Welcome to the Cerillion Blog

Guest blogger Henk Ensing, Technical Consultant at TNO, looks at the crucial role of billing in the creation of Smart Grids and Smart Cities.

Henk Ensing, Technical Consultant, TNO

Just a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak about the Energy Transition in front of a distinguished group of people, all of whom have made their mark in the Telco industry one way or another. The central theme of that session of course being revenue management, and based on the lively discussions in the room I can only come to the conclusion that today, billing is very much alive.

It has, however, become quite a different animal than the billing we’ve become accustomed to in the Telco area in the last decade or so. Sure, billing has already transformed from a subservient service supporting a straightforward set of products to a much more integrated service providing insight and transparency, and enabling the customer experience levels required at the starting of the internet age. However, I consider today’s excellent billing solutions to be a temporary measure, for there’s something quite different looming on the horizon. And what’s more, we can already see glimpses of that future. For that, one only needs to look at what’s happening in the area of Energy Transition.

In the Telco domain we’re quite familiar with terms like ‘unbundling’ and ‘deregulation’. And while the reasons for doing so may differ, much the same processes and developments are happening within utilities like energy generation and distribution organisations. There is however, one singular difference that makes the Energy Transition quite a game changer, to such an extent that it forces other industries to take note. This difference is the opportunity that ‘ordinary’ customers have to generate electricity themselves, also called decentralized energy generation. The exponential increase in Europe alone for people installing photovoltaic panels on their homes barely shows the enthusiasm that exists within households to become self-reliant and save money.

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Following a two-year stint in Dublin, the TM Forum’s Management World returned to Nice in search of some clues to help CSPs “navigate the digital storm” and a ray or two of sunshine to boot. Dominic Smith reviews the keynote presentations.

Stephen Shurrock, Telefónica Digital

Though ‘Management World’ is not the snappiest of monikers, the TM Forum succeeded once again in attracting the great and the good of the BSS/OSS industry for a very busy week on the Côte d’Azur. With a packed programme of keynote presentations, multiple conference streams, catalyst projects and a substantial expo hall, the only challenge for delegates is fitting everything in.

First up in the opening keynote, Gervais Pellissier, CEO Delegate from France Telecom-Orange, spoke pragmatically about the challenges faced in their business, admitting that young people simply regard telecoms as a utility. He also highlighted a key Telco strength “we know how to make people pay, we bill them every month” but acknowledged that they have struggled to succeed in broadening their offerings, citing a fruitless investment of €600m in producing their own IPTV content. Overall Pellissier was charming and spoke with humility, but his comments seemed to underline their problems rather than presenting solutions or a realistic vision for the future.

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Confusion reigns as traditional billing vendors talk up their cloud credentials. Dominic Smith cuts through the hype to provide some clarity around what makes a Cloud Billing system.

Cloud technology is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics for the IT and telecoms industry today, so it’s unsurprising that vendors across the complete BSS/OSS spectrum are racing to position themselves at the leading edge of this high growth area. Cloud billing is one such area that is evolving rapidly, but it is becoming harder by the day for buyers to understand the marketing hyperbole and figure out exactly what Cloud Billing means.

Is a Cloud Billing system one that bills for cloud services? Or a billing system that resides in the cloud? Or are there other key characteristics that define what Cloud Billing really is?

To some vendors the answers to these questions don’t seem to matter. Just put cloud in the product / solution name and hey presto, you have a ‘cloud billing’ system! Of course this just creates massive confusion in the industry and risks damaging the sector immeasurably. What the industry needs is consistency and clarity so that buyers know what they are really getting themselves into.

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The local football team may be suffering a dip in form, but the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was bigger and better than ever. Dominic Smith looks back on another hectic week in the Mobile World Capital.

Live product demonstrations at MWC13

A week has now passed since the closing of the Mobile World Congress, and my sleeping patterns, diet and voice have just about returned to normal. Being on your feet in the exhibition hall for 12 hours a day takes its toll on the body very quickly, and it’s taken almost the same time for my brain to unscramble the many conversations and discussions I had at the show. But what a great week.

