no 1/2011

[13]

The Magazine of Comarch

Telecommunications
Business Unit

www.comarch.com

IN THIS ISSUE:
Customer Spotlight
Multimedia Polska, a multi-service operator,
has a new consolidated BSS

In focus: BSS/OSS Transformation

Transformation… what do you mean?
How to avoid embarrassing challenges in
projects – a vendor view

Hot topic: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience

Service Quality and Customer Experience – where customers meet
the network
 COMARCH OSS SUITE
Strategy, Operational, Fulfillment Assurance
Infrastructure & Support & Readiness
Product
OSS Process Management
Management
Customer

SLA Monitoring

Customer Experience Management

Management
Service

Service
Service Inventory Service Quality
Fulfillment Service Monitoring
Management Management

Inventory
Planning
Service
Management

Activation
Network Inventory
Resource

Management
Performance
Fault Management
Management
Auto-discovery & Configuration
Reconciliation Management

OSS Mediation

Field Service Management

COMARCH BSS SUITE

Market/Sales
Self Care Point of Sale Web Portal Corporate Self Care

CRM

Business Process Management & Workflow

Product Management

Central Product Manager

Operational, Support & Fulfillment Assurance Billing

B2B Gateway

Readiness
Application Integration Infrastructure

Customer Management Corporate Self Care

Customer Order
Management Self Care
Convergent Billing
ESB / Integration Bus

CRM

Service Management Voucher & Top-Up Management

Billing Mediation

Active Mediation

Resource Management
Billing Mediation
Master Resource Management
Active Mediation

Supplier/Partner
B2BGW
BPM

PRM InterPartner Billing

Service Control
Policy Management

AAA

“One company - one service” approach?
ransformation seems to be a permanent state of
T business development. During the last decade,
telecom business has been transformed by
technologies like mobile communication, internet, next
generation networks and by global economic changes like
the digital revolution, the internet bubble, globalization or
economic downturn. Now, after the phase of geographical
expansion of global telecom groups, we can observe
a  consolidation of valuable assets around strong brands
and service innovation centers.
As a software vendor and integrator we see significant
changes in the requirements for BSS and OSS solutions
defined by communication service providers.
Currently, besides requests for specific products we receive
inquiries for specific OSS architectures, congestion-driven
customer experience management or consolidation of
business processes around central product management
and around a “one company - one service” approach.
Apart from standard requirements related to functionality,
performance, compliance with technology and industry
standards, we get many requirements for multi-tenancy,
white labeling, support for daughter companies within
the  whole group, centralized management of resources
(like customer premises equipment (CPE) and SIM cards)
and processes such as service creation and service rollout.
Additionally for traditional “license + setup + integration”
delivery models CSPs request long term partnership options,
Comarch Technology Review is a publication created by Comarch experts and specialists. It is created
to assist our customers and partners in obtaining in-depth information about market trends and
developments, and the technological possibilities of addressing the most important issues.
Editor-in-Chief: Katarzyna Gajewska
katarzyna.gajewska@comarch.com
Layout & DTP: Jakub Malicki
Photos: www.fotolia.com
Proofreader: Katherine Meus
Publisher: Comarch SA
Al. Jana Pawła II 39a, 31-864 Kraków
Tel. +48 12 64 61 000, Fax: +48 12 64 61 100
www.comarch.com
Print: Skleniarz Printing House
ul. J. Lea 118, 31-033 Kraków
Circulation: 1 500
PREFACE 3
business-driven payment models and commitment to agile
development and support in specific countries.
There are many things that drive transformation, one
of  them are the ever changing demands and needs of end
customers. Currently Customer Experience seems to be
what everybody in the telecom industry is talking about.
I  was asked by an industry analysts, what I think Customer
Experience Management really is. Is it only a new expression
for gathering more and more data about the customer’s
behavior, service usage patterns, and the correlation of
such information with more efficient computers to create
new variants of tariff plans or marketing campaigns? Is
there a BSS or OSS product behind it? We at Comarch see
Customer Experience Management as a part of each mature
business. Telecom and cable operators in Europe and US PIOTR MACHNIK
are transforming their IT environments and organizations Comarch SA
in order for them to be capable of delivering services Vice President, Product
cheaper and faster while caring for saving their customers’ Management & Marketing
time and  money, securing their needs for comfort and Telecommunications
professional or personal lifestyles. So from this viewpoint Business Unit
Customer Experience Management is not just a single
product and is far from being merely a buzzword, but it is
rather a way of thinking and a change in business focus that
can potentially bring huge profits in the long run.
In this issue we talk about simple and clear metrics like
business efficiency measured in dollars and market share,
and time to market measured in days, hours and minutes.
We will also take a look at customer experience from various
points of view. Enjoy the magazine!
Comarch’s offices in Poland: Krakow
(HQ), Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw, Poznan,
Katowice, Lodz, Lublin
Worldwide Offices:
Americas
Panama | Panamá
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Europe
by subscription. The articles published here can be Austria | Vienna
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consent of the editors. The names of products and France | Lille, Grenoble
companies mentioned are trade marks and trade Lithuania | Vilnius
Germany | Dresden, Frankfurt/Main,
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version or see the previous issues, please visit: Ukraine | Kyiv, Lviv
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Asia
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 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS
WHAT’S NEW
5 News in Brief
CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
8 Case Study:
Grupo TVCable have obtained new flexible
back office systems assuring smooth order-
to-bill process support
Being a market leader comes with specific
responsibilities. Early on, Grupo TVCable realized
that adding VoIP services would address
a  growing market need and also entice new
customers to sign up for an attractive product
bundle: TV, internet, and telephony (triple-play), but
the introduction of triple-play required new, flexible
back office systems to assure smooth order-to-bill
process support while guaranteeing high levels of
customer satisfaction.
10 Case Study:
Multimedia Polska, a multi-service operator,
has a new consolidated BSS
Multimedia Polska is a multi-service operator,
established via the consolidation of several
regional cable TV providers. Prior to the merger,
each company concentrated on its own area of
interest, (cable TV, telephony and broadband)
acting independently and within its home region.
As a result of these acquisitions, MMP has
transformed into a nationwide corporation, offering
triple-play services throughout Poland with the
need of BSS Consolidation.
IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
12
Transformation… what does this mean???
Throughout the years of designing and delivering
IT solutions for telecom operators I have witnessed
many transformations. Telcos were created
as startups, then formed their own business
model and constructed their IT to support their
business yet in the end (after a few years) they
accumulated a backlog of unsolvable problems
proving unbearable - so they transformed.
14 How to avoid embarrassing challenges in
projects – a vendor view
Without any doubt, embarrassing challenges
happen in projects, especially in IT. In this article
I will elaborate on the most common and most
important challenges of this kind.
16 The advantages of product catalog-centric
BSS
In the old times, before barcodes and readers were
introduced, product offering and sales processes in
small grocery stores were quite simple. You would
just stick a price tag to the product and put it on the
shelf. The customer would then come in, take the
product, and get charged by the person managing
the cash register. Despite the fact that entering
prices manually was more time-consuming, at least
the product offer definition was simple and the offer
was completed in short time.
21 Increase efficiency of order-to-cash
processes with optimal field service
management
If you ask telecommunication executives, which
process is crucial for their company’s operations,
probably most of them will answer that it is the
order-to-cash or order-to-cash-related process.
Moreover, if you ask, which one is the most
complex and was recently or is currently planned
to be optimized or transformed, the answer would
be almost always the same.
26
How will you benefit from BSS transformation
How can the strategic goal of any communication
service provider – increasing the market share
– be achieved practically in mature, saturated
markets with significant competition from
established players and new entrants?
HOT TOPIC: AIMING FOR PERFECT
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
31 Service Quality and Customer Experience
– where customers meet the network
Customer Experience Management (CEM) may
seem to be a broad term but in practical terms
within the area of telecommunications, it refers to
monitoring the stream of transaction records from
a subscriber’s perspective. Is the call setup time
at an acceptable level? Are there places where
setting up a GPRS session takes too long? Was
MMS transferring successful?
34
Managing network congestion problems with
automated Configuration Management and
SQM
Communications service providers have created
a new customer demand for faster, more reliable
services and increased network capacity for
their subscribers with the use of smartphone’s
and tablets. This trend has been additionally
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
strengthened by the dropping prices of mobile
devices. All of this is pushing traffic in access
network to its limits.
36 Thriving as Web platform enabler – “beyond
dumb” pipes
The advent of the mobile internet has been
a great success, but it also appears to have
opened Pandora’s box. The tension is even greater
because the real beneficiaries are over-the top-
players like Google, whilst CSPs seem to have been
cast the role of “dumb pipe” providers.
39 How to transform your BSS to achieve the
perfect customer experience
We live in a world where communications go far
beyond voice and SMS. A mobile phone serves for
video streaming, navigation, playing music and
e-mail, and the traditional use of voice and SMS
can account for just a small portion of the total
time that a handset is in use. The expansion of
operators’ service offerings into data services has
a huge impact on the underlying platform.
BEYOND BSS/OSS
44 A new era of tagging
Since the very beginning of human civilization
people have always had a tendency to mark and
label things, which at first was motivated purely
by the desire to express ownership but later it
evolved into a way to maintain order and facilitate
the management of belongings.
46 Telework – an unexploited niche for telecom
operators?
With the constant progress of communication
technologies - mobile telephony, Internet, and
consumer devices like PCs, laptops, netbooks,
tablets, smartphones - it is becoming more and
more possible for people to work from home or other
locations outside their central office, distribution
or production sites. Telework has the potential to
transform working patterns and to positively impact
health, safety and the wellbeing of the people
involved. Telework has the potential to become an
interesting part of any telecom operator’s portfolio.
TELCOSPHERE BLOG
48 Six issues about the role of BSS in the M2M
business model
50 Renewal of a mobile subscription – is it
simple?

News in Brief
Vectra selects
Comarch to shorten
time-to-market
Polish multi-play operator, Vectra has selected
Comarch BSS for its core billing, customer
management and self-service platform as well as
for field force automation software.
Currently, the major challenges facing cable
operators regarding BSS is the result of the huge
number of products that have to be managed. As
most cable operators are now operating in a multi-
play model, they need to handle various types
of services (cable, Internet, voice and mobile) in
a  consistent way and with the possibility to create
bundles of multiple products.
In addition, multi-channel customer service
requires a consistent product catalog that needs
to be exposed to all sales channels, including CSR,
self care and e-shop.
– “Competition between telecom operators has
forced us to introduce new products increasingly
faster. From a technical perspective we were
looking for a next generation BSS platform which
would support us in pursuing a strategy of product
innovation, streamlining and facilitating the
creation of new offers. We were also looking for
a  solution to enable easy creation of personalized,
on-demand offers for specific customers. From
a business point of view, we expected radical
improvement of customer service quality and
after the first stage of this project I’m sure that
Comarchs’ solutions will help us meet our goals.
Together with Comarch BSS tools we can really
become an important player in quad-play services
on the Polish market” – Tomasz Żurański, President
of the Management Board, Vectra S.A.
Comarch products being implemented at Vectra
include Convergent Billing, Customer Management,
Self Care, Central Product Manager, Billing
Mediation and Field Service Management. All these
products are a part of Comarch BSS Suite which
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
is designed to support various types of operators
– including fixed, cable and mobile – and is the
answer to the requirements of modern multi-play
operators.
Piotr Piatosa, Vice President of the Management
Board and Head of the Telecommunications
Business Unit, Comarch S.A., claims:- “One of
the most advanced elements of our solution for
Vectra is Comarch Central Product Manager which
simplifies configuration of offerings associated
with particular sales channels and regions. With
offers being configured in one place, it is possible
to radically reduce time-to-market and costs on
the operator’s side. For demanding customers like
Vectra it is also very important to have Business
Process Management as a part of the solution
to allow flexible process configuration and
a  possibility of reconfiguration in the future”.
NEWS IN BRIEF 5
Comarch Field
Service Management
– Product of the Year
2011
On the 23rd of March 2011, Comarch received
the Golden Antenna (“Zlota Antena”) Award
for its Field Service Management system,
which was acknowledged as “Product of the
Year 2011” in the category Telecom Operator
Solutions.
Comarch Field Service Management has
already been implemented by a number of
operators including WildBlue Communications
– a satellite internet provider from the US, and
many cable & multi service operators. In 2010,
Comarch started the FSM project for Vectra,
a  Multi-Service Operator based in Poland.
The product has also been recognized in
a  recent Stratecast (Frost & Sullivan) Report
“OSS/BSS Global Competitive Strategies”
dedicated to Workforce Management
(WFM) Strategies for Changing Markets
and Challenging Economics. Comarch FSM
was assessed as a solution that efficiently
optimized skilled resources and schedules
using modifiable and adjustable ratings based
on appropriate business needs.
Comarch was awarded its first “Antenna” in
1999 for the Tytan Billing System (currently
the Comarch BSS Suite). In 2009, a award
was presented for Comarch Next Generation
Service Management, part of the Comarch
OSS Suite portfolio, which enables managing
services and resources in cutting-edge
telecommunications networks – Next
Generation Networks (NGN). In 2010, Comarch’s
Service Quality Management System was also
awarded a Golden Antenna in the category
of Product of the Year / Telecom Operator
Solutions.
 6 NEWS IN BRIEF
Comarch Rebuilds
its BSS around
Central Product
Manager
In answering the crucial requirements of
modern communication service providers,
Comarch has rebuilt the architecture of
its flagship product suite – Comarch BSS
– to support operators in optimizing IT
architectures and cost savings, unlimited
innovation, acceleration of business and
shortening of time-to-market.
Products within the Comarch BSS Suite have
been designed and developed in-house,
meaning that CSPs can count on shorter
delivery times, as well as better quality and
more secure deployment, as compared
to suites from large vendors that arose
as a result of mergers and acquisitions.
All BSS products are based on a unified
data model for reference data and product
catalog. This provides a short time to market,
while facilitating system management and
configuration. Mass and real-time, rule-based
data processing is the core of Comarch’s
competences. This includes service-agnostic
and multi-industry rating, charging and billing.
Business process orientation based on
TMForum eTOM means that there are no limits
to workflows and business processes, as they
are delivered out-of-the-box or configured
during the implementation process. It is
always possible to reconfigure business
processes and workflows to suit particular
needs of the customer.
Comarch BSS Suite is already implemented at
KPN - Netherlands, Auchan SA - France, Bite
Latvia and Lithuania, OnePhone - Germany,
DTMS - Germany, Belize Telemedia Limited -
Belize, Cable Onda - Panama and many others.
In 2010 the following operators also decided
to use Comarch BSS Suite: GTS Poland, Fring,
OXYCOM and five others including Tier-1.
OXYCOM, a new systems aggregator on
the polish market, chooses Comarch’s
solutions
OXYCOM, the start-up company has decided
to build a BSS Platform based on Comarch’s
products. According to the agreement, the
following modules will be implemented: Comarch
Convergent Billing, Comarch Service Activation,
Comarch Billing Mediation and Comarch ESB
(Enterprise Service Bus).
The project has been up and running since the
ending of the first phase of the implementation.
During this stage, main functionalities and
integrations were deployed, which are perceived by
OXYCOM as crucial in order to deliver all its services
such as VoIP, Software on Demand (SoD), Software
as a Service (SaaS) and eCommerce platform.
Currently, the project is in its second stage, during
which further functionalities are developed, mainly
focused on automation processes and system
integration, which will enable OXYCOM to activate
its next advanced services.
The key component of the implemented solution
is Comarch Convergent Billing, a modern high
capacity and scalable billing system which
contains a Central Product Manager with all
the products and rates of OXYCOM’s services.
The solution also supports partner data
management and inter-partner settlements,
customer relationship management, account data
management along with a full integration with the
existing CRM system, thanks to Enterprise Service
Bus - Comarch ESB.
Comarch Billing Mediation is a fully scalable
platform, responsible for data collection
distribution, processing and system distribution.
It monitors the elements to which it is connected
and generates predefined alarms and notifications.
Comarch Service Provisioning is responsible for
fast and reliable service activation along with
complete integration with the existing platforms
which provide services.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
Bogumil Butryn, Technical Department Director
at OXYCOM S.A.: - “The experience and skills of
Comarch’s professionals enabled us to create a
customized system configuration that allowed
to run optimally with our new services. Thanks to
the training at Comarch’s Headquarters, our BSS
systems’ administrators can react dynamically on
the business needs that are evaluated and we can
expand OXYCOM’s offer. The flexibility of Comarch’s
portfolio allows us to build new rate models, which
are later made available to our customers online.
The Software on Demand (SoD) or Software as a
Service (SaaS) market is growing very fast and
so bearing an updated offer in this area has a
substantial meaning.”
Piotr Piatosa, Vice President of the Management
Board and Head of the Telecommunications
Business Unit, Comarch S.A., claims:- “Thanks to
our products from the BSS Suite, OXYCOM has
a coherent, well-integrated system that allows
them to maintain operational and finance areas
of their business. The product catalog for all
service platforms is worth mentioning, as also the
integration with existing platforms such as eBOK,
CRM or eCommerce.”
Scheduled project completion is planned at the
end of September 2011.
About OXYCOM
OXYCOM S.A. is one of the most innovative
companies from the news technologies and
communications sector in Poland. Its main
advantages are: a rich portfolio of modern IT
services, a well-trained team and flexibility, through
which OXYCOM is able to adapt to customer needs.
Among OXYCOM’s products can be found solutions
based on the cloud model, voice communications,
as well as systems allowing for savings and IT
outsourcing. Thanks to a group of experts, OXYCOM
S.A. is able to meet the challenges posed by the
IT market and suggest a solution tailored to his
needs of any client.

