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IPTV Begs The Question: 'Who Is Your Customer?'
As carriers venture to offer ubiquitous IP technologies and products across all silos of their business, data integration will become a bigger issue than ever.
By Susana Schwartz
"IPTV completely changes the way telcos do business," says Rajeev Tankha, senior director of IPTV solutions at MetaSolv Software. "Everyone is talking about quad play and doing tech trials, but they are missing the point."
Tankha believes some carriers are digging themselves into a hole. "We've seen some companies spending $5,000 to acquire an IPTV customer with expensive truck rolls and customer care calls that inevitably start the day of, or within two days of, the IPTV deployment—which in and of itself can take a carrier up to 8 hours to launch," he says. "Carriers try to capture all the data and coordinate it with what they see on their network, and yet they still can't resolve why there is pixelization on the screen or why there's a problem with the audio. Then they lose the customer because they don't have that problem with the cable guys."
What's needed is coordination and agreement across the enterprise about who the customer is and what type of experience the carriers want customers to associate with their brand.
Because the initial margins on IPTV are not very good, carriers have to avoid expensive truck rolls, multiple re-deployments of set-top boxes, and multiple customer care calls. That requires coordination of all the data captured across the organization. But that is extremely complex when voice and high-speed data are traveling on the same wire.
"You don't want to end up having to re-provision something because the voice guys did something without realizing it was going to affect the IPTV quality," says Tankha. It's necessary that the IT and network folks work together to share what they know about customers and services.
Creating One Truth
C-level executives in telecom have already spent millions over the years for the elusive "unified customer view." They've already gone through prodigious ERP and CRM initiatives intended to get functional areas to share data for the 360-degree view. Despite the tremendous energy put into these monolithic projects, they have failed to establish one true system of record.
Part of the problem is that the current telecom environment consists of different views that exist according to who needs the information and where it resides.
A CEO has different views than does a CFO dealing with compliance and financial data, or supply chain management which cares about locations or retailers, or a marketer in wireless who has a different view than a marketer in IPTV, or an executive in charge of supply chain management, and so on.
Also, customer data exists in unstructured and structured formats, such as paper, spreadsheets, video clips, emails and PDF files, as well as databases and multiple management systems.
What carriers need is a "master" that reflects what data is golden to the organization, and who "owns" that data. That "master data" then has to become common to all facets of the organization, which is why terms like master data management (MDM) and "federated data" have become hot buzzwords in all industries trying to re-focus on customer needs.
The terminology reflects the fact that data integration will have to become a complement to CRM and ERP so that CRM, SFA, call center and Web channel systems share one version of truth.
For data issues to be addressed further upstream than was traditionally the case, there needs to be a real-time feedback loop into enterprise applications.
That means allowing "local" data to remain in each silo, while at the same time "federating" the data that would be useful to other lines.
In other words, each silo or functional area must possess an esoteric view of data—whether from a customer, product, content, supplier, location, sales, asset or employee point of view. But each line of business must have a generic understanding of the person as a whole.
Carriers will therefore end up with a view of a person as he or she exists out in the world (where he lives, works, how many kids, and the like), and another view of how that person looks as a customer of each business line's services and products.
As relational databases and logic-based systems mature, it will be more possible than ever before to derive and interpret information for cross-selling, upselling and customer care. For example, if a CSR in IPTV learns during a customer care call that an individual has a young child, that information can be passed along to a marketer in charge of parental controls in other lines of business.
Also, CRM systems could prompt CSRs to ask, "Can this person be entered as a 'new customer' or does this person already exist, and what do we already know about this person?"
Carriers making their foray into IPTV need to think more along product lines like a manufacturer or retailer. For brands to be recognized and consistent on a national and even global basis, the product releases, channel partner management, R&D, manufacturing and other factors will have to be managed centrally.
Who "Owns" Data
The problem of "who owns what data" is the big challenge telecoms have to face, according to Kripa Kripanandan, senior director of business development with Leapstone Systems. "You have to articulate what CRM and billing own so that you don't replicate anyone's role or data," he says.
The key is to stop creating silo systems tied to network element-specific interfaces, so that the application layer and operational layer can be handled separately from the customer care system or billing system.
"You have to start from the bottom up, with the application layer, and across the network infrastructure on top of the IMS application layer," explains Kripanandan.
Starting from the bottom up means deciding who owns the master data.
"To do that, you have to work to simplify the process of defining the service catalog and what you want to expose to upstream systems in terms of customers, products and billing in the BSS layer," says Kripanandan.
That's why there is so much discussion about IT and network folks coming together within data integration initiatives, as well as to push individual lines of business to reach agreement on what data is germane to the customer experience the company wants to achieve.
