Two leading billing and customer care vendors, Convergys Corp. and Redknee, took significant steps this week with Microsoft that will change the way they do business and with whom they do it.
Both Convergys and Redknee made significant commitments to pre-integrate and develop their next generation platforms around Microsoft’s Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) platform and SQL servers. This will allow Convergys to offer unprecedented flexibility (for them) in the platform choices it offers customers and to lower its price point in order to actively pursue Tier 2 and Tier 3 service providers around the world. Redknee gets a world-class CRM addition to its real-time charging and convergent billing platform and will develop an end-to-end converged billing and customer care solution that will include extensive customer management and sales and marketing tools.
As for Microsoft, these new strategic partnerships become both a strong endorsement of its Dynamics CRM and SQL server platform as well as a go-to-market opportunity with a full suite of business support system solutions.
“Dynamics provides a foundational platform for the common marketing, sales and CRM engines they both need, but at the same time Microsoft doesn’t have telco-specific features of its own,” said Terry McGuigan, managing director, telecommunications industry, Communications Sector at Microsoft. “But what we were looking for was the forward thinking they both possess. It isn’t about putting the base billing and CRM systems into play; it’s really about looking ahead to the world of complex online services.”
While some companies, Oracle for example, employ an acquisition strategy to the market, McGuigan said a fundamental aspect of Microsoft is that it is partner led. “We have conversations on a regular basis with most of the top players in this industry. Over time we have found certain synergies,” he said. “And while these two companies have different strategies Dynamics was able to add something to both portfolios.”
Convergys launched and will continue to develop the Smart Communications Suite powered by Microsoft. It will pre-integrate and pre-configure Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM with its billing and customer care platform as well as its shopping and ordering solutions.