Comarch Self Care version 6.6 has been launched
Comarch has introduced the new version of its
Self Care product, with additional functionalities.
Comarch Self Care is a web self-service portal
enabling communication service providers to
reduce customer service costs and increase
customer satisfaction. It answers the needs of the
consumer and SME markets, while the Corporate
Self Care product provides advanced features for
enterprises.
Comarch Self Care enables consumers and small
businesses to browse their bills and usage,
manage their services, and modify personal
information without the assistance a call center
agent. It helps service providers get closer to their
customers and deliver non-interfering, relevant
messages. Comarch Self Care has already
been implemented at: Bite Latvia and Lithuania,
OnePhone, Germany, KPN, The Netherlands, Auchan
Telecom, France or 6GMOBILE, The Netherlands.
Comarch successfully delivers its billing cloud to fring,
a global mobile VoIP leader
Comarch signs an agreement with fring, a leader
in global mobile VoIP and Video communications,
for a high availability Billing Cloud service.
Thanks to the Comarch Billing Cloud, fring has
been able to add fringOut to its services portfolio.
fringOut lets fringsters call any landline or mobile
in the world from their mobile phone at very
attractive prices, starting from 1¢/minute. As the
billing service is provided from the Comarch Cloud,
the project was completed within a very short
time. The billing service is provided to multiple fring
datacenters around the globe.
The delivered solution covers the entire process
of product preparation, allowing defining details
of the services offered to customers, providing
and reselling such services over available sales
channels, activating, controlling and billing for such customers. It offers prepaid and postpaid billing,
Key improvements introduced in Comarch Self Care
6.6 include:
Ability to define additional user relationships
in residential and SME segments –
e.g.  household, family
User profile advanced management (making
it easy for customers to grant suitable rights
to others)
Notifications/escalations – specific alerts can
be created on the basis of rules or events, e.g.
when a new invoice is created
More automated configuration (added generic
overview display and generic contracting,
which allows implementation of the system in
less than 10 weeks)
Case management and order basket
improvements – possibility of painless
integration with external workflow engine
through ESB
services, in addition to monitoring and reporting
them. The project also involved business partners
such as G2S and PayPal, as providers of the
payment services.
– “This is another very important step for Comarch,
especially as it concerns our services in the
cloud model, for such a prestigious customer. It
proves that our portfolio is both highly rated and
trustworthy among players on the telecom market.
We know that real-time billing must be more
open to operators, and we are going to meet this
challenge” – highlights Piotr Piatosa, Vice President
of the Management Board and Head of the
Telecommunications Business Unit, Comarch S.A.
Comarch Billing SaaS ensures delivering
the highest quality services to an operator’s
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
NEWS IN BRIEF 7
Pawel Lamik, CRM and Self Care product manager,
at Comarch’s telecommunications business unit,
said: – “We are devoted to constantly improving
and developing our products based on both
customer demand and the innovative ideas of
our employees. Our customers – communication
service providers - can now implement a state
of the art self-service portal for end-users
significantly faster. The new features now
offer even more value to the users in terms of
convenience and flexibility in using the portal.”
Comarch Corporate Self Care provides online
ordering, data management and reporting
for corporate customers. It is also a telecom
expense management solution, increasing the
value of a  service provider’s offer. Managers of
an enterprise customer can set spending limits
for their employees and receive notifications
when the limit is exceeded. By making use of
virtual hierarchies, the company can delegate
responsibility for the management and control
of costs and services to middle and lower
management.
real-time AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and
Accounting), CRM functionalities and services
monitoring.
About fring
fring (www.fring.com) is a mobile communication
service that gives users internet-rich
communication from their mobile phones. fring
members make free video calls, voice calls and
live chat to friends on the fring network and
to other social networks. Users can also make
almost-free calls to friends and family worldwide
to any landline or mobile phone from 1c/minute
via fringOut. fring leverages the mobile phone’s
internet connection to create these communication
experiences. fring is available on all major
Smartphones (including iPhone, iPod, Android and
Symbian) on any mobile operator, and any mobile
internet connection (3G/4G, Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE).
 8 CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
Grupo TVCable have obtained new
flexible back office systems assuring
smooth order-to-bill process support
Being a market leader comes with specific
T responsibilities. Early on, Grupo TVCable realized
that adding VoIP services would address a growing
COMARCH market need and also entice new customers to sign up for
PRODUCTS an attractive product bundle: TV, internet, and telephony
& SERVICES: (triple-play). VoIP telephony provided a viable alternative
to traditional fixed telephony for tens of thousands of
Comarch households. But the introduction of triple-play required new,
Convergent Billing flexible back office systems to assure smooth order-to-bill
process support while guaranteeing high levels of customer
Comarch Cash satisfaction. Moreover, historically Grupo TVCable’s billing
Desk and customer care systems were decentralized, with each
geographical region managing its own local customer base
Comarch and billing operations. As the company grew, this setup was
Customer becoming very inefficient and difficult to manage. A new
Management system was needed to bring it all under one roof.
Comarch
Business Process The challenge – multiple systems
Management instead of one
Comarch With the introduction of VoIP telephony, the concept of
InterPartner usage-based billing became a critical issue for Grupo
Billing (including TVCable. The company had two options: purchase a
Reconciliation) dedicated standalone VoIP billing system, or a convergent
billing system that would support not only VoIP but also
Comarch Billing all its existing services (CATV and internet) as well as new
Mediation innovative offerings in the future. Although migration to
a single convergent billing system initially seemed like a
Comarch Service grueling task, there were obvious long-term benefits of such
Provisioning an approach. The main advantage was the ability to present
Mediation
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
a subscriber with a unified bill for all services. This would also
simplify the payment handling process. In addition, having
to manage only one billing and customer care platform
would lower OPEX for Grupo TVCable, while at the same
time allowing it to offer specially priced product bundles
(packages) to its subscriber base. One final challenge was
the transformation of the BSS domain towards process-
driven and centralized product management, while still
being flexible enough to allow for regional offer and pricing
variations to better suit individual local market conditions.
Why Comarch?
“Prior to implementing the Comarch solution, Grupo TVCable
operated multiple regional back office instances, with
products, pricing, and billing managed locally in separate
databases and no centralized control. Early on, we realized
that if we wished to maintain the rapid growth of our
customer base, the back office systems must be centralized
in order to achieve transparency, consistency, and data
and process unification across the entire corporation. Yet
these systems must continue to allow us to stay attentive
to regional customer needs. And this is exactly why we
partnered with Comarch. It allowed us to introduce the level
of management control which is necessary to streamline
customer acquisition, billing, and support structure. The
resulting 25% reduction in operating costs allowed us to
offer more attractive pricing while improving our bottom
line.” – acknowledges Fernando Carrillo, VP of Information
Technology at Grupo TVCable.
 CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT 9

An added benefit of having a unified data model and The ability to manage a unified order-to-bill cycle from
a  centralized database is management reporting. The a central location provided Grupo TVCable with the level
solution implemented at Grupo TVCable comes with its own of management control that was previously impossible.
flexible reporting engine which makes it possible to configure Migration and switchover to the new system was performed
and execute periodic and ad hoc reports on the activities gradually, by region, thus unifying all customer account,
of the enterprise, both on a regional as well as a global contract, and financial data across the country and across CUSTOMER
scale. It is now possible to quickly track and report on the the enterprise. Thanks to the underlying Business Process Grupo TVCable,
level of incoming orders, resources needed and consumed Management tool, approximately 40 different workflow Ecuador
during customer installations, technician visits and their processes were configured to simplify tasks and capture
performance, amounts billed, and amounts still outstanding. information which previously was only noted on paper or INDUSTRY
Historical data gathered in the system provides an sometimes not recorded at all, such as information related Communications
important source of information for top management about to technician visits at customer sites. These business
the performance of the company, and helps make better processes range from basic account and contract Grupo TVCable is the
business decisions that will ensure Grupo TVCable’s leading management, adds, moves, changes, equipment swaps, and largest MSO (multi
market position and allow it to offer new innovative products service visits, through more complex resolutions of trouble service operator) in
and services in the future. tickets, and advanced dunning scenarios. Moreover, Grupo Ecuador. The company
TVCable gained a competitive edge as the solution’s flexible was founded in 1986
configuration enabled it to launch new national and regional when the construction
The result – increased operational offers and product bundles with discounted pricing in a of a hybrid fiber co-ax
efficiency thanks to a centralized BSS matter of hours rather than days and weeks. In addition, the cable network linking
solution time needed to connect and begin billing a new subscriber various major cities in
was halved, while the time spent by technicians at customer the country began. In
Preceded by an in-depth requirement analysis, the resulting sites was reduced by nearly 30%. Significant cost reductions 1987, the first subscribers
Comarch BSS Suite implementation provided Grupo TVCable were also achieved by centralizing the IT staff needed to took advantage of Grupo
with a centralized TV, internet, and IP telephony billing and maintain the new BSS solution. Finally, top management can TVCable’s comprehensive
customer care system that was still capable of supporting now obtain accurate, consolidated customer care and billing programming which
regional product offers for the various geographical markets reports in minutes, not days, as was the case in the past. included cultural, family,
in which the company operates. sports, news, movie,
music, and children’s
channels from all over
Billing System Call Center the world. Since then,
the subscriber base
Printhouse Customer Management & has been constantly
Accounting & Taxation Business Process Management
growing as the network
coverage has expanded
Rating & Account Order Trouble
Billing Mgmt Mgmt Ticketing
to reach other parts of
Banks/ Invoices, CDR s, Products/
payments
Services, Prices, the country, and as the
Discounts, Customer
Overdue Bill Callcula- Contracts, CustomerBase product portfolio has
tions & Dunning Data broadened to include
internet access and
Point of Sale InterPartner
Carrier Billing
Settlements &
Cash Desk Reconciliation telephony services.
Today, Grupo TVCable’s
delivers high quality
communication,
Mediation Platform
entertainment and
Billing Mediation Service Provisioning Mediation
educational offerings
to its subscribers
nationwide.
Safari C3 soft Intraway AURIS DAC6000 ACC Microwave E-mail
switch Provisioning (pin codes) Digital TV Analog TV controller Controller
Gateway controller controller

cable Legend:
EMTA modems Comarch
solution
  Figure 1. Comarch BSS Suite at Grupo TVCable

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 10 CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
Multimedia Polska, a multi-service
operator, has a new consolidated BSS
ultimedia Polska S.A. (MMP) is a multi-service
M operator, established via the consolidation of
several regional cable TV providers. Prior to the
merger, each company concentrated on its own area
of interest, (cable TV, telephony and broadband) acting
independently and within its home region. As a result of
these acquisitions, Multimedia Polska S.A. has transformed
CUSTOMER into a nationwide corporation, offering triple-play services
Multimedia Polska throughout Poland.
S.A.
INDUSTRY The business need: BSS consolidation
Communications
Consolidation resulted in the requirement for a wave of data
Multimedia Polska migration efforts from legacy Business Support Systems
S.A. is the third largest used by particular daughter-companies, to a single, central
nationwide cable system capable of handling all regions and services under
operator and provider MMP’s jurisdiction. A flexible and complete billing solution
of digital television, was needed to perform the migration seamlessly, and the
with video on demand, Comarch Billing System proved to be the ideal choice.
broadband and mobile
data, and fixed-line and Multimedia Polska S.A. decided to perform the migration from
mobile voice (mobilFON). the specific systems autonomously, in order to maintain
We were the first control and confidentiality of the migrated data. Such an
operator in the country operation would have been unfeasible without the in-depth
to offer High Definition technical knowledge possessed by MMP’s IT personnel,
Television (HDTV) with and thus Comarch delivered this know-how through profound
numerous add-on product training, delivered as part of its solution. This
modalities, such as video approach proved to be highly fruitful, and the customer’s
on demand (VoD) and IT department succeeded in migrating a group of regional
personal video recorder operators into the new, centralized system. Tariff plan set-up
(PVR) etc. and overall configuration were performed by MMP, leveraging
for this purpose, a pre-defined API delivered by Comarch.
The company has been
listed on the Warsaw
Stock Exchange since
2006.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
The challenge: a tool for winning price
wars
Multi-service operators face rigorous competition, with
diversified geographical intensity. For instance, in some
major cities (or even, in particular streets) multiple operators
are present, whilst at other locations, there are none at all.
In order to compete effectively within these areas, operators
aim to vary their pricing and adjust it to local market
conditions.
Multimedia Polska S.A. was capable of pursuing such
a demanding sales policy, thanks to the Comarch Billing
System, which grants an operator the ability to define
various “regions”, with independent pricing schemes offered
to subscribers. Even the smallest of areas can receive its
own tailor-made offer (e.g. a single street perimeter), in this
way allowing an operator to fine-tune its pricing, and attain
a  competitive advantage over the competition.
This built-in mechanism enables MMP to effortlessly win
regional price wars so typical of the multi-service industry:
areas penetrated by intense competition can have a lower
price-tag attached with numerous discounts, whereas higher
margins can be enjoyed in “virgin” geographical regions.
Multimedia Polska S.A. offers triple-play services including:
Cable TV
Broadband Access
Video On Demand
Telephony
 CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT 11

The result: “multi-service” product
bundling
Subscribers can select between single and multiple services
from the portfolio. Since all services are managed by one
central billing system, discount schemes attached to
customer orders can be introduced by MMP. Such discounts
would apply to either single services, or service bundles
offered at more preferable prices in order to encourage
subscribers to order more. Even complex formulas are
possible, such as discount thresholds for one service
dependant on the consumption level of another service
(Cross Discount). Employing this method, the Comarch Billing
System allows MMP to concentrate purely on the needs of its
subscribers.
The Comarch Billing System, used by MMP as a replacement
for the various legacy systems of its daughter-companies,
avoided additional business obstacles deriving from
diversification of payment days for particular subscribers,
which had been introduced by previous architecture. Some
subscribers would pay in advance, while others had down-
payment plans defined within previous systems. MMP
needed to maintain this configuration within the new system,
in light of the fact that attempting to unify payment schemes
for all subscribers may have led to customer churn or cash-
flow disadvantages for the operator. Comarch tackled this
issue by featuring the individual configuration of payment
plans – whereby the payment day can be customized for
each subscriber, separately.
In this manner, data migration was performed transparently
for the subscribers, and there was no requirement to force
any changes to the contractual terms, allowing MMP to
dodge potential problems related to financial liquidity or COMARCH
customer dissatisfaction. PRODUCTS
& SERVICES:
Why Comarch: many technologies, one Comarch
billing system Convergent Billing
Multimedia Polska S.A. is a dynamic and highly flexible Comarch
operator. Possessing the relevant technical background, Customer
MMP uses various technologies to offer its services: e.g. Management
DSL, HFC, WiFi, etc. Most importantly, independently of the
technologies in use, all services are now managed by one Comarch Billing
billing system. This helps to reduce costs and improve daily Mediation
operations significantly.
Comarch
“We value the Comarch Billing System, due to its Business Process
simultaneous comprehensiveness and flexibility. This Management
platform has seamlessly replaced various legacy systems,
and is currently used to bill all our services. In addition, we Comarch Cash
enjoy the benefits of the new functionality it has provided us Desk
with, enabling the initiation of successful product bundling
and pricing policy.” – states Mr. Krzysztof Jaskolski, CTO of
Multimedia Polska S.A.
Moreover, the nationwide scale of MMP’s business requires
the operator to maintain adequate technical support
resources (i.e. to perform on-site installation services).
In this way, MMP employs the Comarch WorkFlow task
management system, which is integrated with the billing
platform, also automating the majority of task management
efforts, improving daily performance even further.

General Ledger Billing System Call Center

Printhouse Overdue Bill Customer Management

Commissions & Business Process
Calculations &
Calculating Dunning Management
Debt Collection
Agency
Accounting & Customer Contacts,
Data warehouse Invoices, CDR s, Products/ Prospects, Workflows
Taxation Services, Prices,
Discounts, Customer
Bank Contracts, Customer Base
Rating & Data
Others
Billing
ESB

Resource
Management NOC /
provisioning

Billing Mediation

Voice Exchanges VoIP Gateways VoD Sources Others

Legend:
Comarch
solution
  Figure 1. Comarch solution in MM environment

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 12 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS
BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
TRANSFORMATION
Transformation…
what does this mean???
hroughout the years of designing and delivering
T IT  solutions for telecom operators I have witnessed
many transformations. Telcos were created
as startups, then formed their own business model and
constructed their IT to support their business yet in the end
(after a few years) they accumulated a backlog of unsolvable
problems proving unbearable - so they transformed.
A question comes to mind… they went through
a  transformation, but what does this mean? Usually they
would have transformed their aging IT, having it replaced with
a new more powerful and flexible package.
TOMASZ OMIECINSKI the whole process, adjusting IT in order for it to match new
Comarch SA And so a second question springs to mind: did that solve
Senior Manager, the accumulated backlog problem? Well, typically it would
Convergent BSS/OSS Solutions, have solved IT- related problems, but… problems which
Telecommunications Business were caused outside of IT still remained, regardless of how
Unit many times IT itself was transformed. Furthermore, if IT was
transformed but business was not changed, then soon
enough the old patterns of doing business would start to
IDEAS IN BRIEF: imprint old problems onto new IT.
Not all problems So is there a way of solving the unsolvable through
can be solved by transformation? Yes there is. Business Transformation is the
changing IT correct answer.
All problems The right time for Business Transformation comes naturally
can be solved with the maturity of the telecommunications industry. Telcos
by transforming were formed years ago, through the course of this time
business they grew, acquired other telcos or were acquired (some
even many times over) to finally end up in multi-technology
Changing business groups. Nowadays, large telcos are often organized
business affects as multiple companies doing more or less the same things,
an organization’s but using different means and bravely solving problems that
structure, end to they uniquely and unpredictably bring upon themselves.
end processes It is worth noting that even if a group itself standardizes IT
and IT
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
platforms, employees of different group members will still
be organized differently and they will use these platforms in
their unique ways.
So what is this “Business
Transformation”?
Business Transformation, i.e. changing the way of doing
business. Thus, Business Transformation is about changing
organization, changing business processes, changing
patterns of interactions and somewhere at the bottom of
realities (where “adjusting” is most often just an euphemism
for “replacing”).
Business Transformation is much more than just changing IT.
However, changing IT may be the best known and controlled
element of all transformation aspects. After all, IT has been
changed, modified or transformed many times in the lifetime
of any mature CSP, so they know how to avoid typical
mistakes.
Business Transformation is difficult as it requires changing
an employees’ way of working, changing their habits,
re-distributing responsibilities, changing organization
charts (and in turn –titles and positions). This means that
the first and most important thing that is needed for such
a  transformation is the commitment of the executives, i.e.
the effective decision makers. When an organization is being
changed, vigorous disputes are held (“I want my team left
intact”), generating endless e-mail chains that are bound
to occur and could well impact the transformation. Unless
Management is prepared to use all of their executive powers
to firmly tell their employees “We are transforming and that
means that you are transforming too”.