In summary, data integration initiatives must have buy-in from C-level executives if there is to be stewardship and accountability. Carriers have to decide who the customer is, and how they want their customer to perceive their services and products. Only then can the "master" data be identified and "owned" by the "golden" sources for that data.
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TelstraClear Selects Intec for Interconnect TelstraClear, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telstra, is deploying Intec InterconnecT v7 system for domestic, international and ITU-based billing and settlements. TelstraClear is New Zealand's second largest full service telecommunications provider serving the business, government, wholesale and residential sectors.
BT Selects Syndesis for Discovery and Reconciliation BT is implementing Syndesis TrueSource, a data integrity management solution, for discovery and reconciliation across its entire 21st Century (21CN) IP-based network. Under the license agreement, Syndesis will enable auto-discovery, live discrepancy management and reconciliation to accurately track services and network assets, recover resources and enhance processes, including provisioning. The product is designed to ensure scaleable, flow-through automated service delivery based on clean data foundations.
Telenet Deploys FTS’ Leap BCE Formula Telecom Solutions announced that Telenet, Belgium's largest provider of broadband services, has deployed FTS' Leap Business Control Engine (Leap BCE) to perform real-time business control and rating of multi-play services. Leap BCE is integrated with Telenet’s Cisco SCE and SM platforms in the network, as well as with Telenet’s current BSS environment. The company hopes to accept real-time events and dynamically execute actions based on those real-time events.
Tech Mahindra Deploys RateIntegration’s PriceMaker at MTC/FastLink Tech Mahindra announced the implementation of its adjunct rating solution, developed on RateIntegration’s PriceMaker Enterprise Pricing Server product, at Fastlink, a Middle Eastern mobile operator possessing more than 70 percent market share in Jordan with more than 1.8 million subscribers. Tech Mahindra selected RateIntegration’s PriceMaker Enterprise Rating Server, using its proprietary package selection framework, a component of mASTER. mASTER (Tech Mahindra, Analysis, Solution, Transition, Execution & Relationship) helps manage the outsourcing of a portfolio of applications. PriceMaker performs a broad range of pre- and postpaid functions, including pricing, rating and discounting for voice and data services.
Comptel Launches Integrated Fulfilment Solution Comptel launched its integrated Comptel Fulfilment, a suite of pre-integrated inventory and provisioning modules to cover end-to-end service fulfilment functionality from order capture to activation and reconciliation. The Comptel Fulfilment solution is targeted to broadband and cable service providers for triple-play services. The suite comprises of the integration of Incatel NIMS inventory business from EDB Telecom which Comptel acquired in October, 2005 and Comptel’s existing provisioning system.
Alaska Wireless Communications Selects BSG Alaska Wireless Communications has selected BSG for financial clearing and settlement services through United Clearing PLC (recently acquired by BSG Clearing Solutions). Under the agreement, BSG will provide Alaska Wireless with clearing and settlement services for wireless voice, SMS and roaming. BSG will also provide invoicing and collections information for accurate financial reporting.
Telcordia Enables Total Call Mobile’s Entrée into Prepaid Wireless Telcordia announced that service provider Total Call Mobile has selected the Telcordia Hosted Solution for MVNOs to support the launch of its prepaid mobile phone service. The company, which targets multi-cultural ethnic groups in the U.S., has nationwide coverage available with the choice of either monthly or prepaid plans and also provides an International Direct Dial mobile service. Telcordia has signed 11 customers since launching its Hosted Solutions business last year.
SunTec launches TBMS IPTV SunTec announced the launch of its end- to-end IPTV billing solution, TBMS IPTV. TBMS IPTV is an integrated end-to-end customer care and billing solution for IPTV services built around SunTec’s TBMS-T suite of products. It is designed to address the service providers’ need for differentiation through flexible service bundles tailored to individual customer preferences. TBMS IPTV is designed to interface with multiple network elements and middleware platforms to facilitate the creation of customer self-service portals, real-time mediation and charging, creative service bundling, personalized customer management, secure payment processing and revenue settlement, and convergent billing.
Intec launches Intec CEMS Intec announced the availability of the new Intec Centralized Error Management System (Intec CEMS). According to Intec, one major carrier using the product recorded a 90 percent reduction in its aged error write-offs and a 60 percent reduction in its error volumes. Specifically, the product addresses errors between the services supplied to or ordered by customers, and what customers are actually billed for. Intec CEMS has been proven in Tier 1 carrier production environments where on average 90 percent of all incoming errors are applied to case logic or corrected automatically within Intec CEMS without user intervention. Intec CEMS is designed to consolidate thousands of error types, from provisioning errors and rating inaccuracies to network failures and service order issues, into a central system.
