Dealing a Strong Hand

Integrated Systems Help Telcos Forge New Customer Ties

Telcos need to deal customer relationship management (CRM) systems into their game to bring customers closer throughout the entire cycle of contact: from the initial customer request and through the negotiation, delivery, billing and service for all telecom products. A trump card for effective CRM solutions is the order management system.

Order management is a make-or-break element in forming a customer relationship. If a telco can't successfully capture and deliver an order for multiple products in various lines of business, then it can't keep pace in the convergent environment. If it can't view a complete picture of its convergent range of product offerings and its customer information, then it can't effectively match the customers with the products they need. Too often, front-office systems present a duct-tape solution to ordering for multiple products that leaves the back office flailing to fulfill and provision orders it can't logistically process. A fully integrated ordering system requires flow-through provisioning and full integration with network systems. Service negotiation is inextricably linked with delivery control in the telco-centered ordering solution.

Customer Focus

An integrated order management system takes a customer-centric approach. It is essential that all services the telco offers, including wireline, wireless, data services (IP services, ISDN, broadband, e-commerce), private networks (ATM, frame relay, VPN), international and cable, are made available to the customer via interaction with the customer service representative (CSR) or the self-service web interface through one integrated system.

This single, comprehensive solution handles all products and services, all lines of business, all networks and all customers. It uses a product catalog, which serves as one common repository for products, business data and processes, as well as one common data warehouse for customer information. Each customer is presented to the telco representative in one consolidated view.

The customer's complex service usage and capabilities are monitored so the system can be responsive to the customer's needs. Customers have multiple dimensions of telecommunications usage, one moment relying on a portable computer and a global system for mobile communications (GSM) handset, the next moment turning to a massive network for data transmission. Convergent customer orders require many different provisioning systems to a delivery service. The telco that can coordinate and integrate its customer service for multiple lines of business is the telco that can fulfill its customers' needs.

Managing Complexity

Telco customers are increasingly complex. There are unlimited levels of customer hierarchies that must be managed for large customers. Their orders and in-use services can be presented in numerous categories, including location, account, billing and corporate organization. These customer hierarchies are comprised of subhierarchies, further detailing their organizational structure. Without a telco linking this data, the massive potential value of a large customer might be lost. On the other hand, if an order management system can truly accommodate a complex customer hierarchy, the customer's untapped business potential can be maximized, in everything from product bundling to network optimization to attractive SLAs.

It doesn't take a corporation to create complexity for the telco. One residential household can be far more than a list of individual customers with different numbers and service agreements; it can include parents and children each using the range of popular telecommunications services, from local service to paging to the Internet. A telco with an order management system that can take a truly inclusive view of customer hierarchies can only benefit from knowing its customers better. The closer the telco grows to a customer, in all of its complexity, the more the telco can boost its responsiveness to the customer's needs. The impact on customer satisfaction can be dramatic.

The telco with an integrated order management system is able to accurately capture customer requests, conduct online validation and feasibility checks against network resources, and activate the flow-through order process with its full integration with network systems. This integrated solution speeds connection time, reducing customer wait time and accelerating the telco's revenue stream.

A flexible system quickly can incorporate new products and technologies as they become available. In the crowded field of telecom players, all may try to offer the same products, but the speed of delivery and time to market are key differentiating factors determining which telco will win the business.

The integrated order management solution enables improved, coherent customer service. The customer turns to one CSR to order all products, and that representative has full access to the broad range of telco offerings and network resources to deliver them. This streamlined process minimizes service fulfillment time, improves customer satisfaction and wins new customers.

Currently, order management at many telcos relies on multiple systems, each managing separate product lines. A customer ordering a wireline service works through an entirely different ordering system, and often a different CSR, than when the same customer attempts to buy wireless. Even different types of wireline services are typically handled by separate systems. The same holds true for ordering data services. The customer turns to an entirely different ordering system for access to the Internet and e-commerce. All of these separate systems result in lost business opportunities and increasingly frustrated customers.

With the rapid expansion in data traffic and Internet usage, telcos are determined to expand their data-voice convergence capabilities. Unfortunately, voice and data orders are often handled by a relic of bygone processes: two separate, nonsynchronized systems for data and for voice orders. That means a data services customer must traverse both order systems, separately requesting network access, then, in a new order, requesting a permanent virtual circuit (PVC) connection.