OK, let’s get started…but how?
Gaining commitment will not be possible if there
is no concrete transformation plan, which must
clearly define to what and how the business will
transform. As it is often easier to setup a new
business than to transform a mature organization,
the creation of such a plan must not be taken
lightly. The difficulty is in defining transformation
plans which grow with the size of the business
undergoing the transformation. In this context,
transforming multi-market & multi-country
businesses into a single “pan-geographical
business unit” elevates the challenge to yet
another level.
So how does one climb such a mountain? Well,
one way is to hire a leading consulting company,
which would provide thousands of hours of
services. As a result, a detailed report would be
filed that would summarize all of the existing
problems and would hold a list of means to
address them. The report would leave the decision
to the operator and each of the possible “ways out”
would be accompanied with tens (if not hundreds)
of pros and cons to make the decision process a
little bit “easier”. After drawing up such a report CSP
will not differ from where it started, apart from the
fact that now it would have a “summary problem
report” – which could make it easier to explain to
people that the problems exists and have to be
addressed.
Is there another way? Well, the operator could
go back to the good old TMF eTOM to decompose
its Frameworx (especially the Business Process
Framework – in its brand new Release 9 of course)
taking it apart in order to reconstruct the CSP’s
own business like a jigsaw puzzle. One should also
bear in mind all of the past experiences in order
to avoid missing some aspects that have been
inadequately dealt with before. Surprisingly as it
may sound, although multi-market transformations
present additional challenges, they also bring
big advantages as they allow to combine multi-
party and multi-country experiences into a single
business setup.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
A second opinion should also be taken into
account, and rather than going for a theoretical
consulting view, it would be better to choose an
experienced IT partner who would share their
experiences in this area. What we mean is an
IT partner that has already delivered complete
business support suites on its own to a number
of CSPs. An IT partner who has built up its own
portfolio of best practices and standardized
systems in real-life projects. This is one of
circumstances where multi-vendor solutions
delivered by multiple integrators truly fail. Multi-
party deliveries do not allow a party to build
up practice in running end-to-end business
processes, navigating them through various
organizations and effectively supporting them in
different IT systems.
What does it take to execute the
transformation?
1. The management’s commitment and
readiness to defend the program against
people who are prepared to go all the way to
derail the transformation in order to protect
their old ways.
2. Strength and dedication, never minding the
sleepless nights when forming and then
executing transformation plan. A plan that
has to be sound and robust if it is to result in
the management’s “GO” call.
3. Exquisite program/project management skills
in order to execute the plan in a controlled
manner, knowing that the transformation will
span across multiple levels, and will happen
in multiple parallel streams that will affect the
whole organization.
4. And last but not least – an IT partner. Yes,
“IT partner” and not “IT vendor”. Business
Transformation requires an IT partner who will
be prepared to be there with the CSP in the
long run. A partner who is ready to support
the transformation planning process a long
time before IT delivery starts. A partner with
goals that reach far beyond selling licenses or
man days of work.
13
How will the transformation
efforts pay off?
1. It is THE way to free the CSP from the backlog
of problems accumulated throughout the
years.
2. It is THE way to re-compose business,
preparing it for new challenges.
3. It is THE most comprehensive way to
effectively invigorate a mature organization
to make it competitive and ready to race
head-to-head with those who have not been
burdened with years of bad experiences.
Why am I telling you all this?
I am currently taking part in a transformation
program – a multi-market and multi-country
Business Transformation. Comarch is supporting
it not only with BSS/OSS Suite components, but
provides CSPs with access to experience gathered
in previous projects.
The transformation is tiresome, the amount of work
is phenomenal (as I said, complexity grows quickly
with the size of the business undergoing the
transformation), yet I am personally proud that we
are the IT partner supporting the transformation,
and it is my privilege to work with people who have
the right attitude and show admirable commitment
to actually making things happen. People who
have prepared the plan and took their executives
message seriously. People who have organized
themselves in multiple streams and work tirelessly
on “seemingly unrelated” paths, all of which lead to
one common goal. People who have embarked on
a climb of the “transformation mountain”, no matter
what it takes.
Perhaps in one of the next issues of this magazine
I will be able to present how this transformation
was actually carried out and how it transformed
the businesses involved. As of now I can only say
that if you are tired of old problems that reoccur
over and over again, regardless of the times IT has
been changed – don’t be scared and go all the
way, follow the Business Transformation path.
 14 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS
BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
TRANSFORMATION
How to avoid embarrassing challenges in
projects – a vendor view
ithout any doubt, embarrassing challenges
W happen in projects, especially in IT. In this article
I will elaborate on the most common and most
important challenges of this kind.
The conclusions, which can generally be drawn from this
article, are based on the completion of five large OSS projects
for the largest players on the telecom market. These projects
have consumed a combined total of more than 18 years in
their collective completion. Thousands of man days have
been invested, with circa two hundred team members, just
by Comarch alone.
MAREK CIENKIEWICZ sessions were organized to demonstrate system capabilities
Comarch SA
Implementation A lack of a project owner on the
Department Manager, OSS customer’s side
Core, Telecommunications
Business Unit Let’s take a look at the first case. After the initial
implementation was finished, the first worrying signs
started to appear during prototyping sessions: future users
complained about a number of functionalities. They said,
IDEAS IN BRIEF: that the system was not designed in a way that would suite
their current work, and that they would prefer to stick with
Defining project their current solutions. This tendency was becoming stronger
owner is the clue and stronger. Nevertheless, as a result of the management’s
decision, the next project phases were already defined.
Precise definition of Unfortunately, the customer had not yet assigned a project
requirements and manager or a technical manager able to make a binding
scope decision on the project scope. The project team existed, but
no clear responsibilities were assigned to customer’s team
Correct project members. As a result, nobody really encouraged the end
organization users to take advantage of our system – and consequently,
they did not show interest either. Management didn’t push
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
the users to switch to the new solution which would enable
them to work more efficiently.
What was the root cause for all these issues? It was only
after a few months that we found out that a project owner
was not defined on the customer side. This is definitely
the most difficult kind of challenge, as the vendor cannot
really change it. In this case, management was obviously
not supporting our project, limiting resources as much as
possible and handing over the overall responsibility to us.
So, we just presented our expectations concerning project
management and put a lot of effort to contact users: Webex
and they convinced some users but still, Comarch was
the one taking the risk of making technical decisions,
influencing system acceptance in a negative way.
Imprecise definition of project
requirements and scope
The next challenge is, in my opinion, very common and
has been present in a greater or lesser extent in almost all
projects. Project scope is usually based upon the customer’s
request for proposal (RFP), the vendor’s offer and results
of an analysis. Some project assumptions were taken
from the offer and due to several reasons (lying on both
sides) analysis was not detailed enough. This resulted in
misunderstandings regarding the scope of the work and
revealed its full effect during acceptance tests. Questions
appeared: is this particular feature “in scope” vs. “not in
scope”? Such doubts may seriously endanger system
acceptance.

The reason was simple: imprecise definition of requirements
and scope – a difficult challenge to deal with. First, you
must convince the customer to define his requirements
precisely (which is already a challenge when dealing with big
enterprises): either by doing so in advance, before the project
starts (even more challenging), or by participating in the
creation of the work scope during analysis. Precise wording
in offers is self-evident.
A very interesting solution for this problem has a commercial
nature: the analysis may be ordered separately to the
implementation. This offers advantages for both sides. The
customer gets exactly what it wants for a reasonable price,
because the vendor does not have to assume a higher
implementation budget for risk coverage – as the scope
is known. Unfortunately, customers resist to accept this
proposal, especially at the project start. They prefer to have
a  fixed price for the entire scope and not risk – as they think –
wasting money on analysis which could lead to “nowhere”.
Incorrect project organization
The last embarrassing challenge, which is wide spread, can
sometimes be seen in the tiniest elements. Team members
are not prepared for workshops or testing, the training
environment is not prepared or firewall rules are not set.
Questions are answered after a significant amount of time,
due to lack of interest or communication issues. Such signs
can be easily neglected by project managers because they
might think they belong to “normal” issues or depend on
the customer and as such are the vendor’s concern. This
is not always the case. The issue here is incorrect project
organization.
A project without challenges is not exciting. Therefore it is not the challenges that we
should focus on, but rather the way to deal with them.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION 15
One of the key means to overcome this is to set up a project
communication plan specifying who can communicate with
whom, when and by what means. Being introduced by a pro-
active project manager, the plan guarantees success – at
least in project organization.
A project without challenges is not exciting. Therefore it is
not the challenges that we should focus on, but rather the
way to deal with them. Having right means in place and time
is what we should concentrate on. This is the reason why
project management methodologies have been developed.
The Project Management Institute (PMI), PRINCE 2 and
Scrum are the most common in the IT world. There should
be no struggle to introduce changes in the strict approach.
In one of our projects we achieved very interesting effects
by setting up the base of project management on a formal
methodology, like PMI or PRINCE 2, and use Agile/Scrum
elements to a required extent in chosen project phases
such as analysis and specific configuration of software
(which were combined into one phase). Such an approach
enables to create a product in a flexible way, fulfilling
customer requirements much faster in comparison to
a strict waterfall-like management style. The project team
reacts quicker to changes and the customer observes the
progress of product development in regular, relatively short
intervals, of a maximum of two-three weeks. During this
time, organizational, reporting and commercial framework of
the project remains according to traditional methodologies,
which is beneficial for the customer and us.
 16 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS
BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
TRANSFORMATION
The advantages of product
catalog-centric BSS
n the old times, before barcodes and readers were
I introduced, product offering and sales processes
in small grocery stores were quite simple. You
would just stick a price tag to the product and put it on the
shelf. The customer would then come in, take the product,
IDEAS IN BRIEF: and get charged by the person managing the cash register.
Despite the fact that entering prices manually was more
The disadvantages time-consuming, at least the product offer definition was
of having multiple simple and the offer was completed in short time.
product catalogs
In the telecom business, the situation also used to be much
How Comarch simpler then it is today. Nowadays, product offers and
approaches BSS definitions consist of many different elements including
transformation in price, target group, distribution channel and offer validity
terms of a product time. And since an operator often has thousands of products
catalog-centric created, managed and offered by multiple departments,
architecture managing the product portfolio may become very complex
and ineffective. This drawback grows even greater, as
What impact can product lifetimes get shorter (e.g. promotions / personalized
a product catalog prices) and the number of product variations keeps growing.
have on customer
experience The situation can be better pictured from the end-customer’s
perspective. A customer notices an offer about a new
smartphone with attractive, low monthly fees. He goes to
a point of sale and wants to purchase the smartphone with
a mobile broadband service. The dealer enters the order
into the system and tells the customer the estimated time
when the service will become active. The estimated time
comes, but the service doesn’t become active. As a result,
the customer gets frustrated and returns the smartphone to
the point of sale. Then he goes to another operator’s point
of sale, where he buys a similar smartphone and gets the
service activated in one hour. What went wrong?
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
Challenge 1 – difficulties in managing
multiple systems
The operators that have existed on the market for many
years may have products defined and maintained in multiple
systems from different vendors. One billing system handles
mobile services, another deals with fixed line telephony
services, and yet another is for cable TV services. All these
systems need to support sales-related applications such
as CRM, a self care portal and a point of sale system.
A customer service agent should use the same CRM
applications for mobile, fixed and cable TV services, so the
sales-related applications need to be able to use all the
product data that has been scattered across many systems,
and present this data in a unified format.
Developing a telecom operator’s business (adding new
business models, entering new regions, involving in mergers
& acquisitions) calls for the addition of new systems,
databases, terminologies, data structures and new levels
of information quality. As a result, the operator has multiple
data models for products managed in various systems. The
old BSS system that handles fixed line services may not be
as flexible as the new system that handles mobile service
offerings.
If the old and new systems are using different terminologies
to describe the same things, systems cease to “speak the
same language”. In turn, the people working with product
data (e.g. product managers and call center agents), who
need to get an overview of product status, face difficulties
in obtaining the information they want. This increases the
amount of time-consuming manual work, entailing more
costs and errors in the service delivery process. Bringing new
services into the market using a platform with no common
 IN
INFOCUS:
FOCUS:BSS/OSS
BSS/OSSTRANSFORMATION
TRANSFORMATION 17

language can be very challenging, and may give an edge
to competitors. Operators cannot evaluate their current
business performance well, if the underlying system does
not provide a consistent, single view of the situation.
Challenge 2 – complexity of new
product definitions
Data consistency is not the only challenge. When a product
manager is designing new products and offerings, he should
be able to design them effectively, without needing to repeat
the same work multiple times using various applications. The
same should be possible during the implementation of the
product.
Having many parallel systems for product management can
bring various disadvantages:
Duplicated work. Depending on the system, the data
model may be different so one data structure cannot
be used for multiple products. This entails product
managers’ additional effort at product definition stage
and disables product inheritance. All of this means a lot
of time is spent making similar configurations instead
of re-using existing ones.
Complicated maintenance of product data. Managing
existing product data and reconciliation of the data
between products and systems becomes complex,
leading to increased effort on the side of service
providers’ staff.
Lack of consistent product performance data. It may be
difficult to get an overview about the products defined in
different systems. To analyze the overall product portfolio,
the product manager may need to browse data in multiple
systems, which takes more time.
All these disadvantages are slowing down the operator’s
business. This becomes a severe drawback, damaging the
operator’s ability to respond swiftly to changing market
conditions. Apart from time to market on new product
launches, operators need to think about product life cycles
that are getting shorter nowadays. This calls for effective
management of the product retirement strategy, in order to
keep maintenance and retiring costs under control. This is
also a relatively new challenge. Back when fixed-line voice
telephony was almost the only type of service, retirement
was not essential, as the same service could have been PEKKA VALITALO
offered for years. Comarch SA
BSS Market Analyst,
Telecommunications
Challenge 3 – geopardized customer Business Unit
experience
The problems occurring from the complex definition and Nowadays,
management of products won’t only affect the product product offers and
management department. These problems can eventually definitions consist
damage the customer experience too. If the product data is of many different
inconsistent, the order management process may encounter elements including
difficulties, for example in situations where incorrect product price, target group,
data (e.g. wrong price) would be presented to the customer. distribution channel
Additional difficulties may occur from the service fulfillment and offer validity
process. For example, the service activation component of time. And since
an operator’s BSS platform may obtain wrong data (e.g. in an operator often
case multiple database are used) so the wrong product is has thousands of
activated as a result. This entails dissatisfaction on the end products created,
customer’s side. The damaged customer experience may not managed and
only increase churn rate, but also customer service costs. offered by multiple
departments,
To conclude, operators can no longer afford fragmented and managing the
inconsistent product catalogs. They are too time consuming product portfolio
to manage, which is a huge burden for operators struggling may become
to optimize their business processes. A centralized product very complex and
catalog also shortens the time-to-market, which entails cost ineffective.
savings (products are designed with less manual effort)

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 18 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION

Sales Channels

Order Capture Order Capture Order Capture

CRM Self Care Dealer Care

Central Product Manager Order Management

Integration & Specification & Offering Sales Support
Administration Management Order Manager

Workbench Specification Cart Manager

Manager BPM / Order
Orchestration
Product Information Product Offering Recommendation
Publisher Manager Engine

Product Lifecycle Product Catalog Quotation Engine

Management Manager Product Inventory

Initial Data Importer Sales Network Product Configurator

Manager Product Instances

Linking Mapping

Billing System Service Activator

Pricing Algorithms Service Catalog

Rating Elements Service Fulfillment

  Figure 1. Comarch Central Product Manager architecture

and revenue loss elimination (delayed product launches
Operators can result in lack of revenues from the products). It also enables
no longer afford definition of new products and management of the product
fragmented and life cycle using a single system. The system services multiple
inconsistent stakeholders of the operator (e.g. product managers, sales
product catalogs. and marketing), while using a single, consistent data model
They are too time for product data standardization.
consuming to
manage, which
is a huge burden Comarch’s solution
for operators
struggling A central product management should cover offer and
to optimize product specification, product relationship definition, and
their business a possibility to specify which products are exclusive or
processes. sold only as a component of a bigger package. It should
also provide tools for defining target customer types, offer
locations and many other parameters. Central product
management should be an integral part of the BSS
architecture, fully integrated with its other components.
Based on these principles, Comarch has designed its
Central Product Manager (CPM). The Figure 1. presents the
logical architecture of the product. Comarch Central Product
Manager is located between the Sales Channels, Order
Management, Service Activator, and Billing System layers.
As shown in Figure 1, the Sales Channels group includes CRM,
Self Care and Dealer Care applications. This group may also
contain other Comarch or third party applications that are
supporting the sales process.
The most important element here is Order Capture, integrated
with CPM and Order Management. The Order Capture element
gathers complete order data and sends it to the Order
Management component. In addition to the basic information
delivered from the CPM for the order capture process (e.g.
product and price information), CPM can bring additional
value to the process by providing sales recommendations
and price quotations. Integration between CPM and the
underlying billing system depends on the billing systems’
capabilities. In the case of Comarch Convergent Billing
integration is performed using pre-defined interfaces and
pricing algorithms as the main tools for sharing information
between systems.
The order gets sent from the Order Management module
to the Service Activator. This module can perform complex
service fulfillment tasks, consisting of various steps and
based on workflows. Such functionalities provide enable the
operator to flexibly customize business processes.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011


