Communications Crossroads - Winter 2007 - (Page 10)

Participants Fred Brott President, Intec Billing Inc. Managing Director, North America, Intec Telecom Systems Vern Dosch President & CEO NISC Claud Gilmer President UDP Krzysztof Kwiatkowski Product Manager of Billing Comarch S.A. Systems Bob LaBonté President & CEO Communications Data Group (CDG) Glenn Miller General Manager Midwest Data, LLC Lane Nordquist Corporate Vice President HickoryTech President of Information Solutions Jim Odom CEO & President Martin Group initial copy of the check and you have that digital image that you’re passing on to the bank, that same PDF is being attached to the billing records. Paperless plus mobile devices in the ﬁeld are allowing [CSRs and technicians] to complete the whole cycle of service orders without ever printing a piece of paper. Plus every CSR has access to the status of that work order at any given time. That is going a long ways to produce a lot of great efﬁciencies, but probably more important is being able to give timely, very contemporary information to customers when they call in. Where is billing software headed? What new features are becoming standard? What is on the horizon? Bob LaBonté, CDG: What has become obvious is the need to drill down further in analyzing data to maximize revenue and marketing opportunities for our customers. CDG is incorporating more of these options into our offerings, along with the ability to examine trafﬁc down to the individual ofﬁce, switch and node. Providing information on usage patterns and preferences will be crucial to assisting our telecom partners reﬁne their marketing efforts. Fred Brott, Intec: Support for emerging technologies, any service regardless of source or payment type and revenue assurance will all be considered standard requirements of the integrated billing solution as we move into 2008 and beyond. More importantly, we see implementation delivery costs and timeline as equals to functionality considerations. Claud Gilmer, UDP: CRM—you need the tools to manage the customer; and Web self-care—give subscribers a way to manage it themselves. Glenn Miller, Midwest Data: I am seeing a strong movement toward an ASP model of billing and almost moving toward Software-as-a-Service model. This model has a lower upfront cost, is easily scalable and gives far more ﬂexibility for the ofﬁce staff. It also allows for very easy outsourcing customers to compete in the world of today and tomorrow. All this needs to be done with pricing that is fair and affordable. Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, Comarch: The upcoming trends are connected with more complex interconnect charging for Next Generation Networks and calculating revenue sharing between service delivery partners. The most important thing for retail billing is service-independent billing and convergence across multiple levels: service level, customer experience and network level. Vern Dosch, NISC: I think the promise of the paperless ofﬁce has been there for a long time, but what we are seeing now, once you scan that of many of the back-ofﬁce functions of billing, such as message processing, bill rendering, fulﬁllment, payment processing, etc. New features that are becoming standard are ease of bundling, marketing features, easy interfaces to other third-party solutions, Web access and provisioning of services. Out there on the horizon are still the continued changes that billing solution providers need to make to match the changes in consumer mobility, CPNI, telecommuting and others. We live in an increasingly mobile, anytime, anywhere access world; changing to meet that need is on the horizon. Lane Nordquist, HickoryTech: Billing software needs to be able to provide the functionality that provides the tools for service providers speciﬁcally. Number one is to manage rapidly changing plans and options— we are no longer in an industry where we can get by with providing a simple phone service, obviously. What has become standard, that had not been even two or three years ago, is automated provisioning. The other is selfcare, but contact with the customer is probably the single most important thing you can do to remain personal and competitive going forward. So it’s not just providing the self-care, but it’s knowing that you need to be able to get back to the customer to provide opportunities. Third, though I don’t see paper invoices going away too quickly, we are clearly moving away from the traditional check-in-the-mail and toward more online presentation and payment. What trends do you see in consumers and how they pay their bills? How is that affecting telecoms, and by extension, you? Glenn Miller, Midwest Data: The ability to look at, and pay, bills online is getting to be expected. Consumers in today’s world are continuously demanding to access accounts, shop, buy, pay and manage their services whenever and wherever. If a telco doesn’t have these types of features available today, it at 10 COMMUNICATIONS CROSSROADS www.ustelecom.org http://www.ustelecom.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Communications Crossroads - Winter 2007

Communications Crossroads Winter 2007 Up Front Contents Cover Story: Billing Redux Business Advantages: Reaching Consumers with Special Needs Technology Today: Femtocells: The Jury’s Still Out Industry Calendar Index to Advertisers TELECOMPAC

Communications Crossroads - Winter 2007

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