Despite some inclement weather and an over-congested transport system, MWC 2013 will live long in the memory for the back-to-back meetings and continuous stream of interest and product enquiries in our busiest show ever.

A new feature of our presence this year was Cerillion Live – a twice-a-day schedule of open demonstrations on our stand, with all-comers welcome to drop in and check out the latest innovations in our pre-integrated product suite. Two themed demos making complex services simple and streamlining sales and product campaigns showcased the flexibility of our pre-integrated product suite, including the ease of building products and packages in our unified Product Catalogue; the comprehensive sales and post sales processes within CRM; and the intuitive management of convergent product bundles.

We also had an incredible response to our new cloud billing solution, Cerillion Skyline, which we previewed for the first time. Designed specifically for the cloud, but built on our 20 year heritage of delivering high performance billing and transaction processing systems, Cerillion Skyline is a powerful, multi-tenanted, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) billing application for the next generation of digital services and subscriptions. To find out more about Cerillion Skyline, you can watch our introductory video here.

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Dominic Smith previews the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and offers some practical advice to anyone visiting the new venue at Fira Gran Via.

Next month the great and the good of the telecoms industry will descend upon Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress 2013. Back to Barcelona again, but this time to a shiny new conference and exhibition centre – Fira Gran Via. Having visited the new venue now 3 times, I can tell you it is a giant leap forward in terms of the facilities provided. It may not have the grandeur of the Palace and fountains of Montjuic, but the vast exhibition halls, interconnected by an airport style main artery with moving walkways, will provide a fantastic place for the industry to do business.

The new venue has also been equipped with the latest Near Field Communications (NFC) technology with the GSMA creating a complete NFC Experience to put mobile devices at the centre of a new interactive congress. This includes a showcase for the latest NFC devices and services, as well as visitors with NFC-enabled devices being able to use them as their ticket for accessing the site. Furthermore, NFC tags in the exhibition and at key sites around the city will provide access to further information and special promotions.

From talking to people across the industry, it seems most have decided to stay in the same hotels as before, and just manage the slightly longer journey to Fira Gran Via. Though still connected to the Metro system, Fira Gran Via is served only by the FGC train which stops at Fira Europa station, a 5-minute walk from the exhibition centre. The slightly longer journey should be no problem in itself, but with only one train line connecting Fira Europa to the rest of the city, expect this to be VERY busy throughout MWC.

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Ian Western, Solution Architect at Cerillion, looks at the role User Experience (UX) has in achieving that all important Customer Experience (CX).

Have you ever thought that to deliver a software application all you need is to write a list of business requirements and then develop the code to satisfy each requirement in turn? Should be easy, right? Wrong. Even something as apparently straightforward as buying one or more products from a simple website list can pose many challenges.

We’ve all faced the frustration of shopping online when you are guided to the crucial payment screen only to find that you can no longer see what you are paying for. Or perhaps this isn’t the final payment screen and there will be a confirmation page before my order is finally submitted? With uncertainty as part of the buying process, the chances are you will cancel the order and shop elsewhere.

Any user interface, whether on the web or in an Enterprise Application environment, can provide functionality according to system requirements, but when it comes to good references and repeated sales, it is user experience that counts. A good user experience providing ease of use, results in increased efficiency, simpler staff training, and end-user enjoyment. This produces a positive effect for the end-customer experience, with consistency of service quality and a quick resolution to a wide range of issues and tasks.

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Cerillion CTO, Simon Matthews, looks into his BSS/OSS crystal ball to see what’s in store for the sector in 2013.

The BSS/OSS Crystal Ball...

With Christmas fast approaching, my attention isn’t as diverted towards mince pies as I would like. This is an important time of year for all product companies as we look towards our budgets and targets for 2013 and where to spread our investment to drive value and relevance for our customers and target market. I thought I would try and briefly court your attention to read a subset of my observations on what I feel 2013 will bring the BSS/OSS space – my own Christmas list of hopes and dreams for our sector’s evolution.

In my opinion, 2012 has been the year of the “data synonym”. I have truly lost count of the permutations of what those of us who are a tad long in the tooth in this industry would call customer reference data. Though the nature of the data available, its volume, the rights to mine its contents, and the possibilities for the data originators to benefit have evolved strongly, the value chain remains full of opportunity. Many organisations have spent the past year attempting to mine their untapped data treasure, but it’s no fool’s gold.