The Product Inventory module is used for managing
product instances, which store information about the
product offerings to which customers subscribed, and
subscription conditions. It provides an interface for other
modules (especially Order Management) to create and
terminate product instances, and for obtaining information
about product instances e.g. by the CRM application in
the sales channel layer. Example case can be where the
CRM application is used to terminate a specific product
subscription from a customer or to get current subscriptions.
Information model based on SID
As the product structures of operators usually depend on
multiple legacy systems managing product data in their own
databases, managing this data becomes complex. To enable
managing products centrally and making them “speak the
same language”, consistent data and terminology must be
applied to product-related information. Only this way product
life cycle management can be applied effectively.
To achieve this, Comarch based its Central Product Manager
on the TM Forum Information Framework, also called
the Shared Information Data (SID) model. The SID model
provides a single information / data reference model and
a common information / data vocabulary from a business
entity perspective. The model is becoming widely adopted
among the telco operators, so it means that the integrations
between systems from different vendors can use a similar
data model which facilitates system integration.
Product and offer definition
Operators that have complicated product catalogs scattered
around multiple systems can still use these catalogs to
launch new products. But this means product managers
will struggle with duplicated product information, keeping
fragmented data consistent and maintaining integrated
legacy systems. Additionally, legacy systems can limit the
creativity of product managers in defining products and
offers, whereas a modern BSS with centralized product
catalog improves the situation significantly. It enables
product managers to define any kind of associations
and rules in relation to the products. It also ensures
product data is available for sales channel applications,
order management, billing system and service activation
components. Managing product specifications and defining
associations in Comarch’s CPM is possible thanks to the
specification manager component.
One of the essential processes that a central product catalog
should enable is product life cycle management (PLM), which
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION 19
facilitates maintenance and retirement of products. Faced
with an increasing number of offered services and shorter One of the essential
service lifetimes, operators must focus on their service processes
retirement strategies. that a central
product catalog
Comarch Central Product Manager enables operators to should enable is
deploy their PLM processes effectively. After a product is product life cycle
defined in the system, it must be made available as an management
offer to the customers. Different offers may be targeted e.g. (PLM), which
based on the end customer type, geographical location, facilitates
or sales channel (point of sale / web shop). Comarch CPM maintenance
provides a  large set of capabilities for preparing offers such and retirement of
as definition of: prices, promotions, upgrade rules as well as products.
publication and termination rules.
In the stage of product definition, Comarch CPM simplifies
configuration and allows the existing specifications to
be re-used easily by providing an advanced inheritance
functionality based on a mix-in concept. For example,
products can be inherited by various versions with slight
changes, leading to saved time and effort. Multiple products
can be mixed in – thus the inheritance can be used while
keeping the hierarchies of the products.
Inbound and outbound integration
Although the product catalog provides a central point for
managing products and storing master data, it must be used
in tandem with legacy BSS systems. It should provide various
possibilities for inbound and outbound integration with
legacy BSS systems that may not support the SID model.
Comarch CPM provides a Data Importer component that
supports data migration from legacy systems – the imported
data can be used as an entry point for configuring a full
product catalog with marketing offers.
The data can also be exported from Central Product Manager
to legacy systems. In such a case, the replication module
of the Central Product Manager can be used. This is useful
in situations where online integration cannot be performed
and data needs to be replicated into the format of the target
legacy system.
Accelerating sales support
A customer service representative needs information about
the products that are available to a customer. Presenting
information about the products that the customer cannot
purchase makes no sense, because it will lead to situations
where invalid information is given to the customer, and
may entail order drop-out as well as reduced customer
satisfaction.
 20 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
Therefore, the CRM system needs to use the available
product and offering data from the product catalog.
Additional information could be delivered from the product
catalog to the sales channel applications to facilitate the
order capture process. The CRM application should be able
to access the information in the product catalog about
available products during customer interaction, together with
quotations for the products that the customer would like to
contract. In addition, the central product manager should
The advantages analyze the data about customer’s current services and
of Comarch provide sales recommendations to the CRM applications,
Central Product based on the customer data (for example current
Manager from the agreements, consumption information).
sales perspective
include: A sample scenario will be best to describe how the product
catalog can support the sales process. A customer goes to
+ Consistent a point of sale and wants to buy two smartphones: one for
information him and one for his wife. The customer service agent gets a
about products list of available smartphones on his screen. After selecting
and offers for the the smartphone, the list of available tariff plans appears on
customer the screen. Only those tariff plans that can be used with
the smartphones are shown, so there is no possibility of
+ More accurate error during the contracting process. Next, the appropriate
order payment details are chosen. For example, information
management such as whether the customer would like to have both
and service smartphones billed on the same invoice. After capturing all
fulfillment the order details, the service agent can provide an accurate
process quotation and the estimated service activation time, based
on the data from the central product manager.
+ Personalized
products, due to The sales process is also supported by the Cart Manager
flexible product component of Comarch CPM. It supports the order capture
creation process by exposing an advanced interface, which can be
used by external applications such as CRM or a self service
+ Better up-selling portal, providing information about products to the sales
and cross-selling channel layer. The Cart Manager provides information on
opportunities products which are available for specific customers, and
enables order building using a cart, as in web shops (building
an order is like adding items to the cart). This component
can also be integrated with the external serviceability check
systems to verify in real time which service can be installed
at customer’s premises. This reduces the risk of order drop-
outs and service activation errors. The Recommendation
Engine functionality of the Cart Manager is exposed to
sales channels using the same interface. It generates sales
recommendations based on various conditions, to support
the Cart Manager in the Order Capture process.
Comarch CPM also contains a Quotation Engine that
can estimate prices for the currently selected products.
Customers who are interested in purchasing multiple
products, either separately or in bundles, can be informed
about the total cost of their order. If the tariff plans are based
on multiple parameters (monthly fee, usage fee, initial fee
etc.), the customer can obtain information about upcoming
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
costs, which reduces the risk of bill shock. In addition, the
Quotation Engine is useful for preparing quotations for
business customers, who would like to purchase a large set
of products at the same time, as it provides them with full
transparency of the costs.
The advantages of Comarch Central Product Manager from
the sales perspective include:
Consistent information about products and offers for
the customer – reduced risk of inaccurate prices and
other data inconsistencies.
More accurate order management and service
fulfillment process – leading to fewer order drop-outs
and fewer service activation errors.
Personalized products, due to flexible product creation
– the underlying platform is no longer limiting the
creativity of new product definitions.
Better up-selling and cross-selling opportunities,
originating from the recommendation engine
component.
Business process optimization
To maximize the benefits of switching to centralized product
catalog, associated business processes should be optimized.
As the product catalog has an impact on many different
business processes, such as sales, order management,
service fulfillment and billing, it needs to support seamless
integration of these activities. Composing the end to end
process that translates the customer order into service
fulfillment accelerates the operator’s revenue flow, as the
service is activated with fewer drop-outs or errors.
Conclusions
The operators need to improve their agility when introducing
new products to the market. Multiple legacy systems
containing product data that is scattered around multiple
databases increases operating costs, increases the risk of
errors and slows down product development.
Having the product data available and manageable from a
single location accelerates the operator’s business. Not only
can it speed up product management, it also reduces the
cost of system maintenance, improves customer experience,
and increases visibility of the business performance.
Centralized product catalog is the perfect answer to these
challenges.

Increase efficiency of order-to-cash processes
with optimal field service management
f you ask telecommunication executives, which
I process is crucial for their company’s operations,
probably most of them will answer that it is the
order-to-cash or order-to-cash-related process. Moreover,
if you ask, which one is the most complex and was recently
or is currently planned to be optimized or transformed, the
answer would be almost always the same. This is because
the order-to-cash process generally affects the strategic
aspects of most telecom businesses: improves time to
market for new services and, if effective, increases market
share. The process is attractive from many points of view
(integrations, workflows, etc.) and the concept of making it
efficient and flexible with certain tools is essential.
However, sometimes there is no time to consider one very
important aspect of the process. An aspect that is often
covered in one point on the transformation map or presented
as one particular step, but that has remarkable impact
on many areas of CSPs’ core activities, such as customer
service or network operations. This aspect is field service,
an area which can be described as all of the activities that
have to be carried out at the customers or networks location,
in order to complete the order-to-cash process and start
collecting charges for the service. This activity however, is
complex and has to be managed well.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
IN
INFOCUS:
FOCUS:BSS/OSS
BSS/OSSTRANSFORMATION
TRANSFORMATION 21
Order-to-cash in telecommunications
Before elaborating on field service, let’s take a look at the
standard order-to-cash process. Generally there is no such
thing as a “standard” process here, as it is unique for every
CSP when you look at the details, but on a high level it is
possible to pinpoint its universal stages:
Order Capture – an order may get captured from
various sources and channels. A dedicated system SZYMON UCZCIWEK
then receives a new instance of an event-driven Comarch SA
process. From a technical point of view it comes down FSM Product Manager,
to integrating with a complex IT environment. From this Telecommunications
moment on, the order processing system is responsible Business Unit
for the order fulfillment process.
Order Data Collection – after the process is launched,
the system has to collect all data that may be
significant for process purposes. This step can be
partially executed through manual activities, and often
involves many interactions with external sources of
information that are necessary to process the order
(e.g. inventory data, customer data, billing history, etc.).
Order Validation – it is important to validate all collected
data in order to process the new order properly.
 22 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION

Order Processing – according to its purpose, the
order has to be processed in many departments and
in many supporting systems. The order processing
system is responsible for accurate workflow and for
Mobile workforce all events which may have an impact on the order.
means that Order processing can be related with decomposing the
resources are general order into many tasks which are processed in
not stored in a many systems.
warehouse or
based in an office. Order Verification – this step plays a significant role
in ensuring the efficiency of the process, due to the
reduction of redundant activities.
Order Completion – is one of the most delicate steps
of the process. It influences the entire business of the
company and the way it is perceived by the customer. If
this step involves any kind of field service activity, then
not only the company specialist but also the customer
plays an important role in the execution of the task.
Service Installed – after all activities in the process
(especially on-site ones) are executed, the new service
is provisioned and the customer may enjoy its new
services.
Customer Charging - when all data is sent to the
rating and charging systems, payment for the service
is calculated and the order-to-cash process is then
completed.
Most of the steps mentioned above relate to a proper
order processing engine and flexible integration with the IT
environment. As has been mentioned, the execution of tasks
needed to fulfill the order may involve field activity. In such
a case, even if the workflow is flexible and the system is well
integrated with CRM, it may not be enough, due to the unique
character of field services.
The unique character of field service
Field service (e.g. on-site installation) is often treated as
part of the general workflow in the process and is managed
the same way as do other manual activities. Field service is
different from other activities performed during the execution
of a process, this is due to the fact that it is related to the
mobile workforce, performed in the field and executed
at the customers or networks location. Mobile workforce
means that resources are not stored in a warehouse or
based in an office. When something in the service has to
be changed, changing it may pose a challenge if you don’t
have proper tools. A service is executed in the field, so there
is an additional and crucial aspect – driving time (equal to
a technician’s working hours spend on route) and driving
costs (vehicles, mileage, carbon footprints and many others).
Without any dedicated processes, this time and cost may be
really significant (see the section related to costs). Probably
the most important aspect is that all field activities are
performed at the customers or networks’ location.

PROCESS START
Customer Call

Trouble Ticket
Resolution
YES

NO NO YES
4. Inform customer 7a. Inform
CRM about manual 5b. Inform
7. Service
activation
customer about
intervention customer 6. Contracting problem and
and expected 5a. Notify customer: about request expected time 8. Customer
1. Find Service not possible (auto) Home install premise Service
2. Select 3. Check & time of response of response YES
Customer suggest “another data ordered? installation OK?
package reserve service” scheduling
in CRM YES NO

YES
Check & Reverse NO Reservation SA Request Activation
Request OK? OK?

OSS Process Result SA

OSS C. Resource
Result
A. Feasibility D. Service activation
Feasible? YES Reservation
Check Process Process Process

Home Visit Home Visit

Result Result
NO

B. Schedule manual
intervention

FSM I. Local Exchange Process II. Customer Installation Process

Order Execute Order Execute

registration task registration task

  Figure 1. Example of order-to-cash process supported by CRM, OSS and Field Service Management systems

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011


Visit reservation
Real time scheduling
Automated scheduling
Schedule optimization
Routes optimization
Location based scheduling
On-line schedules
Task details
On-line completion reports
  Figure 2. Optimal field service delivery process and tools for supporting the process
Network location aspects include access keys, procedures
and run services, whereas customer location aspects
include appointment time, a possibility of a customer not
being found on-site, and most importantly - customer
experience. Because of these three main differentiators of
field service, tools which are implemented to support the
organization in field service management, should consider:
Driving time - should be supported by a GIS system. The
more aspects of geographical information are included
in routes calculation (i.e. traffic information), the more
efficient will the solution be. Moreover, routes should
be calculated globally for the whole department. It is
not crucial to prepare the most cost-effective route in
the context of only one technician. It should be optimal,
taking into consideration all tasks and all resources.
Task priorities – some customers or tasks should be
attended to quicker than others because of their value
to the company or their impact on services.
SLA – a very important factor for customer service. If a
CSP needs to achieve a customer churn rate lower than
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION 23
New Service Call
Dispatching
Technician On Route
Task Execution
Order Completed
20%, its technicians must always be on time (with only
15 possible minutes of delay, if no green option was
chosen by the customer or in a set range of time when
the green option was selected).
Warranty – if it is a service call within the warranty
period.
Technician skills matched with order parameters – so
that field work orders are assigned to the appropriate
technicians.
Task duration – calculated based on history data (may
be changed by a technician on site).
Real-time management of any changes in the field
which may appear; if not supported by proper tools
may be unexpected.
All these things in the order-to-cash process are essential
for its efficiency. But how to measure the exact impact and
what specifically affects field service management in the
order-to-cash process?
 24 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
It is all about KPI’s
To have full knowledge about the situation and efficiency
of the order-to-cash process, you can use metrics which
describe how the company handles this part of operations.
There are many KPIs used for this purpose, but let’s focus just
on some of them and examine what influence field service
has on them:
Process time – if the order-to-cash process is
automated, it can be completed quite quickly, in
minutes or even seconds. If there are some manual
back office steps, it can be measured in minutes, but if
it is field service, it has to be measured in weeks. First
of all, an important strategy to boost performance is
to limit field service to the minimum, by automating
tasks performed on the network. In many cases it is
not possible to fully automate it and field intervention is
required. In such cases well implemented field service
management can reduce the process duration from
Maybe the cost weeks to days or even hours.
of field service is
not high enough Process cost – operational expenditures of automated
or savings from processes are generally low and still the main cost
dedicated tools will be field service. Because it can’t be off-shored,
are not significant people, vehicles, petrol are a significant part of the cost
enough? Or process, and can be only reduced by lean management
maybe the cost supported by dedicated systems.
of technology is
higher than the First time fix rate – a crucial KPI, which has impact not
benefits? The only on the process. If the process is not finished during
answer is very the first visit, then the costs of order completion are
short - none of the significantly larger and the cost of repetitive truck rolls
above. is really high. But, there is something more to it. This KPI
is deeply correlated with customer experience. First call
resolution is crucial for customer satisfaction. Without
skilled technicians, provided with mobile access to all
important data and without reactive rescheduling, it is
impossible to achieve its improvement.
Correction costs – similar as in the Process Cost KPI
but with a negative impact on customer experience.
Time to market - the time in which the service is
launched – a major aspect of the order-to-cash
process. The period of time when the process was not
completed should not be charged to the customer’s
bill considering the customer was not serviced. This
is regarded as a more complex process. In this case
the service provider bears not only costs of resources
but also costs of not holding prospective income from
services.
These are not all the possible KPIs, but if the process is
related to on-site activity, these are the most important
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
elements of the process. So why wasn’t it registered as
something important by the service providers and resolved
many years ago? Maybe the cost of field service is not high
enough or savings from dedicated tools are not significant
enough? Or maybe the cost of technology is higher than the
benefits? The answer is very short – none of the above. I will
try to support this answer with real numbers presented below.
Cost inefficiencies don’t have to fly
under the radar
Although in industrialized countries services are a major part
of their economies, the main improvements in productivity still
relate mainly to improvements in manufacturing. However, the
problem of service performance (especially field services) is
remarkable. Even mid-market service providers, for example
with 150 field employees, can waste about 1mln EUR.
In Figure 3 you can see a calculation made by Comarch, based
on an experience in delivering field service management tools
and market research. Savings include all ingredients of TCO
for dedicated tools. How is it possible and why is it still not
resolved, even in companies which have been on the market
for over 100 years? Researchers from British Telecom in their
book “Service Chain Management – Technology Innovation
for the Service Business” claim that this is a consequence of
an uncompetitive regulated market and a result of high profit
margins, leaving little room for the operational inefficiencies
to “fly under the radar”. But the situation has changed and
now the market is becoming competitive and customer-
centric at the same time. So to cut costs, maximize resource
performance and customer experience improvements in the
area of field service, the following aspects are required to:
Improved technician productivity and efficiency due
to providing them with mobile access to task details,
optimized scheduling and routing, as well as accurate
resource management.
Dispatchers equipped with automatic tools for
scheduling - a real-time dispatcher management board,
GIS support and direct contact with technicians, thanks
to mobile access provided for technicians.
Advanced scheduling methods which enable the
calculation of schedules while considering every
aspect of field work orders, including even the most
complex SLA rules.
Easy access to information - when technicians know
what to do and can check their current task list while
in the field, the customer knows the exact time of the
technician’s visit and the CRM is seamlessly integrated,
tasks are completed on the first visit and customers are
satisfied.
 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION 25

The proper
management
of field service
becomes a
necessity and the
process has to be
comprehensively
supported by tools
which really make a
difference.

  Figure 3. Calculation of cost savings after implementation of dedicated tools for field service management
(fsm.comarch.com)

Conclusions

As order-to-cash is a crucial process for every telecom
service provider it should be organized as well as possible.
At the same time it is one of the most frequently executed
processes, so any improvement in it has to be multiplied
by thousands. One of the aspects of the process is field
service. As cost of work still increases in OECD countries,
mileage has to be reduced, due to costs and requirements
for sustainability regarding these processes. Therefore, the
proper management of field service becomes a necessity,
and the process has to be comprehensively supported by
tools which really make a difference.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 26 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS
BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
TRANSFORMATION

How will you benefit

from BSS transformation

H
ow can the strategic goal of any communication
service provider – increasing the market share
– be achieved practically in mature, saturated
markets with significant competition from established
IDEAS IN BRIEF: players and new entrants?
Enabling sales- First of all, no company can grow without protecting
driven product its existing market share effectively. This task can be
innovation achieved by management of customer satisfaction and
loyalty, competitive benchmarking, and ensuring high
Delivering a quality of service. The second task - increasing the market
personalized share and entering new markets - can be much more
customer challenging as it requires a comprehensive, bottom-up
experience transformation. At one end of the spectrum there are
mergers and acquisitions – rare, but spectacular events.
Moving operations At the other end lies continuous marketing innovation
and customer – regular shipments of small yet bright, differentiating
interactions to the ideas in areas such as product, pricing, market segment,
Web distribution, and promotion. This kind of innovation plays
a pivotal role in enabling growth, but does not require the
Focusing on development of products from the pages of a science
exploring market fiction novel. It’s often more than enough to fix a small
segments and difficulty in a customer’s everyday life, increase availability
niches and convenience of using a telecom service provider’s
products, or improve customer experience.
Leveraging
partnerships to Communication service providers often have a vision
maximize returns about how to approach these tasks, but there are ways
on core assets to improve the effectiveness of executing them. Having
already invested so much in next generation networks
and OSS in recent years, operators need to monetize
these investments. Their goal may be set on customer
intimacy or product leadership, and their network may
have the required capabilities and potential, but in terms
of BSS architecture, many service providers are still in
the world of product silos and fragmented processes.
Hundreds of big and small applications forming the overall
IT landscape make business goals difficult to reach and
seriously constrain the operators’ ability to reinvent their
offerings dynamically. They hinder attempts to leverage
relationships with customers and partners in new ways.
Overall, this situation can lead to stagnation and loss of
market share to rivals.
Enabling sales-driven product
innovation
Customers, especially in the enterprise segment, expect
customized products and services - well aligned to their
ICT needs, budget, and corporate goals in general. Thus,
selling mobile subscriptions at a discounted price may no
longer be a viable market strategy when the product is so
commoditized and it’s hard to differentiate one operator’s
offer from all the others.
Imagine an eco-friendly company as your potential
customer. Given that all operators can offer a similar price,
network quality and customer service, how can you win
this opportunity? It’s by making your offer unique – aligned

