At a time when telecommunications providers are introducing a profusion of new wireline and wireless products, convergent billing--billing that combines everything from long distance and cellular services to cable TV--is critical to success. The benefits of convergent billing--a single consolidated bill, rapid service deployment, reduced customer churn, decreased time-to-market and rapid product adjustment--will play a critical role in determining success or failure in the marketplace.
Three key challenges providers face include:
Relational databases that support electronic interfaces that, in turn, capture customers' requests.
Capturing customer-generated events at the switch and server, rating the events, calculating the bills and feeding bill data back to customers via their preferred media.
Integrated customer care and service deployment.
Regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) anticipate losing between 20 percent and 25 percent of their market share to new competitors, as do carriers in Europe and Asia. Established service providers want to stem the changing tide by locking in customers. Offering a single, convergent bill that includes bundled products and services is one way. Service providers want to offer their customers a full view of all their telecommunications services, including local, long distance, mobile, PCS/cellular, enhanced services, broadband and entertainment.
Defining the Market
A convergent billing system and customer care solution should have the flexibility to adapt to customers' current service offerings. Billing should be integrated, not just electronically stapled. This integration allows full customer service ordering, product service bundling, multi-layer/cross-product pricing and discounting, service activation and provisioning, and multiservice and cross-product revenue management. Critical elements of convergent billing and customer care include presentation of the bill regardless of media and the integration of:
Sales and marketing
Cross-business functions
Service activation and delivery
Post-billing
Accounting
Meeting Service Provider Requirements
Business software for a convergent billing and customer care environment must enable service providers to offer one or all network services to the customer base when the marketing opportunity arrives.
The product's marketing capability enables customers to rate all wireline and wireless usage against the same rating scheme or to design a rating scheme for each class of service/usage type combination. The marketer can create discounts and promotions that target all usage and call types or that target or restrict certain usage or call types.
The marketer targets the individual customer or customer segment, and the new product is then available in the company catalog for service representatives who are selling to customers. Saville's convergent billing platform (CBP), for example, uses these products to generate a much-needed service bill in a single integrated process.
In today's complicated business environment, business software also must enable users to work with easy-to-understand screens, create customer profiles and select the customer's chosen products and services. Enhanced service cannot be delivered if the order then must be re-entered into a separate service delivery platform. CBP recognizes the changes to the customer structure and product portfolio and generates the applicable service orders according to the work process relationships in its client-defined tables.
The data necessary to affect service delivery is stored in data files and can be transmitted to the end service provider via batch reports or in real time. Some providers, such as Saville, will custom-design the interfaces to the exact requirements of the client and the end service provider.
Once service has been delivered, the customer generates activities that are rated according to marketing plans and immediately stored on the online screens as unbilled usage. When the customer's bill cycle is due, a single process calculates, generates and updates usage with the latest billing information.
John Hart is vice president of marketing for Saville Systems, Burlington, Mass., a leading provider of convergent billing and customer care solutions for the telecommunications industry. For more information, call (617) 270-6500.
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