“A Telco must have wide cross selling options available from different verticals”

Today, operators are facing a number of challenges in the form of thinning margins and cannibalization of revenues by OTT players. How can they gain momentum here by investing in BSS transformation? The need for individual consumer invoices has diminished significantly over time. However, to get to this point, BSS operations need to transform from complex and difficult-to-understand to simplified with clear pricing and transparent charging practices.

The critics of BSS often overlook the B2B side of a telco’s service offerings. Revenue from business customers are a significant growth area. Many of which are based on the products of third party vendors and partners that are delivered from the Cloud.

For successful B2B services and B2B2C opportunities, a strong and open BSS infrastructure needs to be in place to ensure fast and seamless connection of the new services, while maintaining smooth service delivery processes. Partner management capabilities need to allow the service provider to reconcile revenue sharing schemes with its third party service partners. In the end, partners and their consumers are expecting to receive an excellent service experience from the service provider.

On one hand operators find it tough to survive in diminishing margins and on the other hand, customers are expecting great service experience - what is the best way to stay on top of things for operators?

Improving the customer experience is an essential component of any BSS transformation project, applicable to both retail and business customers.

A great service experience is achieved with a holistic approach to all customer interactions and smart business processes that maximize automation and include applied AI, precise billing and clear service offers.

A telco should offer all-digital and omnichannel customer service options from every communication channel. Customers, both retail and business should have access to self-service information and processes, whether from the telco’s web site, self-service portal or mobile app.

How can operators future-proof their service operations with the help of an innovative BSS/OSS strategy? What is your proposition for the operators here?

Future proofing a service operation implies that a telco will be in the position to rapidly roll out new services and products at any given time. This situation is ideal and is what we refer to as a fully integrated multiplay BSS operation.

To achieve this, we recommend that a telco no longer invest in its legacy BSS systems.

Instead, we recommend establishing a network of BSS-related products running in the Cloud that forms an accessible and powerful service enablement platform.

What are some of the trends in the BSS space that are creating value for operators?

Most telcos as well as service providers in parallel service markets are considering their options to facilitate their B2B and B2B2C business models.

To continue to grow, a telco must have wide cross selling and options available from different vertical.

Telcos are starting to offer virtualized network functions as services to their enterprise customers. Full business process integration with an enterprise catalogue, automatic billing and completion, forecasting and simulation are required.

What are some of your innovative offerings in this space and why is it important and relevant today?

When we engage customers, we focus on broadcasting a value proposition for the project, such as improving the billing infrastructure to support new services and overall business growth for the service provider, while maintaining predicable revenue from all streams.

For many years, service providers have been attracted to the multiple play support of our MaxBill solution and its ability to serve as a powerful service enablement platform in a unified operational framework.

Smart automation is another area of innovation that we have incorporated into our billing solution. Most business processes and operational workflows can be fully automated and do not require the intervention of service provider staff.

Kirill Rechter is the CEO of LogNet Billing.  He is an expert in designing and implementing modern billing solutions for prominent telecommunications and utilities service providers worldwide.