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011


to this company’s values. Providing a conveniently
packaged “environmental protection solution” - for
example consisting of an online conference product and
a  pack of mobile subscriptions for a predictable monthly
fee and with an estimated overall CO2 footprint.
Bundling existing products into a tailored solution
during the sales process makes your offer stand out
and increases the probability of converting a lead into
a  customer. But there are still some questions that need
to be answered. Does your sales force automation system
support selling ad hoc solutions based on products
defined in the billing system? Can your fulfillment rely
on integration and mapping of products to customer-
facing services and in turn to resource-facing services, to
ensure fast and faultless delivery? Is your billing system
able to put exactly the same solution name, price and
solution item structure on the invoice as in the agreement?
Unfortunately, for many service providers – even market
leaders – the answer to these questions is no.
We spent a lot of time and effort to develop a solution that
would help you solve these challenges. Our Comarch BSS
Suite is now fully equipped with features that let you easily
define and sell customized packages made of existing
products, and offer them to specific customer segments.
Such customer-dedicated solutions are instantly available
for use in the CRM sales and ordering, as well as fulfillment
and billing modules. Thanks to the centralized product
management concept of Comarch BSS, such ad hoc
product bundles are consistently handled across the
solution – from lead, through order, to invoice – in terms of
naming, pricing and business rules.
Delivering a personalized customer
experience
Personalization of product features, customer service and
marketing communications has a strong, positive influence
on customer experience and loyalty. This potential often
goes to waste. First of all, there are countless examples of
customers disappointed at being treated in a standardized,
mediocre way. Imagine you make heavy use of your mobile
internet service, and receive a loyalty offer for contract
renewal where you can choose between a pack of free
airtime minutes and a pack of free text messages, but
nothing else. Since you’re mainly using your phone for
downloading content, social networking or playing games
online, and only occasionally to call someone or send an
SMS, such an offer will be unattractive to you, but may
even be annoying. An ideal offer would take your profile into
account and include additional options of free data traffic
or free downloads packages.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION 27
How do such situations occur, with a complete history of
customer transactions - usage data, payments, service
channels interactions, orders, trouble tickets, leads and
campaign data being stored in the service provider’s
databases? With regards to personalization of products
and customer relationships, this data should be treated
as a “treasure chest” and leveraged for the highest level of
customer satisfaction.
What makes this treasure so hard to be effectively used by PAWEŁ LAMIK
product management, sales, customer service and loyalty Comarch SA
teams? It’s the fact that the data is scattered between CRM Product Manager,
numerous data stores, applications and processes. Telecommunications
Without an IT architecture built around a centralized Business Unit
product catalog and capable of utilizing 360-degree
customer information such negative customer experiences
are more than likely to occur repeatedly.
But personalization of customer dialogue based on
a 360-degree view and analytics is only one of many
promising possibilities. There are also opportunities in
policy management, pricing, bundling and service delivery.
Take policy management as an example – regulators have
taken care of some aspects, such as bill shock prevention.
But customers expect not only more transparency in their
service usage and spending profile. They also seek flexibility,
to tweak thresholds and rules, both on a per-subscription
basis, and within broader units such as a   household
or a company. Other examples of innovations through
personalization include on-demand quality of service Without an IT
(QoS) adjustments, dynamic pricing based on network architecture
characteristics, or pick-and-choose TV channel packages. built around
These opportunities also create multiple difficulties for a  centralized
service providers in terms of OSS-BSS data and events product catalog
integration, configuration management through different and capable of
customer service channels (including self-service), or utilizing 360-degree
setting up dynamic QoS-driven pricing schemes. customer
information
Comarch BSS enables a service provider’s employees to negative customer
access and leverage a 360-degree view of a customer experiences are
relationship. As a centralized system with configurable more than likely to
business rules, Comarch BSS helps you personalize occur repeatedly.
customer experience by differentiating product offerings,
process flows, service levels, and marketing activities
based on customer preferences and trends. In addition, by
using flexible data and functionality access rules, you can
empower your partners - resellers, dealers and telesales
- with the same information and tools your employees
use, thus increasing coherence of customer experience
across various channels. Comarch BSS also provides an
advanced, user-friendly self-service portal for end users
as well as telco managers working for your customers, to
manage their personalized service profiles.
 28 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION

Moving operations and customer Focusing on exploring market segments

Today, interactions to the web and niches
the innovation and
differentiation is in Customer self-service and online selling have the potential Deeper coverage of a market segment or vertical
the effectiveness to reduce a significant portion of a service provider’s industry may bring new potential revenue sources for
of tackling the key repetitive, day to day sales and customer service tasks, communication service providers. So does becoming an
challenge of turning including exchange of paper documents and costly face expert in a given field, or finding a lucrative market niche
your web portal into to face or phone-based interactions. Most individuals before competitors do so. Best of all is be the only player
a robust sales tool; and companies are used to searching, buying and even there. Since such strategies require high organizational
when this happens, consuming products online, not to mention fostering their agility and strong IT support, it’s no wonder they are
it becomes not only relationships with other people on the web. An information frequently best executed by market challengers – small,
a significant source portal was the first step in a service provider’s online yet innovative service providers. They have the required
of leads and orders presence. flexibility to change their business model when their
but also a preferred competition changes theirs, and to outsource the boring,
customer service Opening internal systems to customers and partners is the low-impact business areas to third parties, while remaining
channel. next step. It is a proven method for service providers to in charge, staying close to their customers, and inventing
reduce the cost of customer service and billing. It enables remarkable products.
them to offer customers better pricing transparency by
allowing them to browse their bills, service usage data and Can your company enter new markets and address niche
detailed charges. This way, customers know what they are markets as quickly and cost-effectively? Not with the
paying for, which leads to higher customer satisfaction. burden of organizational silos and fragmented internal
But providing such capabilities to customers is now applications. These are flexible but inefficient, and require
becoming more of a best practice then a novelty. Today, a lot of error-prone manual work, with maintenance
the innovation and differentiation is in the effectiveness of costs steadily increasing and ever longer innovation
While major tackling the key challenge of turning your web portal into lead times. While major business and IT transformation
business and IT a robust sales tool; when this happens, it becomes not may be a suitable way for some operators to overcome
transformation may only a significant source of leads and orders but also a these hurdles, to others it may well be unacceptable
be a suitable way preferred customer service channel. Among the issues of for various reasons. They prefer an alternative path –
for some operators security, usability, performance, licenses or flexibility, one rolling out new services through deployment of adjunct
to overcome these of the toughest challenges service providers face in this solutions managed by standalone business units, affiliate
hurdles, to others matter is user adoption. companies or joint ventures. There are multiple benefits of
it may well be this approach, including reduced financial and marketing
unacceptable for Comarch BSS offers a user-friendly set of self-service tools risk, faster time to market and minimized total cost of
various reasons. for your customers and partners, making it easy for them ownership, dynamically tied to business growth. Fixed
They prefer an to order, receive bills and manage subscriptions online. mobile convergence for SMEs, managed mobility services
alternative path With the Comarch solution, thanks to channel-dependant for multinational corporate customers, cloud computing or
– rolling out new product offering rules and pricing, motivating customers a multi-tenant M2M service enablement platform are just
services through to use the online channel is going to become easier a few examples of services rolled out this way recently.
deployment of than ever. User adoption and partner productivity is also
adjunct solutions improved through dedicated self-service portal features for Thanks to its centralized product and customer
managed by users from different customer segments – residential, SME management as well as flexibility in shaping business
standalone and corporate. Centralized order management eliminates rules and processes, Comarch all-in-one BSS Suite
business units, delivery bottlenecks and enables effective orchestration supports innovative service providers in effective
affiliate companies between order capture, fulfillment and product exploration of valuable market segments and niches. It
or joint ventures. management capabilities, supporting fast provisioning of can serve both as an end to end BSS solution for MVNOs
communication products and first-class customer self- wanting to implement new business models as well as an
service. MVNE gateway for network operators and enablers who
want to apply and automate advanced, multi-sided B2B
interaction schemes in order to exploit the capabilities
offered by Next Generation Networks.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION 29

Leveraging partnerships to maximize The complete set of OSS/BSS tools delivered by Comarch fulfills From our
returns on core assets the requirements of 2.0 partnerships and helps to achieve perspective, the
higher operational efficiency through integration, automation strategic building
Maximizing return on core assets such as customer billing and flexibility. Communication service providers looking for blocks to sustain
relations, customer data and the huge network, OSS/BSS more agile win-win co-operation models can leverage the fact EBITDA growth
and IT infrastructure expenditures requires improvement that Comarch is both a software and service vendor with a are service
of both operational efficiency and transformation of stable financial condition, diversified product portfolio and a innovation, strong
supply and sales channel partnerships - on multiple global presence. customer focus,
levels. The resulting 2.0 partnerships are all about sharing and operational
– data, resources, and infrastructure, but also risk and efficiency. We
responsibilities in the value chain - in unprecedented ways. Conclusions like working with
On the network level, where there’s an almost exponential vendors whose
growth of data traffic, network performance is becoming In the face of high network, IT and business transformation solutions help us
a competitive issue. This is especially true in case of spending, ineffective BSS environments disable efficiency reach these goals
mobile operators. Although LTE and large fiber network and innovation in the delivery of differentiating services with increased
deployments make it possible to provide enough capacity, and customer service. Modern BSS solutions enable productivity and
they are extremely expensive and therefore not feasible efficiency and innovation needed to monetize these lower IT costs.
for all players. Network outsourcing and sharing have investments and to strengthen communication service
become viable strategies for service providers to optimize provider’s position on mature, saturated markets. Comarch Robbert Noorman,
operational costs and it’s not a niche trend (according BSS supports marketing innovation of communication manager Innovation
to Gartner, by 2012, 80% of Tier 1 CSPs will be involved service providers with its open architecture, customer- & ICT
in advanced intra-industry alliances, similar to those centric approach, centralized product management,
undertaken by airlines). built-in business process manager and rule-based KPN Managed
configuration on various layers. Mobile Solutions
In terms of what the network carries, a vast portion of
traffic is generated by content and applications delivered
by OTT (over the top) players – mostly internet companies
having a direct relationship with the customer regardless
of the network he or she is using - as opposed to
traditional telecom services. Communication service
providers treat them as new competitors, and not without
good reason; as Gartner reports, by 2014, over the top
players will have captured almost 10% of consumer mobile
voice minutes in developed markets. Operators will be
better off entering partnerships, not only in the internet and
media industry, but also in other transforming industries
such as utilities, payments, or medicine. As a result, old-
new requirements will appear across network core and
transport, service delivery and BSS/OSS layers alike.
These will include convergent, network access method-
independent service delivery, fulfillment, assurance and
billing, cross-partner integration and multi-tenancy. Since
the lines between a customer and partner are blurred,
products go far beyond basic connectivity services, and
the definition of the role of a service provider in the value
chain is blurred, legacy OSS/BSS product catalog, service
inventory, revenue sharing, or partner management
capabilities will usually prove to be insufficient.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

30 IN FOCUS: BSS/OSS TRANSFORMATION
It’s time to transform
your BSS!
OPTIMIZING
Optimizing architecture for
lowering costs
IT departments are forced to optimize costs.
One way to do this is to reduce the number of
redundant IT systems used for similar activi-
ties. Therefore, a good way to optimize costs
is IT consolidation by using the same sys-
tems in various domains, e.g.:
> pre-paid and post-paid as well as mobile
and fixed customers on the same plat-
form
> retail and wholesale domains on one plat-
form, with the possibility of sharing infor-
mation
> interconnect, roaming, revenue sharing,
M2M and MVNOs on a single platform
Apart from the time and cost savings it also
brings more flexibility, shortens the time to
market, and can be an additional driver of
transformation.
Another way to optimize costs is to eliminate
revenue leakages. This can be achieved by
gaining more control over processes, qual-
ity and revenue assurance tools, as well as
reducing the amount of manually performed
tasks by automating certain processes man-
aged by various departments across the or-
ganization.
Cost optimization also requires flexibility
in launching new products designed by the
marketing department and expected by cus-
tomers. This means introducing new products
without expensive, risky and time-consuming
system upgrades. The need of IT departments
for cost-efficient introduction of new prod-
Go to:
http:// transform-your-BSS.comarch.com
Download series of white papers on BSS transformation
by Comarch.
INNOVATING
ucts, configurations and business processes,
or modifications of the existing ones, calls for
a modern, consolidated BSS.
Innovating without limits for
a winning product portfolio
Communication service providers must be
able to introduce new products and enter
new markets easily. An example here can be
entering the M2M market, strengthening an
operator’s multi-service offering or simulta-
neous use of various business models such
as reselling, enabling or two-sided. IT de-
partments play a significant role in this area
– they need to ensure that IT systems used
in their company empower innovation. BSS is
one of the crucial elements here, so it should
not create any limitations or block innovation,
but support it in the best possible way.
While innovation is best expressed by add-
ing new products to the offer, the majority
of pre-existing products must still be main-
tained. So the total number of products to
maintain is continually growing. BSS must
be able to support the growing number of
products and at the same time eliminate the
need for creation of redundant products by
mechanisms such as personalized pricing
and promotions.
Innovation also requires constant develop-
ment of existing IT systems. Whole new inte-
grations and systems have to be added to the
BSS. Such development can be supported by
applying Service Oriented Architecture using
open interfaces to help limit the overall com-
plexity of the solution.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
ACCELERATING
Accelerating time to market for
faster business results
The changes on the telecom market are hap-
pening faster than ever, and the pressure on
IT departments to keep pace is increasing.
Shortening the time to market from a mere
buzzword often becomes a nightmare.
One of the biggest problems with the time
to market is that legacy systems force you
to configure new products in various places,
with different rules. This involves a complex
process of testing, limits the possibility of
managing the entire process of a product
launch, and does not allow for obtaining con-
sistent product performance data.
This calls for the architecture to be transformed
so that it includes centralized product man-
agement and unified order capturing for all
sales channels. Such a change lets you con-
figure products in a single place, which radi-
cally decreases configuration time. In addition,
product life cycle management lets you bet-
ter organize processes connected with design-
ing, implementing and terminating products.
Another key condition for quick introduction
of new services to the market is pre-integra-
tion of BSS and OSS that lies in a common,
standard data model. Such a model empow-
ers the user, by allowing a uniform view of the
network and service layer. Pre-integrated BSS
and OSS provides the ability to ensure high
quality of service and thus better customer
experience. Additionally, this approach allows
automating many processes and in turn ac-
celerating the business.
 HOT TOPIC: Aiming
IN FOCUS:
for Perfect
BSS/OSS
Customer
TRANSFORMATION
Experience 31

Service Quality and Customer Experience

– where customers meet the network
ustomer Experience Management (CEM) may seem CEM and SQM – alternatives or
C to be a broad term but in practical terms within the
area of telecommunications, it refers to monitoring
complementary solutions?

the stream of transaction records from a subscriber’s
perspective. Is the call setup time at an acceptable level?
Are there places where setting up a GPRS session takes
too long? Was MMS transferring successful? These are the
typical questions a CEM system tries to answer.
Service Quality Management (SQM), on the other hand,
deduces the quality of services from network-related
data. Typically it integrates with a lot of performance data
sources, both high- and low-level. SQM correlates all these
different types of information upon the service model in
order to calculate service-level KQIs from network-level KPIs.
SQM perceives service data through network data while
CEM directly monitors the stream of subscriber transaction
records. Are these two different approaches redundant or
complementary? Are they two alternative ways to achieve
the same objective? If we already have CEM, is SQM still
necessary and vice versa? How can we benefit from one
integrated SQM+CEM environment? MALGORZATA
KWATERA-KNAPEK
The first important difference can be already seen in Comarch SA
the name itself: CEM concentrates on Experience while OSS Solution Manager,
SQM concentrates on Quality. Experience means that the Telecommunications
subscriber needs to use the service so that the operator Business Unit

CEM is reactive
by nature. It can
OSS Console OSS Web GUI BO Universe OSS Portal help detect and
or another 3rd party BI
solve issues before
Comarch OSS Suite a  customer calls
CEM the hotline but not
NGSA SQM with SLA before the issue
appears. SQM
Data Integration Layer can at least try
to be proactive,
because it can
PM solution PM solution PM solution
have the necessary
performance data
before problems
occur.
Network MSC HLR
BTS LTE BS

VLR NodeB

  Figure 1. Integrated SQM+CEM+NGSA environment

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 32 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience
can measure it and deduce problems. Shortly speaking,
IDEAS IN BRIEF: something needs to go wrong first, so that the operator
can react and draw conclusions. Better experience for
What are other customers comes from lessons learned. CEM is
the principal reactive by nature. It can help detect and solve issues
differences before a  customer calls the hotline but not before the issue
between SQM and appears. SQM can at least try to be proactive, because
CEM solution? it can have the necessary performance data before
problems occur. Customers experience problems, because
Are SQM and CEM something went wrong in the infrastructure, at least in
two alternative some cases. This means that, at least in theory, it should
ways to achieve the be possible to predict and prevent them.
same objective?
Now let’s take a look at Quality. SQM can measure quality also
If we already have in areas where there is very little experience. Even in cases
CEM, is SQM still where bad customer experience is a result of the customers’
necessary and vice own errors (for example terminal misconfiguration), SQM can
versa? help: it is sufficient enough to collect KPIs together with the
cause of the problems, e.g. user authentication failure. On the
How can we benefit other hand, SQM relies on service models and associated
from an integrated KQI definitions. Defining CEM indicators is easy and they will
SQM+CEM usually reflect the real perception of the subscriber quite well.
environment? The design and fine-tuning of SQM service models may take
years. Calculations are complicated and multi-dimensional.
The models need to be verified against reality every day.
What is the point of having “all services in green” in SQM if
the customers still experience problems? This can happen
with SQM, a little change in calculation algorithm or threshold
level can immediately influence the service state.
What is the point of
having “all services From SQM perspective, in principle, all cells in the mobile
in green” in SQM network look the same – they will provide the same
if the customers
still experience
problems?
OSS Console OSS Web GUI
Comarch OSS Suite
NGSA
Network MSC
  Figure 2. Integrated SQM+CEM+NGSA+PM environment
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
performance indicators. Of course, we can introduce priorities
and rules to treat rural areas differently than airports and
business centers. We can also prioritize cells by traffic level,
which is also measured by SQM. Yet both possibilities entail
more configurations and more complexity in rule definitions.
The first one also requires a high level of quality of inventory
data, on which SQM will rely when applying these rules.
Again, in CEM it comes naturally: in highly used areas of the
network, a lot of experience records will be gathered and
naturally the concerned cells will get higher priority. In the
new commercial center traffic will be higher on the opening
day: CEM will take this aspect into account by design,
while SQM will need to learn that some cells should have
an assigned higher priority, either by updating inventory
information or by generating a threshold violation due to
traffic which in some cells exceeds everyday values.
It is clear that SQM and CEM are not alternative solutions:
only together can they create integrated quality and
experience management environment where customers
meet the network. Only by having both of them we can
understand how customer problems map onto the network
and vice versa. Only SQM can provide root cause analysis
necessary to understand from a network level, why problems
detected by CEM occur and where and how they can be
fixed. On the other hand, CEM ensures everyday verification
of the SQM service models and enables filling in the
so-called “experience gap” between customer perception
and measured quality. Thanks to this fine-tuning of service
models, SQM can be really proactive and the two systems
sum up to really improved customer experience.
BO Universe OSS Portal
or another 3rd party BI
SQM CEM
with SLA
PM
HLR
BTS LTE BS
VLR NodeB
 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience 33

It is clear that
SQM and CEM are
not alternative
solutions: only
together can
they create
integrated quality
and experience
management
environment where
customers meet
the network.

