PR releases

Information Management The Key To Telco Health As Convergence Gets Real

Virgin Media Pay A Heavy Short Term Price For Long Term Gain
Information management and charging systems are again becoming the key competitive differentiator in a convergent marketplace. Customers are now faced with the opportunity to buy any combination of phone, internet, TV and mobile from a growing variety of service providers, from traditional fixed telephony incumbents to mobile operators to new retail brands entering the communications market.

However, in order to leverage the real advantages that multi-play offerings can bring, telcos must ensure that they have a 'single view' of their customers and that they develop the ability to deliver services seamlessly across their entire portfolio. Customers need to be able to understand what is being offered to them and how much they are going to pay; meeting customer expectations of simplicity is vital.

So says Hugh Roberts, Consultant Director for IIR Telecoms and also Chairman of the World BSS Awards Judging Panel.

Roberts continues: "Recent figures announced by Virgin Media show how difficult this transition can be. Although overall year-on-year revenues are up, so are operating costs. Virgin has to bite the bullet and pay the 'integration tax' as it starts to bring its customer and data management systems into line across the group and gears up to leverage the potential benefits of quad-play capability in its service offerings. For now, it is stuck with having to take a hit as it starts to educate consumers about multi-play, but doesn't yet have the new 'cross-platform' services to make their bundled offerings properly sticky."

Although the situation at Virgin Media is very likely to get worse before it gets better - not least because customers responding to the recent well publicised spat with Sky are on 30 day termination contracts and won't appear in the churn metrics until next quarter - the lead time advantage they get from beginning BSS consolidation now will deliver a significant competitive advantage in the future. The true situation is far from bleak.

"But how do you identify best practice in the market place, and determine its suitability to your own competitive environment?" asks Roberts, "Finding out what other service providers are doing around the world to ensure effective billing and information management can be both difficult and time consuming, which is why gatherings such as Billing and Information Management Systems in London are so important."

Numerous interactive panel debates and discussion sessions accompany the large number of service provider only presentations, which this year include:
* Olga Botero, CIO, Bancolombia
* Pierre Marin, IT Billing Development Director, France Telecom
* Tim Kelly, Head - Strategy & Policy unit, ITU
* Wolfgang Weninger, Senior Billing Architect , Mobilkom Austria
* Doug Melbourne, Orange Group Brand and Consumer Marketing, Orange
* Patrik Englund, Service Manager - Billing Systems, Telia Sonera
* Heiko Faure, Head of Billing Service Management, Vodafone Germany

"When coming to terms with convergence, getting a clear view of the big picture and what everyone else is doing about it in terms of their deployment plans for their customer facing systems is always more than enlightening. Billing & Information Management Systems has always delivered on this, and it is gratifying to know that this year will be no different."

about Billing & Information Management Systems 2007

Billing & Information Management Systems 2007 is the leading conference and exhibition in the EMEA Telecoms BSS, Billing and IT calendar. The operator-led conference programme offers insights into benchmarking and improving current billing, IT/IS and customer care practices, while achieving operational excellence and shaping strategy for next generation financial transaction processing.

www.iir-billingsystems.com/
Conference: 4th - 8th June 2007
Exhibition: 6th - 8th June 2007
London Olympia 2
4 - 8 June 2007

Produced by IIR Telecoms
www.iir-events.com