven approach.
At that time, many of our customers were questioning the difference between our catalog approach (technical abstraction and simplification for faster time-to-market through process repeatability) and that of the commercial catalog (product definition and linkage to the commercial process such as CPQ). This debate was further discussed in blog posts “Viewpoint – The Single or Dual Catalog Conundrum” and “More on the Catalog Conundrum.”
In catalog-driven fulfillment, the service catalog acts as the brains of the system. This means that service order management, provisioning and activation systems are able to not only retrieve product decompositions from the catalog, but also use that information when orchestrating and fulfilling orders. Additionally, in a well-architected solution, workflow components can be designed within order management, which can be published for discovery by the service catalog.
Comptel’s catalog-driven approach to service fulfillment works independently of workflow design, effectively decoupling product lifecycle management from the technical processes required to implement services. When technical product information is managed in Comptel Catalog, a customer has better visibility on deliverable products. Additionally, he/she will find it easier to define new products that can be delivered without complex and lengthy workflow creation and modifications.
It’s interesting that Sigma has chosen the concept of “Idea to Install” to explain the joint value of the aforementioned companies. Effectively, it’s another phrase invented to explain a traditional fulfillment northbound (BSS) and southbound (NEM) integration, accompanying phrases such as Order-to-Activate and Concept-to-Cash (which brings in the additional vector of revenue management).
There is trend forming among CSPs towards operational transformation, aimed at aligning systems closer to actual customer processes and the management of the customer experience (also known as the creation of the “Customer Company”). So is this north – south level of pre-integration relevant anymore when you consider the need for a more multi-dimensional integration approach towards Over-the-Top (OTT) providers and value-added applications? Only time will tell.
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Globally Evangelising #MWC13 – “Barcelona-in-a-Box”
Posted: May 23rd, 2013 | Author: Steve Hateley | Filed under: Events, Industry Insights | Tags: analytics, Comptel, Comptel Catalog, Comptel Fulfillment, Comptel Social Links, CSP, customer experience, Customer Experience Management, LTE, mobile, Mobile World Congress | 1 Comment »
Mobile World Congress 2013 (MWC) in Barcelona had the highest attendance ever with 72,000 visitors. Every year, many of our customers do not have the opportunity to attend or meet us there, and to that end we created a customer workshop concept ‘Barcelona-in-a-Box’. The idea is simple – if you couldn’t attend MWC, we bring it to you.
We built the workshop concept on three key industry topics which were discussed during MWC and continue to be on the agenda of almost every CSP.
To set the scene for the Barcelona-in-a-Box sessions, we shared our observations on the industry, based on extensive and in-depth discussions with major operators across the globe, insight we have gained from industry analysts and an independently commissioned report.
These observations addressed increasing smartphone penetration and how it’s driving up data usage, but not necessarily increasing revenues – largely due to pressure by OTT services such as WhatsApp, Skype, YouTube and Facebook (to name a few). Secondly, we discussed how bundled tariffs and packages are increasingly attractive to mobile subscribers, assisting CSPs with customer “lock-in” and positively driving up revenues. We highlighted the next evolution of the bundled approach through creation of fully shared data plans, as seen in the US market for example. Finally, as an observation we deliberated that while LTE rollouts are still in their early stages, the importance of attracting the right high-use customers to adopt the highly valued (and highly subsidised) handsets is key for accelerating ROI on those infrastructures.
To ensure that we have the correct data on consumer needs in place, we at each session discussed the locally relevant results of the consumer survey, Customers Yearn for the Personal Touch from Their Mobile Operators, we made at the end of 2012 with Vanson Bourne, an independent research firm. We polled 6,000 consumers from 12 countries across EMEA, Latin America and Asia Pacific on their service usage and spending habits, as well as their relationships and satisfaction with their mobile operators.
In addition to vivid discussion on the common challenges and local consumer needs, some of the sessions included live demonstrations that showcased the solutions that Comptel has developed to address the needs of its customer. We showed the benefits of the Comptel Event-Analysis-Action strategic framework with:
- Robust and highly automated Comptel Fulfillment that supports service innovation and better customer interaction while reducing costs
- ‘Plug ‘n’ Play’ Catalog-Driven product creation that allows building and adapting marketable products quickly from established service components, accelerating new revenues and allowing agile responses to market changes
- Comptel Social Links, predictive analytics to improve and automate every-day decision-making at each customer touch point and serve customers based on their individual needs and techniques of finding the right customers for new products.
We have already taken Barcelona-in-a-Box across the Middle East, Europe and Asia receiving great acclaim for our initiative and its content, being quoted as having “a fresh approach” to actively engaging with our customers. The Comptel team has enjoyed the lively debates and sense of shared understanding of the industry state and prospects for the future. Based on the feedback, we have validated that Comptel is in-sync with CSPs and our solutions suitably address their needs. We are excited to see which topics are on top of the agenda for Barcelona in 2014!