Correlation

  Figure 3. MMSC device latency (red) vs. MMS sending time (brown)

A look from solution architecture
perspective
Figures 1 and 2 present two possible functional architectures
of an integrated SQM+CEM environment implemented upon
Comarch OSS Suite.
Figure 1 shows SQM+CEM+NGSA (the last being Next
Generation Service Assurance that in this context receives
and manages the alarms created by SQM and CEM),
implemented over an existing distributed performance
management architecture, where every technology is already
covered by a dedicated performance management tool. This
is a relatively fast and cost-effective path towards SQM+CEM
environment, which enables achieving quick wins while
keeping old investments alive.
Figure 2 shows a different approach where the entire
performance management architecture is built from scratch
in order to form one integrated PM+SQM+CEM+NGSA
environment. Bringing benefits such as maintaining and
managing all KPIs in one environment, having all performance
data in one place (for faster and more productive reporting)
and one consistent GUI for all users.
Of course, a hybrid approach is also possible, where
SQM+CEM work partially on the basis of existing performance
management tools and partially use integrated PM for
areas in the network where dedicated PM does not exist. In order to
A hybrid approach may also be considered a step-by-step guarantee a real
migration from a scattered network-oriented performance improvement
management environment to integrated PM+SQM+CEM, in customer
where customer and service finally come into focus. experience, it is not
sufficient enough
Finally Figure 3 presents an example of a report that enables to only implement
to correlate increased MMSC device latency (measured CEM, whereas pure
by SNMP protocol) with increased MMS sending time SQM will never
(in  regarding to transaction records). be able to have
real customer
perspective. Only
Conclusions together can they
give the best
As we have seen, in order to guarantee a real improvement results.
in customer experience, it is not sufficient enough to only
implement CEM, whereas pure SQM will never be able to have
real customer perspective. Only together can they give the
best results. “Together” means also interacting, integrated
and freely exchanging data. And here’s the next challenge,
because usually CEM and SQM areas are handled by different
departments and different processes in the telecom operator
organization. Only will overcoming these processes and
organization challenges make it possible to take a big step
towards better customer experience.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 34 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience
Managing network congestion problems
with automated Configuration Management
and SQM
ommunications service providers have created
C a new customer demand for faster, more reliable
services and increased network capacity for
their subscribers with the use of smartphone’s and
tablets. This trend has been additionally strengthened
by the dropping prices of mobile devices. All of this is
pushing traffic in access network to its limits. Apart from
issues associated with finding new business models for
increasing revenues, operators are also investing in the
rollout of their 3G/4G network. How to manage rollout, so
that the millions of Euros spent actually entail an increase
in network &  service quality?
JAKUB
KAPUSTA-ZALUSKI
Comarch SA Resource inefficiency and service
Telco Consulting Manager, quality – two main challenges
Telecommunications
Business Unit Each operator can manage massive network rollouts to
a certain extent. Aside from a huge investment, the main
limitations are observed in resource efficiency and the
capability to manage both positive and negative impact
IDEAS IN BRIEF: on service quality. One of the ways of improving resource
efficiency is by automating the configuration management
Increasing network process.
and service traffic
So far, a typical approach is that the planner works with
Automating a planning tool and the output is provided via a file-
configuration based interface to the configuration department. The
management as a latter is then responsible for providing the configuration
key element to the network. This means that the input from planners
is combined with the current network information (input
Quality of services from operations or ticketing systems). In fact, this means
perceived by manually re-planning the network, very often without tools
customers or consistency checks that are available for planners.
As the configuration is then integrated in the network,
planners have to also compare the exact implementation
effort with their plans, and manage changes. They can
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
do so either by accepting the differences or by rejecting
and pushing the engineers to update the configuration.
All of this creates an additional workload, which limits
the operator’s possibilities to manage massive network
rollouts. Additionally, also the output quality of the network
is very often different from what was requested.
The second issue relates to the quality of the services
perceived by customers. When an operator is doing large
network rollouts, the standard way of performing drive
tests is not always the most reliable. Additionally, together
with standard coverage and population KPIs, strategy
decisions regarding site locations should take into account
the impact on service quality. However, currently only a few
operators have systems in place allowing for providing KQIs
with aggregated services, based on specified criteria. So
the decisions are purely based on standard coverage KPIs.
Transforming the OSS
In order to mitigate those problems operators must
transform both their OSS and organization. As this is
already happening, there are different strategies on the
market to manage the process. Some service providers
focus on outsourcing as a strategy to eliminate in-house
problems and enable flexibility in their rollout activities.
Such a strategy looks good, but in fact, in order to
successfully implement it, a change in the IT landscape is
also necessary. Other operators choose to address only
OSS transformation, by improving tools and capabilities.
Automating configuration management
Figure 1 illustrates the direction, in which the
transformation of the OSS should head in order to improve
 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience 35

network quality and operations efficiency. There are two
elements of the solution: automation of configuration
management and constant monitoring of service quality.
Automating configuration management is a key element
as it brings planners closer to the network and improves
the quality of the rollout and integration. With such an
approach planners have full control over the network, and
the error rate in configuration requests is significantly
decreased. Additionally, through feedback from the
network, planners can easily control the implementation
of the configuration requests and immediately react on
discrepancies. Such a solution also allows seamless
introduction of a self-organizing network (SON) strategy,
with central configuration management and automated
site configuration delivery, which retains the planners’
control over the process and the network.
A  Service Quality Management (SQM) solution delivers
information, that is used by several departments - starting
from operations and planning departments and ending
on management. The use of the solution in the planning
department is an interesting case. There are two main
processes which can be used. The first one corresponds
with measuring network quality and pointing out areas Automation and
where services are not fully seeing to the capacity of the good control over
network. Such information can be used to trigger network service quality
optimization processes or plan a network upgrade in are one of the
a  specified area. The second process is an automated one, most important
allowing for comparing the service quality before and after elements of cost
network upgrade. This example can show planners how management.
their changes influence services and can steer the planner
towards more efficient network design in future.
Conclusions

What about Service Quality
Management?
In order to fully benefit from the automation, it is also
important to implement a tool and processes that
will measure the impact on service quality. Every
process needs measuring and a constant improvement
strategy – the same applies to configuration management.
Automated configuration management and service quality
management solutions are key components on the road
to manage increasing network and service traffic. As this
trend will stay strong and customers will demand more
and more capacity for their services, it is very important to
keep the network cost under control. Automation and good
control over service quality are one of the most important
elements of cost management.

Service KQIs &

Network Planning Planning DB Network Planning Service Impact Customer
KPIs Customer
Tickets
ite t
d s ou
s
ate ab

Customer
tiv ck

Planning & Operations Service Quality

ac dba

Network Plan
Inventory DB Management
e

Customer
Fe

Tickets

Configuration DB
Network
Configuration Operations Reconciliation
Fault Automated
Configuration Operations Fault Performance
Management Management Management
Management
u lts
Fa

lts
ork

rk Fau
tw

wo
Net
Ne

Network Network

  Figure 1. OSS transformation

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 36 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience

Thriving as Web platform

enabler – “beyond dumb” pipes

he advent of the mobile internet has been a great
T success, but it also appears to have opened
Pandora’s box. The problem is that the surge
in data consumed by users is not compensated for by an
IDEAS IN BRIEF: adequate growth in revenue. This is mostly due to the fact
that in order to promote the mobile internet CSPs have
The solution for introduced flat rates. The tension is even greater because
CSPs is to become the real beneficiaries are over-the-top players like Google,
a Web platform whilst CSPs seem to have been cast the role of “dumb
enabler pipe” providers. As a result, CSPs are seeking a way out, in
order to be able to fill the gap between increasing costs
End-users have and flat revenues. As a remedy, a concept has emerged
different needs and that exposes service delivery platforms to third parties,
thus a different including the community of developers, has emerged. The
perception of what concept is closely related to the idea of operator application
the Web is stores.
CSPs provide Critics of this approach argue that telco operators lack the
something more competences to provide a platform for developers, and that
than a technical the API provided is too limited to be attractive to developers.
oriented QoS Moreover, the problem is that the only platform which really
network holds any significance for developers is the Web itself.
Freedom means
the ability to enjoy End-users inherit CSPs’ problems
applications
without counting From an end-user perspective we might say that problems
the consumed encountered by CSPs are exactly that: their problems.
kilobytes However, this belief is slightly naive as it is always the
customers who finally pay the costs. When looking more
closely at the surge of data consumed by end-users, it turns
out that the majority of data is consumed by relatively small
user groups. These groups are either peer-to-peer application
riders, YouTube addicts or alike. What does this mean for the
average user who probably only needs email access or basic
web browsing services when he/she is on the go? Well, it is
likely that they will pay extra to cover the costs generated
by high data usage profile users. “Paying” can mean literally
both covering the costs and the receiving of a poor quality
of service (QoS). We will most likely pay money. This is due to
the fact that flat rates are calculated according to the rule of
average, which means that the majority of users pay more,
so high data usage users can pay less. Suffering from a poor
QoS is even more evident, as inevitably, when accessing the
internet, each of us has recognized that the real bandwidth
is far smaller than advertised by the CSPs.
Selling more than just “dumb pipes”
The solution, which is expected to solve both CSP and
end-user problems, is shifting the role of telco operators.
Instead of selling Mbps, operators will be able to sell service
and application enablement. This means that application
connectivity with the appropriate QoS is tuned to a
service. From the end-user perspective it is the services
and application, with embedded connectivity, which are
purchased. Embedded should mean that connectivity costs

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience 37

are included in the price for the service/application. For
the end-user it enables maintaining unconstrained access
to their most favored applications/services without the
need to count minutes or kilobytes. For CSPs it enables
receiving compensation for network costs according to the
application/services network usage profiles. An example
service package can be an email and basic web browsing
package or access to social tools, for example, unlimited
use of Facebook or alike. An example from the opposite
end of the spectrum could be a peer-to-peer applications
package. The idea is designed to enable end-users to
decide for themselves what it is they want to use, as we
all have different needs and thus a different perception of
what the Web is.

LUKASZ MENDYK
Web Comarch SA
OSS Product Manager,
Web
Enablement Telecommunications
Business Unit
QoS, Authentication,
Autorisation,
Accounting, payment

Network Service Platform

Network

  Figure 1. Web Enablement platform

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 38 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience
As CSPs are to sell CSP as a Web Enabler
User Experience
enablement rather The question, which may arise, is how to implement the idea
than just being without granting telecommunication operators too much
“dumb pipes”, it power. If the only way to use applications and services was
should allow them via an operator’s application store, it would probably mean
to have a fare that operators would have a monopoly -acting out the role
share of revenue of gate keepers. Being a true enabler must mean that third
generated by the parties have a choice as to whether they want to leverage
customers of over- an operator’s application store or whether they prefer to use
the-top players. alternatives. In the case of the latter, the operators should
only provide a network enablement, or more precisely, the
discussed network QoS required by a third party service or
application. This is expected to enable different business
models as some developers may chose revenue sharing,
leveraging operators application stores with a built-in
charging and billing functionality, while the others may chose
to pay purely for network QoS enablement. The role of CSPs
service platform is depicted in Figure 1.
Selling User Experience– business
models
Retailing QoS by operators will require the technical
capabilities of traffic shaping and policy enforcement, which
may be challenging. The envisioned practical approach
is that when an end-user acquires a “basic browsing”
package and all online applications, which confine to the
assumed “basic” QoS, the providers of these applications
will not require additional enablement. However, if the
Over-the-top application is data intensive, for example video streaming,
players and CSPs in order to guarantee appropriate user experience, the
don’t have to be third party application will need the appropriate network
bitter enemies. QoS enablement. This, in fact, means that CSPs provide
They can cooperate something more than a technical oriented network QoS,
or at least compete instead enabling good user experience. Depending on the
on fair terms business model, the costs of the enablement can be covered
where each party either by the price of the application paid by the end-user,
is compensated or in the case of Ad supported usage of the application, the
for the costs owner of the application will cover the costs. In addition, an
it endures and end-user can purchase the “video streaming” package to
receives revenue cover the costs of the required enablement.
share according to
the value it brings. In conclusion, the overarching idea is that each party is paid
according to the added value it brings to the ecosystem. At
the same time, end-users should have a choice regarding
what they pay and what experience they receive in return.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
CSPs vs. the Over-the-top players
The idea presented above - of CSPs playing the role of a
web enabler - is attractive as it allows both competition
and cooperation with the over-the-top players while in each
case gaining a profit. Competing means that CSPs endeavor
to create their own developer community. Cooperation on
the other hand is treating the over-the-top players much
the same as developers, which means that they are treated
as application providers. But in this scenario over-the-top
players are likely to have direct access to customers which
distinguished them from just individual developers. As CSPs
are to sell User Experience enablement rather than just being
“dumb pipes”, it should allow them to have a fare share of
revenue generated by the customers of over-the-top players.
This is because the proposed mechanism would allow CSPs
to be compensated according to the added value they bring
to the end-user applications. For example, in case of an end-
user application, whose value is based mainly on network
ability to carry the content with appropriate QoS, the CSPs
should get a relatively high revenue share. Video streaming
applications are an example of this. On the contrary, in case
of an end-user application, whose main value is not based
on connectivity but on some other business logic (where
connectivity is not intensively used), the CSPs’ share should
be relativity lower. In either case CSPs may receive adequate
compensation for network related costs. For us - as end-
users - it seems to be a perfect solution as everybody
receives a fare share according to the value they bring.
Conclusions
Over-the-top players and CSPs don’t have to be bitter
enemies. They can cooperate or at least compete on fair
terms where each party is compensated for the costs it
endures and receives revenue share according to the value
it brings. This is also good news for end-users who, after
all, always pay the final bill. If the role of web enabler was
to be taken over by CSPs, and connectivity costs covered
by applications, this would allow end-users to retain the
freedom which flat rates provide. Freedom means the ability
to enjoy applications without counting consumed kilobytes.
At the same time heavy usage users don’t have to add to
the bills being paid by modest users or broaden the CSP
revenue-costs gap. It also dispels the CSPs’ frustration
caused by thriving over-the-top players being the only
winners, while CSPs suffer the costs.

How to transform your BSS to achieve
the perfect customer experience
e live in a world where communications go far
W beyond voice and SMS. A mobile phone serves
for video streaming, navigation, playing music
and e-mail, and the traditional use of voice and SMS can
account for just a small portion of the total time that a
handset is in use. The expansion of operators’ service
offerings into data services has a huge impact on the
underlying platform. Offering more data services not only
entails additional network capacity investments, but also
calls for extra capabilities to be added to the BSS platform.
The operator must be able to charge for the new types of
services and adapt quickly to competition, while keeping
the customer experience intact.
I already have a billing system – why
transform it?
The increasing availability and choice of smartphones, their
wider capabilities and the reduced prices of mobile data
offerings have led to wider use of mobile data services. This
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
HOT
HOTTOPICS:
TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience 39
poses a new challenge for the operators: the revenues from
mobile data services are no longer covering the costs of
network maintenance and network capacity investments.
Flat rate data offers are evolving into more complex products,
where the various services can be rated and charged
differently. But the question is this: are the billing systems
currently used by operators fit for the new charging models?
The increasing complexity of charging models does not only
mean an operator has to face redefining rating rules. The
underlying BSS platform must also have enough capabilities PEKKA VALITALO
to process the growing number of event data records. It must Comarch SA
be able to differentiate the amount of data and the service BSS Market Analyst,
types that the customer is using, in order for the operator Telecommunications
to charge properly for the service usage. As mobile data Business Unit
services are becoming increasingly popular, the existing
BSS platform that has been capable of simple data session
charging, is facing bigger challenges. This is true especially
now, when operators have started to cut down on all-you-
can-eat data plans and introduced tiered levels of data
quotas per month (including service-specific data quotas).
 40 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience
Then there is a question of another type of differentiation
IDEAS IN BRIEF: between pricing models – i.e. prepaid versus postpaid.
Offering both prepaid and postpaid services can pose
Why you need to a challenge for operators. When the products are rated
transform your and charged on different systems, maintenance of both
current billing systems becomes much more complicated and expensive
system than having a single, convergent platform for handling both
prepaid and postpaid services. The same also applies for
How a modern different types of services (for example one billing system
convergent for mobile services and another billing system for xDSL
billing platform services). The ideal billing solution should be able to charge
can help all the services, regardless of the underlying network
you improve technology. Additional problems may occur when introducing
customer new charging models, because the legacy system may
experience while not be capable of supporting them (for example, the billing
keeping costs system used for mobile data may not be able to handle data
low services efficiently enough).
What Complexity of charging and pricing models is however just
features and one side of the coin. Due to heavy competition, telecom
functionalities operators are also forced to shorten the time-to-market for
you should look new services. Delayed service not only entails additional
for in an ideal work, but also potential loss of revenues. Short time-to-
convergent market also has another advantage: if an operator is the first
billing solution one among its competitors to introduce a given service to
the market, this service is in unique position, which provides
a strong competitive advantage.
The challenges described above are pushing the operators
Are the billing towards transforming the billing platform into a more
systems currently convergent one. The benefits from this transformation include
used by operators not only business and revenue growth, but also the ability
fit for the new to react faster to market changes, improve the customer
charging models? experience and reduce operating costs.
Towards customer-centric BSS
The revenues The relationship between an operator and its customers
from mobile data has shifted in favour of the customer and evolved into a
services are no more customer-centric model compared to a couple of
longer covering the years ago. The times when the customer and operator had
costs of network a simple relationship (e.g. the customer used a fixed line
maintenance and telephone service and received an invoice once per month)
network capacity are over. More stakeholders have entered the market and the
investments. service that a customer purchases from an operator acts
as a channel for additional content. The operator also has
more business partners than before (e.g. content providers,
interconnect partners, resellers) and they must be managed
efficiently too, but the main focus stays on the end customer
(regardless of whether it is a business customer or an
individual).
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
The operator’s billing platform should support the customer-
centric approach, by enabling the creation of convergent
offers and personalized services. The operator should be
able to provide any combination of services in a bundle, and
constantly improve the customer experience. Customer data
becomes a valuable asset that should be leveraged through
up-selling and cross-selling.
Things to look for when looking for
a convergent billing platform
Support for numerous business models
The operators that have been in the market for a long time
may have modified their business models during the years of
operation, or added new ones. Perhaps the focus has been
mainly on business customers, and only later expanded
to individuals, or vice versa. Perhaps the sales model was
based only on direct selling at first, and later it was extended
to involve resellers too. Business models evolve. This is why
operators need to have a single, convergent BSS platform to
support as many business models as possible. Each time
the business model changes, the existing BSS platform
should be able to support it.
A truly convergent billing system should be service-agnostic,
and able to be used in any business model with rating,
charging, billing and invoicing for any services offered. That
kind of platform should also show versatility, which means
the system can operate in a diverse range of configurations
with different providers.
Ability to reduce the time-to-market
If an operator’s products are defined in multiple systems,
those systems can be used to launch new products and
charge for their usage, but sooner or later the restraints
will become too severe. Operators may find that their
current BSS platform does not support modern products,
that configuration of individual products takes too much
time, or that system maintenance becomes too expensive.
The current process of product and offer introduction may
already include activities such as duplicating product
information (the same information is entered multiple times),
struggling to keep the fragmented data consistent, and
maintaining the integrated legacy systems. The amount
of work in these areas can be significantly reduced with
a single convergent billing platform.
If we take a case of a greenfield operator in rollout phase
of its services, short time-to-market may even be more
important as it speeds up the start of the revenue stream.
A convergent billing system should also provide convergence
on the prepaid/postpaid level and on a service level.

