Comptel’s Second Day at Management World Africa 2011

Phew! The second day of TM Forum’s Management World Africa 2011 is over. Now, I’m back on an airplane but this time to Cape Town (where Comptel has an office). Before landing, I again reflected a bit on the speech I gave on “taking personalisation to the next level—exploring how communications service providers (CSPs) can optimise customer retention and profitability through SIM management.”

In the afternoon’s presentation, I explored how CSPs across most parts of the world run their prepaid businesses, giving relatively little choice to users, mostly pre-provisioning the data and logistically managing many types or packages of SIM cards. Basically, SIM packages define the product one buys with or without a number attached.

I then expressed what the basic choices of personalisation are (price or product) and raised the question of segmentation. Aren’t we already in the stage of various types of micro-segments where two people in even the same village in rural Africa, let alone in urban cities, likely won’t have the exact same desires and expectations of CSPs’ services? If we start looking at the number of devices we use and the usage patterns we have, we would find that there is hardly any commonality, except that we all call and use data services—but that is not granular enough to address our need for personalisation. We have a vast amount of segments to address today, and the old mechanisms for defining products with varying prices and other parameters need to be rethought; otherwise, they will lead to non-personalised experiences and low customer loyalty.

I went on to explore if the mechanisms of trying to guess what is hot or not is valid—ultimately suggesting that CSPs do not even try. Let users select the services and value-adds they are interested in, and enable them to choose these elements themselves. My conclusion: loyalty is driven not only through quality but also through personalisation. If we allow users to self-personalise the services they take from their CSPs, how can competitors offer anything better?

Like I wrote yesterday, catalog is left, right and center of this kind of approach, but the way we fulfill service orders needs to be well coupled with the catalog data. If you want to know more, we’re happy to discuss it with you—it’s a bit of longer story than a blog post really.

Overall, it was a tight 15-minute session with a Q&A with the audience, and there was much more positive discussion afterwards 1-on-1 with the CSP community present.

On The Way to Management World Africa 2011

I’m writing this while travelling to TM Forum’s Management World Africa 2011 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I’ll be giving a speech on “taking personalisation to the next level—exploring how communications service providers (CSPs) can optimise customer retention and profitability through SIM management.” (Despite most of my blog posts having been about IMS or LTE, this one won’t.)

So while flying on the Airbus A380, which, by the way, is the most advanced aircraft I’ve ever travelled in, I started to think about how telcos, in general, fail at personalisation and why they should really take a serious look at other sectors like the airline industry. A major difference can be seen when comparing the way CSPs and airlines price their offerings. Telcos, for the most part, have fixed pricing with tiered costs based on peak and off-peak hours, but they don’t really personalise it at all. Whereas airline fees vary depending on the time of your flight, the number of passengers on that flight, etc.

Then, taking it a step further, upon booking, airlines personalise all communication based on your mileage program level. You can also choose your seat depending on availability and class of service, and sometimes have the option of special meals or drinks. Even after landing, I will be picked up by a personal driver, who has my name on a large sign to help me find him in the crowd.

Looking at it, aircrafts like the A380 are complicated ‘monsters’, technological masterpieces on their own. However, the airlines do not really sell the technology—but rather the experience. And although the personalisation is limited somewhat, it is still much more than just an SMS informing you that the European Union regulatory data caps and prices are valid when you’re roaming, for example.

I will be presenting around this topic and how CSPs can make personalisation real for customers. The key elements needed to see it through? Comptel believes it’s a full-fledged fulfillment suite. Comptel Dynamic SIM Management uses a configurable dialogue engine to drive user interaction, backed with Comptel Catalog to ensure that the products defined can actually be delivered with a service and resource inventory for numbers and SIM-related data and, of course, real-time Comptel Provisioning and Activation.

I know this will be published after I land, but thought of writing this to begin to explore the issue of personalisation. I will continue with this direction during Management World Africa and in some blog posts to follow.