Q3 2012: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy
Posted: October 23rd, 2012 | Author: Juhani Hintikka | Filed under: News | Tags: analytics, business, Comptel, Comptel Fulfillment, mediation, Social Links, strategy | No Comments »
Last week, we announced Comptel’s financials for the third quarter of 2012, which proved that our earlier focus on cost containment is quickly showing results. This quarter was ripe with strong sales, bringing the company back to profitability, and I am very pleased to show revenue growth in all of Comptel’s areas of business.
We won two significant projects from South America – one is outside of our traditional domain, from a Brasilian utility company that purchased Comptel Fulfillment, and the other is with Telefonica Argentina that continued to consolidate its mediation systems with Comptel. Reinforcing our position as a powerful analytics vendor, we also closed a Comptel Social Links deal with a prominent operator group in the Middle East. In addition, there was a considerably large sized managed service deal, and a few larger upgrades of Comptel Mediation and Comptel Fulfillment contracts from existing customers.
As anticipated, the operating result for the third quarter was positive. We met the cost-savings targets set in June, and the cost level for this quarter was significantly lower compared to the first half of the year. Now, it is time to move forward following the regrettable personnel-related efficiency measure we completed during the quarter and continue the execution of our strategy. We’re confident that we’re moving in the right direction and are further improving the integration of our analytics capabilities and striving to deliver on our corporate values.
One of our goals is to become the leader in customer interaction automation for telecommunications, and we’re also looking to expand this outside of our traditional domain. This will ultimately have an impact on our sales and marketing strategy, which will both be aligned with the approach, as the role of our partners will become even more important. In order to implement the new sales and marketing approach, we decided to build a strong team of sales executives, headed by the newly established role of Chief Market Operations Officer (CMO), who will take the lead in this transformation. At the same time, we also simplified our Executive Board to ensure the organisation is as efficient as possible and can successfully execute the strategy.
Overall, the third quarter of 2012 has been quite busy. Maybe the best way to sum up this quarter is to simply reiterate how I concluded the last quarter: I’m honoured to convey, on behalf of Comptel, that we are looking forward to continuing to deliver on our promises to the market in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Viewpoint – The Single or Dual Catalog Conundrum
Posted: September 27th, 2012 | Author: Steve Hateley | Filed under: Industry Insights | Tags: BSS, catalog, Comptel Catalog, Comptel Fulfillment, fulfillment, OSS, provisioning and activation, Service order management | 2 Comments »
Advantages of a catalog-driven fulfillment philosophy
We’re regularly faced with our Service Provider customers and prospects questioning the inclusion of catalog within the Comptel Fulfillment stack – stating quite categorically that “they already have a product catalog” and why would they need another? So I just wanted to put a few words together to demonstrate the real advantages behind the service catalog approach.
More than ever, increasingly complex services depend upon efficient, fast and accurate time-to-market, but too often in many OSS and BSS implementations, product specifications are intrinsically linked to the workflow that implements the service. In the most extreme cases, the workflow itself is the specification of the service. This practice leads to an unmaintainable and inflexible architecture, because every time a change is required to a product, the workflow must be modified. The more changes that are made, the lengthier the workflow becomes, and the more unreadable, unmanageable and unviable it is as a practical architectural solution. Unfortunately, in many cases this tends to be the case for single catalog implementations.
In catalog-driven fulfillment, the service catalog acts as the brains of the system. This means that service order management, provisioning and activation systems are not only able to retrieve product decompositions from the catalog, but also use that information when orchestrating and fulfilling orders. Additionally, in a well architected solution, workflow components can be designed within order management which can be published for discovery by the service catalog.
Comptel’s catalog-driven approach to service fulfillment works independently of workflow design, effectively decoupling product lifecycle management from the technical processes required to implement services. When technical product information is managed in Comptel Catalog, a customer has better visibility on deliverable products. Additionally, they will find it easier to define new products that can be delivered without complex and lengthy workflow creation and modifications.
Therefore, specifying technical product information in a data definition, rather than in a workflow design delivers immediate efficiencies in terms of building, delivering, enhancing/customising and supporting a product. Taking a catalog-driven fulfillment approach will allow a CSP to:-
- Launch products and services faster. Increasing the profitable lifespan of new services, accelerating product launch to meet market expectations for new service and quickening competitive alignment.
- Reduce product launch and management costs. Enabling access to new low volume niche markets, protecting margins in the face of reduced profit on mass market services.
- Enable greater innovation in product and service creation. Customer expectations for tailoring is growing, so maximising the ability to convert network potential into innovative marketable products, particularly products built together with partners, is key.