This provides a foundation on which the greenfield operator
can construct a large customer base, without limiting the
available payment options.
Legacy systems that are still in use in many telecom
businesses may limit product and offer definitions or rating
and charging scenario definitions. By transforming the
billing system into a convergent platform, product managers
will gain an opportunity to define and apply many kinds of
associations and rules to the products and their charges,
which will make their work a lot more efficient.
A truly convergent billing system has a modular and object-
oriented construction, which enables fast and simple
implementation of new services. Definition of new services is
possible thanks to the parameterized services and business
rules, and does not then require modifications of the
application code (hard coding).
Standardization
Whether an operator needs to fulfill almost the complete set
of eTOM processes or just a subset of them, a convergent
billing system should come with a suite of out of the box
integrated applications to match the individual operator’s
needs. This enables the operator to avoid the challenge of
integrating various software solutions from multiple vendors.
Providing multiple types of operation
possibilities
Also, some operators have their business model based
on a strong outsourcing strategy, enabling the operator
to focus on the most strategic subjects instead of system
maintenance. Thus the development and operation efforts of
the billing-related activities should be able to be outsourced
to the BSS vendor.
One platform for both prepaid and postpaid
services
In legacy billing solutions, the operator often maintains
two separate systems for postpaid and prepaid services. If
similar products are offered in postpaid and prepaid models,
there may be a lot of duplication. Thus having one solution for
both types of offers has great advantages (such as cost of
ownership and flexibility). Additionally this change will cause
all event types (voice, data, SMS) to be rated and billed by the
same convergent billing system. Furthermore, the extra work
caused by duplicated product catalog and customer data
records, as well as all other problems associated with mixed
prepaid / postpaid offers, can be eliminated with a single
convergent platform.
A well-chosen convergent billing system enables postpaid
events to be rated in real-time if needed, reducing the
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience 41
configuration differences between prepaid and postpaid The ideal billing
tariff plans. Consequently, only the core of the billing system solution should
should be aware of the difference between a postpaid be able to charge
and a prepaid event. All other elements of an operator’s IT all the services,
systems and telco network can be completely unaware of regardless of the
this difference. This results in a very clean implementation of underlying network
logic for these systems. technology.
Easy integration with other IT systems
To support transformation towards a convergent billing
platform, it is necessary to integrate existing IT systems
with the platform. Such development can be supported
by applying Service Oriented Architecture with the use of
open interfaces, which can help limit the growth of the total
complexity of the solution. A convergent billing system can
support the innovation of operators through the inclusion
of features such as an open architecture, customer-
centric approach, centralized product management, built-in
business process manager and rule-based configuration on
various levels.
Multiple levels of convergence
Convergence exists on multiple levels. Prepaid and postpaid,
multiple underlying network technologies within a single
platform, many different customer types, all services in one…
these are just some examples. Having a separate platform
for each of these issues would significantly complicate an
operator’s daily operations.
A convergent billing system allows operators to price and
invoice distinctly different services together, with new
combinations created quickly to reflect market changes. Operators may find
A unified customer account enables an operator to view the that their current
big picture easily, spotting cross-service relationships and BSS platform does
buying patterns that show new business opportunities. not support modern
products, that
Easy introduction of new charging models configuration of
As mentioned earlier in this document, network capacity individual products
investments and maintenance costs are increasing more takes too much
rapidly than the revenues from data service usage. In time, or that system
addition, a small percentage of subscribers are using most maintenance
of the network capacity, thus causing network problems for becomes too
other subscribers and influencing their customer experience. expensive.
This is why policy management has become a very popular
concept. It was used for network throttling before, but now
it is becoming more common as a tool for providing value-
added services and segmenting data services. For example,
the usage of Facebook via smartphone can be offered with
a  cheaper tariff than the usage of YouTube.
Operators should have policy management capabilities in
their billing platform, to be able to offer personalized services
and tariffs to their customers, while removing the unlimited
 42 HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience

There is no excuse data consumption plans and differentiating service types. A
for delays in convergent billing system enables operators to control and
system operation, charge the subscriber services basing on the service type,
especially if these instead of general data consumption only. This provides
delays are visible to operators with new business opportunities, reduces the
the end customer. network investment and maintenance costs, and improves
customer experience.
Better performance of the billing platform
The increasing volume of transactions (for example, from
data services that are charged based on a service type) puts
a lot of pressure on the billing platform. It must therefore be
scalable and support a high volume of transactions. There
is no excuse for delays in system operation, especially if
these delays are visible to the end customer. For example, if
a prepaid service is not charged correctly and a customer’s
prepaid account is charged much later than when the
service was used, the customer may become confused
about the actual available balance on their account. Another
issue is when service performance is too low and a service
cannot be used by a customer. This causes a negative
customer experience and leads to revenue loss.
From the hardware perspective, efficient data processing
is crucial. An efficient data processing engine in the billing
system can handle more events with similar hardware in
a  given time, than a less efficient tool (where more hardware
is needed to reach similar rating performance). A convergent

Product Managers IT Billing Managers Finance Backoffice

Product System Customer

Management Management Management
GUI GUI GUI

Product Catalog Manager, Comarch Convergent Billing

Product Inventory
Business Process Management Existing Systems
of the Operator

Customer
Data Access &

Specification & Offering Resource Collection

Management

Information Reporting DMS/Archive

Management Management Management
Management
Inventory
Sales Billing Account Receivables Billing Inquiry, Dispute
Management Price Management Management & Adjustment
Support MNP

Payments
Product Instances

Product Catalog Customer Product System

ESB / Integration Bus

Specification Configuration G/L

Product Offering
Repository

Product Specification
Financial Data Pricing Algorytm Output Definition Service Usage
Distribution Channel Data Warehouse
Product Promotion Customer Bill,
Product Offering Price Reports Rating Element Customer Bill Applied Customer
Collections Billing Rate
Printing

Rating & Pricing Processes Output Formatting Central Log

Billing Processes Manager
Data Processing

Product Lifecycle Product/Service Transactional Bill Format /

Bill Calculation Dopcument Process
Management Rating Render Scheduler
Production
Product Information Online
Publisher Charging

Active Mediation Billing Mediation

Fixed, Cable IP, IMS, NGN 2G, 3G, 4G

Multi-Service Network

  Figure 1. High level architecture of Comarch Convergent Billing

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011


billing solution should include a high-performance rating
engine, and in this way it should reduce hardware costs.
Additional savings on hardware can be reached by
consolidating the separate legacy billing systems into
a  single convergent platform.
Apart from high performance of the billing platform, efficiency
can be increased by automating mass data processing.
A convergent billing system provides tools for configuring
and scheduling processes (one benefit of this is that billing
procedures can be performed during the night when the
system is not overloaded with regular user activities) and
real-time updated graphs and charts about the process
status. It should also be possible to issue detailed reports
about, for example, errors.
Comarch Convergent Billing overview
The business challenges that have been presented in this
document, can be approached with the Comarch Convergent
Billing solution. The solution is a high capacity, scalable
billing system which can be used in any service provider
business model including fixed, mobile, broadband, satellite
and cable TV operators, as well as multi-service and MVNOs.
The solution enables fast and simple implementation of new
services offered in the process of business development,
and can operate in a diverse range of configurations with
different providers.
In order to streamline the management of complex products,
it is recommended that Comarch Convergent Billing is used
together with an additional module for product management:
Comarch Central Product Manager. This module handles
offers and product specifications, defines relationships
between various products, and specifies which ones are
exclusive or only sold as a component of a bigger package.
It also defines target customers, their locations, and many
other parameters. Comarch Central Product Manager is an
integral part of the overall BSS architecture, and can also
be integrated seamlessly with other components of the
Comarch BSS Suite if needed.
Comarch Convergent Billing solution can also be used
together with a Product Inventory module that manages the
product instances. The Product Inventory module provides an
interface for other modules (including Comarch Convergent
Billing) to create and terminate product instances, as well
as fetching the product instances to be used in the billing
system.
The logical architecture of the Comarch Convergent Billing
module is presented on the Figure 1.
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
HOT TOPIC: Aiming for Perfect Customer Experience 43
The system can be used for both prepaid and postpaid The customer
events. From the implementation point of view, in the system experience is the
there is almost no difference between a postpaid tariff plan strongest focus
and a prepaid tariff plan. When introducing new tariff plans as it becomes
for the products, the logics from the old tariff plans can be the most efficient
re-used. For example, extending a prepaid tariff plan into a weapon in the
postpaid tariff plan is a straightforward operation, because constant fight for
both tariff plans can use the same configuration rules and a customers.
single database that contains the accounts and tariff plans.
When it comes to data processing, Comarch Convergent
Billing also shows very high performance. It contains two
internal components for data processing – one for mass
data processing and one for real-time processing. Both
components use the same administration application and
configuration rules. The efficiency of the system makes it
process even the most complex tariff definitions quickly and
accurately.
In addition to the key functionalities such as prepaid and To use the business
postpaid billing, the system supports multiple types on wired opportunities,
and wireless networks. It also contains a built-in business the underlying
process management functionality, supports a wide range of billing system
additional processes relating to core functionalities, such as of the operator
mediation, payment processing, dunning and G/L integration, must be capable
and has a modular architecture, providing various interfaces of enabling new
to external systems. types of services
and bundles and
The key benefits of the solution can be summarized ensure a short
as shorter time-to-market for new services, reduced time-to-market
maintenance costs, convenient adaptation to new business for the services,
models within the same platform, and improved customer while at the same
experience. time providing cost
savings.
Conclusions
The telecom business has become more customer-centric
than ever before. The customer experience is the strongest
focus as it becomes the most efficient weapon in the
constant fight for customers. Despite the challenges of falling
revenues from voice services, the operators get additional
business opportunities from providing new, personalized
services to their end customers. Customers also appreciate
the smooth operation of the services they are using, and
pricing transparency – customers must know what they are
paying for.
To use the business opportunities, the underlying billing
system of the operator must be capable of enabling new
types of services and bundles and ensure a short time-to-
market for the services, while at the same time providing
cost savings.
 44 BEYOND BSS/OSS

A new era of tagging

ince the very beginning of human civilization Over the recent years, traditional barcodes, called 1D
S people have always had a tendency to mark and
label things, which at first was motivated purely
barcodes, have been slowly but successively replaced by
their improved successors, 2D barcodes. These, as compared
by the desire to express ownership but later it evolved into to the 1D’s capacity of a dozen or so digits, can store several
a way to maintain order and facilitate the management of thousand of characters, which makes it possible for the
belongings. With recent technological development new producer to put much more machine-readable information on
ways of tagging have emerged, not only providing new, more the packaging, than just the product’s identifier.
convenient ways of putting order numbers onto physical
objects, but also enabling the creation of completely new
functionalities, going far beyond original intentions.

GRZEGORZ WACHOCKI The beginning of things – traditional

Comarch SA barcodes
R&D Department Manager,
Telecommunications Let us begin with traditional and ubiquitous barcodes, the
Business Unit invention of which was mainly driven by the need for having
groceries labeled by something which is easily recognizable
by machines. They are completely illegible for the human
eye, but a cashier equipped with an electronic reader can   Figure 2. 2D barcodes are created on the base of the
easily and quickly count the total price of even the biggest same idea as the traditional barcodes but can store much
supermarket cart filled up with the smallest articles. more data

2D barcodes can One step further – RFID

store several
thousand of Another technology that was originally used for product
characters and identification is RFID (radio-frequency identification). However,
can store much the technology has evolved from its original use and is
more than just the currently quite a powerful tool. The idea behind it was to store
product’s identifier. data in a small silicon chip which transfers it to a  reader in
the form of an electromagnetic radio signal. This can improve
the shopping experience, as the cashier does not need to
read articles in the cart one by one because it is possible to
pass the whole cart through a gate equipped with a special
antenna that detects all the tags at once. Shopping can really
  Figure 1. Traditional 1D barcodes be as simple as that, theoretically at least.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 BEYOND BSS/OSS 45

Composed of a small silicon chip and an antenna, RFID that it is an RFID tag, and thus enable a new range of
tags, in contrast to barcodes, can be applied to virtually any possible applications. This makes it possible to tag, read and QR applications:
objects, such as clothes, thickets or credit cards.. identify not only physical but also virtual objects, such as
an electronic business card or your fly ticket which exists Marketing &
only in your phone memory, iyou do not have a physical advertising
Entering the mobile market ticket but you can still enter the aircraft. Communication
between the two NFC-enabled devices means that two NFC- Information
Together, with the boom of smartphones over the recent enabled handsets can exchange data in an y manner. This distribution (e.g.
years, these technologies have become very popular on can include sharing local network configuration, exchanging when printed on
the mobile market due to embedding of these readers contact data between devices or even making money business cards)
into handsets e.g. a camera with an appropriate software transfers between two tapped phones - though in this
piece for barcodes and NFC technology for RFID. The case some confirmation from the user would probably be Links to resources
mentioned NFC (Near-Field Communication) technology is necessary. located online from
a communication protocol designed for portable terminals the real world
allowing them to read RFID tags. It also provides new features
based on a radio communication channel, which is designed Logistics and
to work only on very small distances – a few centimeters at transportation
most. Integrated in a mobile phone, the technology enables
not only to read RFID tags attached to objects but also Providing context-
makes it possible for the phone to imitate a contactless based information
RFID tag or to communicate and exchange information with about products/
another NFC device. services/places

Indoor navigation
A world of possibilities – how are
tagging technologies used? Tagging of goods

There are numerous possible applications of such

technologies, now embedded in a small phone that everyone
carries in their pocket, which are way more interesting than NFC applications:
shopping and check-out improvement. Next-generation
tagging is one example. It enables the label to store Electronic tickets
additional data related to the product such as its description,
as well as a command for the handset to display a web site Mobile payments
or launch an application that helps the user to configure   Figure 3. RFIDs may have many forms, from a simple and micro-
the product or service he or she is just about to buy. Indoor sticker ,as viewed in the picture, a key ring or virtually payments
location is another example. It can replace the old-fashioned anything that may be an embedded inductor/antenna
or just simply a really small silicon chip. There are also
“you are here” marks, on maps, with an advanced easy-to- Mobile promotional
available ones that can be implanted into the human body.
use system which can show the person’s location on their coupons
smartphone screen, as well as direct the user to a chosen
destination. Copying data from a business card (encoded in Conclusions Loyalty programs
one of the mentioned technologies) with the use of a phone
without the risk of making an error in unfamiliar foreign Initially intended to simply attach identifiers to products, Indoor navigation
names or long phone numbers, is yet another element on the RFID and barcodes triggered the appearance of new
the long list of possible benefits of tagging technologies possibilities and solutions. This in turn has made ‘next Quick retrieving of
utilization. generation tagging’ even more attractive and therefore, has information and
increased their popularity. configuration to
The solutions provided by the NFC technology alone can the mobile phone
be even more amazing when you consider the various Will everything in the world be soon labeled with RFIDs? (e.g. for WIFI service
communication modes (RFID reading, RFID simulation, Well, maybe not everything, but certainly some products, configuration)
and communication between two NFC-enabled devices). such as those requiring complex or personalized instructions
The first one is not very surprising as it allows the phone of use, will soon be equipped with a chip. This will improve Access
to read the RFID tag exactly the same as any other reader customer assistance and enable new functions such as authorization (e.g.
and take corresponding action according to the obtained multimedia guidance put on a pill box, providing dosage buildings, cars)
value, but the remaining two are much more powerful. RFID information adjusted for the particular person who will be
simulation implies that the phone can imitate (simulate) using it.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 46 BEYOND BSS/OSS
Telework – an unexploited
niche for telecom operators?
ith the constant progress of communication
W technologies - mobile telephony, Internet, and
consumer devices like PCs, laptops, netbooks,
tablets, smartphones - it is becoming more and more
IDEAS IN BRIEF: possible for people to work from home or other locations
outside their central office, distribution or production sites.
Working from home Telework has the potential to transform working patterns
could save you and to positively impact health, safety and the wellbeing of
those 1-2 hours of the people involved. Telework has the potential to become
commuting time an interesting part of any telecom operator’s portfolio.
Mobile telephony Have you ever woken up and experienced that “Oh no, not
and mobile Internet again!” feeling, knowing you’re about to spend an hour in
offers more a  huge traffic jam, nine hours in the office, then again an hour
freedom in terms in a traffic jam? If you did, perhaps you’ve heard of telework
of choosing the – the idea of working remotely and substituting work
location of work travels and commuting with telecommunications. Working
from home could save you those 1-2 hours of commuting
Billing can be split time, gasoline expenses as well as spare the world a few
- some services kilograms of daily emission of CO2. Some people tend to work
are billed to the more productively outside of the office – experiencing less
employer, some distraction and being motivated to prove, that their boss’s
billed to the decision to let them work remotely was correct. Can anybody
employee work remotely? Of course telework is not for everybody. If
your work requires your physical on-site presence (e.g. such
jobs as chef, working at a carwash, selling tickets at the
train station or running a farm) – working remotely is not
necessarily for you.
Employees save Telecommunications support telework
time, get more
choice and work Since there would be no telework without modern
arrangement telecommunications services - let’s find out how they can be
flexibility. useful in typical telework arrangements. Let’s start with mobile
services. Mobile telephony and mobile Internet seem to offer
more freedom in terms of choosing the location to work. It
could be relatively static like home, but it could be also a coffee
shop, a park, or even such a dynamic location as a train or
plane. For most of us however, it would be very inconvenient
to run an online meeting, not to mention a videoconference
from, say, a coffee shop. This is due to limited privacy as well
as potential quality issues (can your mobile provider guarantee
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
uninterrupted coverage, as well as satisfactory levels of
throughput, packet loss, average jitter and delay during an
important video conference?). Quality of service is still a major
challenge mobile operators need to address. On the other hand,
investments in LTE and the advent of 4G technologies looks
promising in this context. Perhaps the extreme, 100% location-
independent flavor of telework with guaranteed reliability could
be offered by mobile operators to companies and become
a  small yet growing revenue stream.
Telecommuting – how does it differ from
telework?
The less mobile category of telework, where daily commuting
is eliminated (but not necessarily all work travels) and an
employee is mainly working from a single location (e.g. home
office) is called telecommuting. Telecommuting supported by
fixed-broadband services creates interesting opportunities
for operators, their corporate customers and the employees
of the latter. Let’s take Nordic countries as an example -
telecommuting is quite popular there. There are operators who
offer a special type of triple-play service: a large enterprise
signs a contract and DSL lines are installed at the homes of
selected employees (telecommuters). The employer pays.
Thanks to the DSL line, an employee can access company
systems via VPN, send e-mail, attend online meetings and
so on. But for private use he can sign an agreement with the
same operator and order IPTV and/or VoIP services. These
services are activated on top of the DSL line serving as a base
service. The private person pays bills and can manage his
subscriptions (e.g. through a dedicated self-service portal),
without the access of that person’s employer to the information
regarding those private services. The company can only see
Internet access DSL line parameters and statistics (preferably
through a corporate self-care portal).
Split billing – how to do it well
In terms of BSS, a feature which enables the described
scenario (some services paid by the employer, some by the
employee) is called split billing. There are different possible
 BEYOND BSS/OSS 47