These current order management solutions overlook far too many critical opportunities to serve customers with one integrated bundle of services. There is a daunting amount of record-keeping duplication. The telco can't effectively retain its customers or even recognize marketing opportunities if it can't keep track of the same customer subscribing to multiple services at once. Similarly, one limitation of separate systems for data and voice services is that telcos cannot entangle customers with bundled packages.

Provisioning can turn into a logistical nightmare, with overlapping feasibility checks and site visits. This lack of coordination can lead to a black hole of duplicate, ongoing ordering tasks with no coordination between the telco's various systems and the customer's interdependent services or conflicts. As service fulfillment lags, so does billing. The cost to the telco is tremendous, but the cost in dollars is surpassed by an even costlier loss in customer satisfaction.

The New Order

The broad-scale order management approach is characterized by convergence. This solution incorporates all lines of business, networks and customers, with the flexibility to rapidly incorporate new levels of complexity, technologies, products and business processes. It covers the entire order flow for each product, from start to finish.

A good order management system streamlines service negotiation. The telco customer no longer has to turn to various customer service numbers and operations to order diverse products. One CSR can order the full range of products a telco offers, as well as bundle product offerings.

The same CSR can view all of a customer's current services and pending orders, using this information to detect order interdependencies or conflicts. The system enables immediate mediation with provisioning and network systems, and, as the order is being negotiated, the system is running a feasibility check on the network resources available to support the order.

The system presents cross-product packages, price plans, SLAs and sales aids, enabling real-time service negotiation and capture. Customers' history and value, mined from data collected by the telco's data warehouse, can be viewed in an integrated order management system. Based on the data, the CSR can offer customers the most appropriate deals and services when they are online for their order.

The increase in data services is prompting a transformation in ordering and billing for telecommunications services. Orders will become increasingly more sophisticated, based on a variety of measures that will pinpoint customer usage. Telcos will be able to sell customers data services based on content parameters and QoS such as bandwidth, time of day, transmission protocol and line security. An order management system that centralizes all product information and all complex customer profiles is better equipped to pinpoint the customer's specific needs when it comes to these increasingly sophisticated levels of data service. A single telco point of contact for customers is essential when the customer wants to negotiate multiple orders with a multiplicity of parameters and fine-tuned delivery requirements.

A good product catalog, meanwhile, can drive order management operations. It functions as a repository for a massive amount of information, keeping track of all products and all networks. It holds all the rules that determine product eligibility and descriptions of business processes, detailed information about each service in each line of business and myriad product bundling options for pricing and marketing. The product catalog should map out the entire negotiation, provisioning and order flow for each product offering. It must be flexible enough to enable the telco to rapidly introduce new products, business processes, pricing and product bundling, without reprogramming.

When a telco designs new products or services or packages new bundles, it needs a flexible system that will readily digest new levels of complexity. Each business process and rules for each new service must be flexibly incorporated into the order management system. The ability to reconfigure rules swiftly translates into timely new product introductions and captured market opportunities. The simplicity of changing rules is critical to affording the users of the system a readily accessible product creation environment.

A system built with a robust architecture accommodates complex business processes and rules. A powerful work-flow engine can process maps for each service, event and customer segment. This engine is capable of sequencing and monitoring the gamut of ordering tasks, identifying jeopardy situations when they arise.

As for web-based billing and provisioning, that's an area many telcos are moving into or at least exploring. However, the levels of complexity and specialization of the telecom environment are such that standard web-retail strategies are inappropriate. Telecommunications has so many levels of complexity in delivery and integration that simply picking new products over the web would only scratch the surface of the customer potential. The telco-oriented website would interface with a comprehensive order management system. That system would detect the interdependencies and network capabilities inherent in fulfilling any service the customer would select over the web.

In many cases, customer orders have proven to be extremely volatile, and a telco that wants to keep its customer's business must be able to keep pace with the customer's changing needs. A single customer order can undergo multiple levels of changes, additions and follow-up. This volatility demands an order management system robust enough to handle complexity, flexible enough to accommodate evolving business strategies and alert to the details of the ordering process in order to adjust them to changing customer needs.

The order management system is the center of the telco's support system. It must be able to communicate with all of the telco's operating systems to relay information to networks, billing, contracts, directory services and other systems. An interface engine enables enterprise integration and facilitates the rapid design of new interfaces, rather than having them rigidly defined in hard programming code.

Shlomo Baleli is president of R&D at Amdocs Ltd. (www.amdocs.com). He can be reached at shlomobl@amdocs.com.

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