Around the World

Cellular News…
Mobile Network Operators Need New Approaches to Make Data Profitable
Editor Ian Mansfield covered a recent Ovum report, Making a Profit from Mobile Broadband Data, which looks at why mobile network operators (MNOs) need to find a smarter approach for managing their networks and charging for data usage.  The report explains that MNOs need to use customer data held in the BSS with policy management and controls in order to manage soaring traffic loads, drive profits, personalise the customer experience and increase their agility and response times.  Clare McCarthy, the author of the report, noted that, “some MNOs have already adopted plans with options such as discounted evening and weekend use or monthly data caps.  However, this approach doesn’t go far enough and only addresses one part of the equation.  It doesn’t maximise revenue potential with high-value customers.”

This is a similar point Bob Machin raised after attending Informa’s Broadband Traffic Management event back in November—the industry has been steadily moving from Policy Control 1.0 to Policy Control 2.0, with the first wave dominated by the need to control (and indeed deter) the use of data services, and the second taking a much more liberal approach which encourages data usage, but aims to flatten out peaks and troughs in demand, spreading usage more evenly across networks, geographies and time spans to allow a much better return.

TM Forum: Revenue Management Community…
Minutes, Seconds – Who’s Counting?
Tony Poulos, BSS strategist and evangelist for TM Forum, blogged on Telstra’s recent move from 30-second billing blocks to one-minute billing blocks.  While the communications service provider (CSP) says this move will bring the company in line with industry standards (and analysts have noted that Telstra will reap tens of millions in revenue from the change), consumer groups are unsurprisingly opposed. They are saying that it will make phone calls more expensive, and that the industry could easily charge in smaller time blocks.  As Tony points out, CSPs generally aspire to one-second billing, and this was pretty much the world standard. From a BSS/OSS perspective, this move is certainly a surprise, as more CSPs are looking to charge in real time and offer more advanced and flexible pricing models to optimise subscribers’ experiences.  What are your thoughts on Telstra’s move?

Light Reading…
Many India Lines Inactive, Finds Regulator
India editor Gagandeep Kaur reported on recent data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and Visitor Location Register, which found that 222.52 million lines (nearly 29%) of the total mobile phone lines (771.18 million) are inactive.  There are a lot of pre-paid numbers that have been activated but used only for a certain amount of time; users likely activate new numbers either with the same CSP or a rival.  In January 2011, Bharti Airtel added 3.3 million new mobile lines to reach a total of 155.8 million—giving the CSP a 20.2 percent share of the mobile market; while Reliance added 3.2 million to reach a total of 128.9 million—giving it a 16.7 percent market share.  The only operator that recorded a reduction from its subscriber base was Videocon Telecommunications; this is believed to be the result of subscriber churn following the introduction of mobile number portability, which was introduced earlier this year.  It will be interesting to see how these figures shape out throughout 2011, particularly because SIM management will play a larger role in CSPs’ OSSs and as India’s wireless subscriber base continues to grow.

Mobile World Congress, Day 3: The Next Level of Personalisation with SIMs

This morning, I was able to catch up with my colleague, Simo Isomäki, about some of Comptel’s Mobile World Congress happenings. He has had many great discussions with customers about dynamic SIM management while in Barcelona. And interestingly, Simo found that it’s not the cost savings benefit that’s really resonating with communications service providers (CSPs), but rather the ability to improve subscriber campaign success rates through greater personalisation.

Operators can really create a dynamic customer experience, as SIM card packages no longer have to define their campaigns. Think of handsets as service kiosks, and present customers with a menu that allows them to select their own services based on their device types, whether they want pre-paid or post-paid, etc. CSPs can also further segment their subscribers and offer totally differentiated packages based on the context in which customers purchased their SIMs, like the retail store type (Tesco versus Harrods, for example) and the customer’s location at the point of first use. This even gives operators a greater revenue advantage, with customers more likely to buy services directly offered and tailored to them.

It’s great to hear about CSPs’ interest in dynamic SIM management, and discuss how this area of OSS is evolving beyond the sale of vanity numbers and support of Mobile Number Portability. This really indicates a deeper level of thinking around personalising the customer experience.

Gearing Up for AfricaCom in Cape Town, 9-11 November

In less than a week’s time, AfricaCom (taking place 9-11 November) kicks off in Cape Town, South Africa, and Comptel will be there at stand D9 (opposite the coffee point!).