ways to handle this. ADSL subscription installed at an
employee’s home can be paid by his employer. ADSL costs
can also be taken off the employee’s gross salary - this way,
in some countries, an employee is saving a percentage
of tax from the bought amount. A company may also pay
completely, partially or not at all for private IPTV and VoIP
for an employee’s subscriptions. Optionally, an employee
with ADSL from his company may sign a direct agreement
with the same operator and have IPTV and VoIP usage billed
separately on his private account.
Except for billing, there are more areas to consider – product
management, pricing, agreement handling, customer order
capture, product terminations and transferring, dunning, and
campaign management, just to name a few. A CRM / billing
solution must support management of both residential and
business customers, customer roles (payer, owner, user) in
the context of subscriptions, linking of products on separate
customer accounts during product ordering, and of course
splitting charges. In reality, a typical telecom’s silo-based
architecture with its legacy CRM, billing and delivery systems
has a low capability of covering these requirements and
is not able to meet the expectations regarding support for
the  telework scenario described above.
Win-win game
Assuming an operator does have a modern BSS solution in
place. What are the key benefits of telecommuting service
availability? Employers can reduce office maintenance
costs, as well as increase productivity and loyalty of their
employees (by allowing them to work remotely while
financing their DSL line and other necessary services).
Service providers gain a new niche for their triple-play
services - a cross-selling opportunity at a lower subscriber
acquisition cost. The environment is less polluted.
Opportunities for people to participate and remain in
employment extend. Employees save time, get more choice
and work arrangement flexibility. They also gain more
convenience – if they switch their employer, they can retain
private services from the operator (by just transferring the
DSL line onto themselves or onto the new employer) – thus
avoiding service provider switching hassle. PAWEŁ LAMIK
Comarch SA
CRM Product Manager,
Conclusions Telecommunications
Business Unit
Telecommuting works well in all-IP fixed broadband
networks. Services like VoIP, VPN, videoconferences and
online meetings enable virtual teams of teleworkers to
collaborate effectively with their “on-site” colleagues and
prove that physical presence in the office during work hours
may be overhyped. Mobile operators, introducing mobile
broadband based on next-generation networks with high
quality of service, have a great opportunity to support the
growing trend, virtualizing workspaces and transforming
workers into teleworkers. Telework supported by a flexible
BSS platform also enables the introduction of innovative
marketing offers to companies and their employees.
Maybe sometime soon you’ll wake up an hour later than Employers can
usually, and instead of driving to the office, you’ll just go to reduce office
another room, sit down, switch on your laptop and perhaps maintenance costs,
your TV set to set up a videoconference with your virtual as well as increase
teammates. After all, the telecommuting motto says: work is productivity and
something you do, not something you travel to. loyalty of their
employee.

Salary

ADSL can also be paid from gross salary John Smith:

IPTV/VoiP usage is billed separately to residential customer and a Bricks
Corporate customer:
the employee R Us teleworker
Bricks R Us

Billing account: Billing Billing Billing account:

Customer care department John’s private bill
Company pays for ADSL Invoice sent to end-users
subscriptions installed at homes for the part for which
of employees. the  company does not pay
Company may also pay completely
or partially or not at all for private
Non-bilable account: IPTV and VoIP subscriptions of an
John Smith as employee
an employee
(teleworker)
Private IPTV/VoiP subscriptions are using
ADSL line activated under company
Subscription hierarchy

  Figure 1. Telecommuting

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 48 TELCOSPHERE BLOG
Six issues about the role of BSS
in the M2M business model
Mobile operators need a completely new BSS for M2M because M2M is a totally different
business model.
The M2M business model is mature and well-known by
operators, although the facts that the technology is relatively
cheap and that the telecom market is quite saturated offer
new opportunities for growth. Final charging and invoicing
are not the main issues, and very often the existing billing
systems for the enterprise segment are good enough to
fulfill a standard M2M business model. I don’t recommend
using retail BSS; I know a case when an SMS campaign was
addressed to air conditioners. The end user is different, the
PIOTR MACHNIK processes are different and the ARPU is different.
Comarch SA
Vice President, Product Operators can consider cooperation with specialized service
Management & Marketing partner or buying a new charging or billing solution for M2M
Telecommunications when:
Business Unit
1. They would like to be more independent from
M2M aggregators, have direct contact with end
customers(usually corporates or enterprises which are
their customers in a purely telecom business sense),
and deal with many aggregators instead of having one
strategic partner reselling the communication pipe to
M2M devices and dealing with end customers.
2. The cost of upgrading the current billing system is
unacceptable. The current billing system doesn’t
recognize the difference between traditional mobile
subscription with ARPU at 20-40 EUR, and M2M with
ARPU at 1-5 EUR.
3. The current billing system doesn’t support hierarchical
billing or charging scenarios for B2B and B2B2C
business models.
4. The current solution consists of numerous modules, is
too complicated, and incapable of adopting new tariffs
and products or of integrating with non-standard M2M
infrastructure.
Of course basic set of M2M functions shall include:
1. Subscription management (hierarchy, access
technology and procedures).
Comarch Technology Review   01/2011
2. EDRs correlation, intelligent de-duplication, and
enrichment with e.g. location context.
3. Bulk SIM activation and management.
4. Fraud prevention to support M2M policy assigned to
specified SIM or data source.
5. Workflow processes and automation of logistics and
selfcare.
6. Control Tools and integration gateways.
At Comarch we provide a solution for managing this business
area called the M2M Platform.
M2M charging and tariffs are flat
and  simple
It depends. When operators come to vertical business they
have to think in categories of value adequate for specified
vertical markets. The charging policy for an M2M business
evaluates simple tariffs (including monthly or annual fee),
usage-based charges beyond thresholds (like 100kB/month),
and more specific use cases such as:
1. Quantity of transmissions for toll road or periodical
maintenance of expensive electrical equipment.
2. Completed data transfer from a number of machines
(terminals) in a specified time frame for utilities or real
estate business.
3 Direct (from end terminals at customer premises) or
drop-in (from concentrators) mode of transmission for
RFID like ZigBee.
4. Uni-directional/bi-directional transmission for upgrades
and media downloads (as in the connected cars
business case).
 TELCOSPHERE BLOG 49

5. Content-based policy (short notification of and unified business applications framework is a key 5. Specified roaming agreements for international
alarms, and big file transfer for online security for communication operators who want to increase use (logistics, carriers, global vendors of moving
business cases in eHealthcare diagnostics their share in the global M2M pie. goods) or multiIMSI, MultiMSISDN.
platforms like Comarch iMed24 traffic
management for electronic readers such Aggregation of M2M services and co-operation with 6. Users are different and demands are different.
as Amazon Kindle). For example ECG on-line many M2M service and vertical partners, could be In voice and internet it’s quite simple. We talk
examination is a precise sequence of both side the best way to increase the profitability of an M2M or we download content and we pay for it. But
notifications and big media files downloads business. When they stay offering pure network in M2M we can have, for example, a case of a
when blood sugar check consist of few very service they could lose customers to service company which leases fitness machines, trucks
small checks in specified time of the day. aggregators. or bulldozers. The benefit of a customer is in
using M2M remote diagnostics for significant
6. Risk-share and revenue-share model based In my opinion the best strategy for Telco Operators is: reduction of costly on-site maintenance and
on real revenue transfer scenarios. E.g. increasing productivity of the equipment and
operators can secure M2M transmission to Offering direct B2B services trough direct sales profitability of the core business.
the big bulldozer but they would pay when the channel for mass and global M2M connectivity
equipment works (and earns a real money). like automotive, navigation, global logistics and Most of companies, including Vodafone, KPN and
asset management. Sprint have dedicated smart M2M business units or
The important features of the charging system for specialized teams within their enterprise business
M2M are: hierarchy management and location, Find strategic vertical partners for B2B2C model departments.
automation and self-configuration of many for selected services and offer differentiators
subscriptions, user-defined pricing and flexible like eHealth or connected homes and work.
offering (typical for enterprise segment), mass Is there a difference between M2M
process and subscription management (such as Leave a middle and small business and non and RFID and NFC?
bulk SIM card management and activations). strategic market segments for partners and
developer communities securing revenue share RFID is one among others technologies that could
from intelligent connectivity management. be used to establish M2M communication. RFID is
Operators will become M2M perfect for short distance communication (100-
technology vendors and vertical 300m), for monitoring fuel tanks, containers,
platforms’ operators The M2M business model is based automation of distribution processes in big fashion
on SIM cards so it’s the same as factories and stores, and so on. Technologies such
It’s similar to handset manufactures or the internet pure retail telco as RFID ZigBee have been developed specifically for
USB dongles market. The M2M chipset and device enterprises, in contrast to GSM or GPRS which was
manufacturers and service providers market is In theory yes, because everybody can buy M2M SIM originally developed for voice and the transfer of large
mature. It has its own established leaders both in cards but the M2M business model and processes volumes of data. ZigBee is much more efficient than
technology and business. The telecom operators’ are different. It’ is similar to the business model in the SIM-based M2M in terms of power consumption,
business is to support this market with intelligent enterprise segment. The main differences between ‘plug & play’ features and integration with automatics
connectivity, special quality of service (QoS), high traditional SIM-based retail and M2M are: including SCADA, MODBUS or intelligent buildings
automation of processes, self care applications, systems. RFID technologies are dedicated to small
and open, real-time APIs or B2B gateways to the 1. The importance of bulk SIM management and distances and relatively small data transfer (ZigBee
communication medium and data. SIM logistic processes. 250kB/s in 2.5GHz). When we have to secure long-
distance transmission between moving assets we
Operators could monetize existing assets and 2. Specified SIM cards adequate for industry ought to use a SIM-based M2M communication
benefit from hosting applications, managing purposes (more life cycles longer than 12 years, channel. When we have to arise security level of the
international communication, increasing as opposite to 3-5 in retail telco, tolerance for transmission we have to consider Bluetooth or NFC.
membership of loyalty programs, remote upgrade high and low temperatures because of outdoor Of course, mixed architectures consists of unlicensed
management, and the option of ad-hoc look-up use). spectrum transmission and GPRS concentrators
to remote intelligent terminals. Communication are possible and, for example in smart metering,
service providers could play a significant and direct 3. Special policy: no voice, usually small portions are very popular and cost-effective in terms of
role in those M2M areas which will have become of data exchanged in specified time periods. communication costs and energy consumption.
standardized in the next few years (such as the
eCall automated emergency call service during 4. Dealers, resellers and aggregators; A long-
car accidents, connected vehicles and automated tail revenue share model in contradiction to
traffic control). M2M standardization is a very hot retail account sales to enterprises; web will
topic in organizations such as ETSI, GSMA and OMA. be a major customer contact channel in this
Standardization in field of open sensor networks business.

Comarch Technology Review   01/2011

 50 TELCOSPHERE BLOG
Renewal of a mobile subscription
– is it simple?
I subscribed to a mobile service almost one year ago. The end date of this subscription is
approaching. We are hearing about how customer satisfaction is important for operators, so
let’s see what effort the operator has made to try and renew the contract.*
The first call from a call center agent arrives 3 months before the
end of the contract.
Agent: “Hi, would you be interested in renewing the contract
today?”
Me: “Please call me again in 2 months (one month before the end
of the contract).”
Agent: “Ok”
Fine, it seems as though they are interested in keeping me as a
PEKKA VALITALO customer.
Comarch SA
BSS Market Analyst, 1.5 months before the contract ends, the next call arrives from
Telecommunications the call center agent.
Business Unit
Agent: “Hi, we have prepared an offer for you. Because the
average amount of your invoice has been XXX, we would like to
offer you some new attractive pricing. Which services have you
been using the most? Voice or SMS?”
Me: “I have used voice services more than SMS”
Agent: “Do you usually call numbers in our network, or also
numbers of other mobile operators in the country?”
Me: “Yes, and also to numbers abroad. And what about mobile
data service? Can you send me the offer by e-mail, so I can have
a look at it without making a decision right away?”
Agent: “Sorry, I cannot send any e-mails from the call center. You
would need to make the decision based on the information that
I’m telling you over the phone”
Me: “Ok, so I’ll check the offers on your website before making any
decision. Please call me back later”
When the operator is calling to subscribers and proposing them
new offers in this way, it does not seem to be a very smooth
operation.
Why are they asking if I have been using more voice or
SMS? Shouldn’t they already see this from their CRM
systems, and not simply look just at the final amount of the
invoice?
Shouldn’t they see from my service usage profile that a big
portion of the invoice amount comes from calls abroad?
Instead of just voice and SMS, why are they not offering me
Telco Sphere blog - a place to share ideas on the developments in the telecom world:
telcosphere.comarch.com
Comarch
ComarchTechnology
TechnologyReview 
Review   02/2010
 01/2011
data services as well (which my current subscription also
includes)?
And why not send the offer details to me by e-mail so that
I could have a closer look at the offer details? If the offer is
complex, not everyone wants to make the decision right
away.
Would the customer appreciate getting a personalized offer,
based on his previous service usage profile? The amount on the
invoice does not say much about the subscriber’s service usage
profile.
One month before the end of the contract, the call center agent
calls again.
Agent: “Hi, have you checked the offers on our website.”
Me: “Yes, one offer looks interesting and I am interested in it.
However I checked the offer conditions from your website and
I have a couple of questions. Do you speak English? No? Ok,
please have some English-speaking agent call me and discuss
these issues and the agreement”
Agent: “Ok. An English-speaking person will call you soon”
When negotiating a new subscription during a telephone call, I’d
rather agree to a new contract in English, since I’m not a native
speaker of the local language.
There are still 2 weeks until the end of the contract, and still no
call from the English speaking call center agent. It looks like I
need to check what the other operators are currently offering.
The issues that I have complained about in this blog post should
not be too difficult for the operator to handle better. It would at
least increase customer satisfaction and reduce the churn rate.
* The above blog post was written in February. I got no additional
telephone calls from the agent, so three days before the contract
expiration I finally went to the point of sale for renewing the
contract. Service was good and the contract renewal took less
than 5 minutes.
The opinions expressed in this blog post are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Comarch.
 M achine-to-machine (M2M) traffic can provide
additional revenue sources for operators battling TELCO OPERATOR M2M PARTNER
against reduced revenues from voice services. The number of
connectable machines is 5 times greater than the amount of
humans (source: ETSI), and the number of machines currently External Systems
connected is extremely low.
Self Partner’s
Comarch Management administrators
As the level of M2M traffic increases and M2M devices Existing BSS M2M
become more common, the price of individual M2M hardware Platform Platform
components falls, boosting M2M popularity even further. In
Integration M2M Partner
addition, the declining price of data services facilitates more
Existing OSS Systems
M2M business scenarios. Scenarios that a couple of years
Platform
ago were deemed useless, due to high costs, now present
an attractive business opportunity, with telco operators able
to attain a new revenue source by offering M2M connectivity Integration
services.
Underlying Network
Services
The Comarch M2M Platform for mobile network operators and
M2M enablers supports rating and charging, and also provides
tools for actions such as performing mass operations on SIM
cards, and integration with inventory and a self service portal.
The platform contains a B2B Gateway for secure web service
integration with a partner, thus enabling self management
and provisioning functionalities that partners can utilize via
their systems. This platform can be added to the existing MNO
infrastructure in the same way that MVNE platforms are added The Comarch M2M Platform is designed to support
to support MVNO business. mobile network operators and M2M enablers with their
M2M business operations. In addition to rating and
Comarch M2M Platform – Benefits:
charging, the solution contains other functionalities
such as mediation, provisioning, self-service (including
Single platform for various types of M2M services:
self-provisioning) and partner management, depending
service-agnostic data processing for multiple types of
industries
on the requirements of the M2M enterprise. With this
solution, the operator and M2M enabler are able to
Able to process vast amounts of data control resources (such as SIM cards) and manage
workflows.
Increased automation and cost efficiency

Enhanced cooperation with business partners

Flexible integration with external systems: standardized More info is available at:
interfaces, modern and open technology http://m2mplatform.comarch.com/
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