The telecom billing industry has some exciting years ahead as service providers transform their businesses and discard old business models. So it’s not a bad time to become head of one the segment’s largest systems integrators/consultants. Such is the honor and the challenge for Jean-Marie Pierron, who was named this year to head Accenture’s Billing Practice.
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| Accenture's Jean-Marie Pierron |
Pierron has been with Accenture for more than 18 years, 16 of which have been in the telecom sector. He’s worked with clients such as UPC Broadband, SFR, Deutsche Telekom, Pacific Bell, Ameritech and France Telecom, offering his expertise in BSS/OSS, revenue management and billing.
Pierron inherits more than 2,000 billing professionals and a history of ongoing relationships with Amdocs, Comverse, Convergys, Intec, LHS, Oracle and almost 200 other clients. These relationships account for 193 completed implementation projects among them. Comverse is its most active with 51 projects. The group currently has eight major billing projects underway globally: two in North America, three in Europe and three in the Asia Pacific region.
Most projects are aimed at achieving billing and BSS transformation in order to become more customer-centric, Pierron said, adding that cable providers are being the most aggressive. Legacy telcos, he said, are busy tearing down silos in order to build more commercial business platforms.
Other types of transformation Peirron says are underway include converging prepay and post-paid billing systems and outsourcing projects.
“There hasn’t been a lot of outsourcing in North America, but we are seeing more demand for it,” Pierron said. “We also see software-as-a-service emerging as clients request this kind of approach.”
He said that while telcos are looking for cheaper billing solutions because they don’t have the resources to buy complex solutions, he doesn’t see service providers doing much for now in the way of cloud computing billing. “That may develop later,” he said.
The biggest trend Pierron sees today, which he and his team will try to facilitate, is the transition from best-of-breed solutions to best of suite. This has been a seesaw battle since the mid 1990s.