In 2013 I expect the data gold rush to continue, but the focus to tighten. The undisputable value of consumer and business insight you can glean from accurately analysed data is not news. However, what I feel we will see in 2013 is less dominance from the hardware / ‘would be’ software behemoths, barking ‘BIG DATA’ in our faces every two minutes, and in fact more advances and benefits from the analytic software vendors.

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Dominic Smith talks to Ramana Palepu, CIO of GO, Malta, about the BSS/OSS challenges they face, and how working with Cerillion is helping them to achieve their goals.

Ramana Palepu - CIO, GO

Ramana Palepu is a Global IT executive with over 30 years’ experience in Telecommunications, Retail, Banking and Financial Services.  Ramana has been serving as Chief Information Officer of GO plc. since September 2011, having previously served in the same role during 2008-2009. In his early career spanning over 18 years at SWIFT, he executed several large scale IT programmes and strategies for the world’s premier interbank financial telecommunications network.  Ramana also founded RollStream Inc., an Enterprise Community Management platform, serving as its Chief Information Officer, and was Chief Technology Officer of Worldwide Retail Exchange (WWRE). Ramana holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering.

DS: Hi Ramana, and welcome to the Cerillion Blog. Tell me about GO, what market(s) are you in, what products and services do you provide and what is the company’s vision?

RP: GO has been providing telecom services in Malta for more than 35 years, originally as the fixed line telephony incumbent, then progressively introducing broadband internet services,  mobile telephony, Digital and IPTV. GO is the first 4P (quad-play) telecom service provider and by far the largest, most established and well-rounded communications and entertainment provider in Malta. In addition, we offer a range of business-related services both directly and together with BMIT, a wholly owned subsidiary of GO; these include data networking solutions, business IP services, M2M, cloud services, and managed and co-location facilities.

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Leonardo Hodgson, Proposition Manager at Cerillion, investigates the rise of dynamic pricing strategies in different markets and evaluates the potential risks for Communications Services Providers (CSPs).

Dynamic Pricing

It’s a fact: the old bricks-and-mortar version of commerce is struggling to keep pace with the powerful and constantly evolving world of online shopping. It is still quite hard to conceive that the traditional offline commerce, which has existed since the origins of humanity thousands of years ago, would face one of its most powerful rivals in the virtual world of the internet.

One of the key advantages that contributes to the superiority of e-commerce is the convenience of shopping at any time and from anywhere. However, as a recent report published by the marketing firm vibes indicates, despite the accessibility of online shopping, modern consumers still enjoy going to local shops to inspect, try and compare prices of their desired gadgets, shoes, toys and clothes, before then returning home and buying online at a lower price.

This growing trend of ‘showrooming’ has become much stronger through the use of smartphones which allow consumers to do real-time product and price comparisons whilst in-store. Equipped with tools such as the Amazon or Ebay mobile applications, consumers can gain access to the latest price information and product reviews at any time, providing them with a level of bargaining power that was never possible before.

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Dominic Smith reports back from Informa’s recent Industry Outlook 2013 event in London.

A fragmented market

Under the banner of ‘The Innovation Challenge’, this year’s Industry Outlook event blended in-depth insights from Informa’s own principal analysts with some well-chosen guest presentations from the likes of Telefónica Digital, Honda Europe, Deutsche Telekom, Colt, Vevo and Evernote, to provide a well-structured and thought provoking conference.

An interesting mix of analysts and guest speakers dovetailed perfectly as we were taken on a journey from customer innovation – what customers want; to network and infrastructure innovation – how to deliver it; before finally looking at the wider issue of service and business model innovation – how to make money; with the knowledgeable and experienced presenters sharing many lessons learned along the way.

From the number of times the word ‘fragmented’ was used it is pretty clear that the complexity and diversity of customers / devices / services / networks is the root of many challenges, and as you may expect there are no easy answers. However there is cause for optimism with some notable CSPs leading the way when it comes to innovation.

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