The organizers, Informa, are claiming that this year a record 4,200+ attendees from more than 1,500+ companies have registered—up 70% from last year.

From a biased perspective, I would like to think that holding this event in beautiful Cape Town (which IS Nice!), has something to do with this increase, but in reality, I suspect it is more a reflection of the rapid growth of the telecoms sector in Africa.

The temptation is to say growth = money for events…but I believe this cynically oversimplifies the value operators get from an event like this.

Growth has also meant increasing competition with everybody wanting a slice of the pie, so I suspect operators are primarily attending to find answers about how to generate and manage new revenue streams and cut costs in order to ensure future growth.

African operators need to grow their revenues from services (e.g. data and VAS) in the face of declining voice and SMS margins. For operators with OSS heavily geared towards simple voice and SMS services, an increasingly complex service portfolio brings many new challenges with respect to designing, launching and managing them. Comptel has seen a lot of interest this year from African operators in its catalog solutions for helping them get new services to market more quickly and cheaply, and managing the increasing service complexity.

There is also a non-growth-related challenge that needs mentioning, and that is one introduced by the legislation being enacted across Africa requiring operators to identify subscribers prior to their SIMs being activated. This shatters the current operating model of simply bulk pre-provisioning SIMs and introduces the challenge of only activating them after subscribers have been identified. It also presents operators with the ‘opportunity’ to leverage a closer relationship with what was previously a largely ‘anonymous’ subscriber base using ‘one-size-fits-all’ packages. Comptel has also seen a lot of interest in its dynamic SIM management solution, which helps operators comply with the legislation, cut costs from SIM wastage and leverage the legislation to actually get additional revenue streams.

So here’s to problem-solving at AfricaCom. Hope to see you ‘here’.

A Dynamic Customer Experience: Going Beyond CRM

Back in 2006, Comptel developed its vision of the Comptel Dynamic OSS. This wasn’t just a piece of marketing spin—there was real substance behind the concept. What we realized was that we were on the midst of a major shift in telecom software, and that Comptel was in quite a unique position.

At that time, customer experience management was becoming a key differentiator, but much of the focus of communication service providers (CSPs) until then was on bringing in self-care and a better CRM. What we recognized was that one of the key aspects of the customer experience was happening below that glossy surface. With customers, consumers or businesses, increasingly wanting things “now!”, it was essential for CSPs to be able to create and tailor both services and charging plans to suit their needs. And, that called for dynamic, real-time fulfillment and charging capabilities closely linked with customer-centric data repositories. (Hey, that is exactly the area of business that Comptel specializes in!)

Fast forward to 2010—now customer experience is at the centre stage.

At Management World 2010 in Nice, there was much talk about policy management, for example.  What is policy management when you think about it? At its core, it’s about being able to deliver personalized services and charging plans dynamically to customers. And, that requires dynamic policy control and charging solutions coupled with customer-centric information—like Comptel Control and Charge.

Another example of the need for customer-centric, dynamic OSS is SIM management. Although you’d think the issues around dynamic resource management would have been solved ages ago, they’re not. We launched Comptel Dynamic SIM Management in February 2010 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to address the issue created by the pre-provisioning model. The idea is to completely transform the process into a just-in-time one. This enables CSPs principally to unbundle their prepaid (or postpaid) commercial proposition from the SIM card and all related assets, until the service is actually acquired and activated by the subscriber. This way, we lower the cost to acquire a customer substantially, and we also provide the ability to launch new services or campaigns to market much faster, as the ‘product package’ is dynamically allocated at the time of activation. Think of it as a means to run campaigns per any and every day, as SIM card packages no longer define the campaign offering! Also think of the “first use experience and personalization” you are able to offer with this new type of activation process!  Once again, it’s about dynamic OSS components working closely with customer-centric information.

Solutions like Comptel Control and Charge and Comptel Dynamic SIM Management are key ingredients and very vital parts of CSPs’ strategies in being able to ensure the best, differentiated customer experience, while lowering costs and increasing revenues.

With Management World Americas 2010 on the horizon and the future ahead of us, it will be interesting to see what will be the next ‘dynamic’ solution that will enable CSPs to reach the next level and offer an improved customer experience! We’d like to hear your thoughts on what it could or should be…