Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a global leader in relationship management, has announced the availability of Product Control Manager 2.0 within its BSS/OSS solution portfolio. This new version of Product Control Manager includes innovative new features that provide enhanced support for product change management, dynamic data modeling, and real-time integration with external systems.

Available now, the latest version of Product Control Manager is a centralized product catalog and product lifecycle management system that supports the creation, management, dissemination, and use of product and service data, and covers the full technical, commercial, and price definition of products. With Product Control Manager, communications service providers can more effectively manage their products across all network and service domains, shorten time to market for new convergent offers, improve quality, and reduce the costs associated with managing a complex product portfolio.

“We have seen a significant shift for service providers – in their customer base, competition, and in the market at large – all of which point to a need to introduce more products faster, and to make product management tools more responsive,” said Bob Lento, Convergys President of Information Management. “This latest version of Product Control Manager not only fills a gap left by existing product management tools that have not effectively consolidated product information across the enterprise, but reflects our deep understanding of the evolving needs of the marketplace, and incorporates insights we have gained over the past year from our successful deployments with leading service providers.”

Product Control Manager supports extended attributes, complex business rules authoring and execution, constraint processing, multi-user collaboration, entity revision management, lifecycle state management, a TMF SID-based data model, and flexible integration support. Product Control Manager version 2.0 delivers a number of enhancements over prior releases, including:

• Impact Analysis and Fast Update: Users of the application, such as product analysts, product managers, or marketing managers, are automatically alerted when changes occur in constituent definitions of products. The users can then compare different definitions to see what has changed, and if desired, quickly and efficiently incorporate the changes in the overall product model. This capability is required for on-going maintenance, change management, and modeling efficiency, especially in deployments where multiple users collaborate in defining and maintaining the product data. The feature improves usability of the system by enabling users to compare and contrast existing and new product definitions, and ensure consistency and relevancy of product data.

• Reference Methods for Dynamic Data: This capability enables creating more flexible and dynamic product definitions that can incorporate data from external systems through use of pre-defined data look-ups. Administrative users can create, and then register, in Product Control Manager one or more Value Reference Methods and/or Validation Reference Methods. Product modelers can select a reference method as the means to retrieve details (e.g. external data look-up) of a parameter in the product definition (e.g. attribute value, attribute restrictions, allowable ranges, etc.). The data look-up can be invoked at different points as needed, such as during the modeling process, to get point-in-time details of the parameter. Reference Methods can be utilized as real-time call-outs from Product Control Manager to external data source.

• Guided Selling and Enhanced Meta Data: This feature allows creating a richer description of products, where as part of the product definition, modelers can specify the desired presentment of product data by external systems (e.g. ordering portal). Product modelers can specify the sequence in which an orderable item in a product or a configuration choice is presented. Additionally, help notes and flexible display labels (organized into display categories) can be associated with product definition elements.

• Flexible Pricing Modeling: This functionality extends the pricing definition support to better manage pricing changes for products. User can specify effective dates for pricing (start, end), associate alternate pricing plans for products (and change associations via rules), establish default pricing which can be later revised or removed within the context of a given offering, and define comprehensive pricing rules.

Convergys BSS/OSS Solutions deliver innovative support of convergent services leveraging real-time marketing innovation, minimizing risk, reducing operational costs, and generating revenue in order for our clients to focus on building valuable relationships with their customers. Convergys supports six of Fortune’s Top 10 communications companies.

About Convergys
Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG) is a global leader in relationship management. We provide solutions that drive more value from the relationships our clients have with their customers and employees. Convergys turns these everyday interactions into a source of profit and strategic advantage for our clients.

For more than 30 years, our unique combination of domain expertise, operational excellence, and innovative technologies has delivered process improvement and actionable business insight to clients that now span more than 70 countries and 35 languages.

Convergys is a member of the S&P 500 and has been voted a Fortune Most Admired Company for nine consecutive years. We have approximately 75,000 employees in 84 customer contact centers and other facilities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and our global headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information, visit www.convergys.com

(Convergys and the Convergys logo are registered trademarks of Convergys Corporation.)