At last week’s Futurecom 2009 in Brazil, Comverse unveiled its recently upgraded Comverse® ONE™ Billing & Active Customer Management offering, which strengthens the ties between telecom carriers and their subscribers.
The new offering directly addresses recent findings from industry research firm Forrester Consulting. The research, commissioned by Comverse, uncovered that operators’ current customer management/customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities are not enabling them to meet their key business goals.
The capability gaps span multiple systems and functions: customer management, business and operational support systems (BSS/OSS) and sales and marketing. Even though these areas have interdependencies, they have “grown up” separately, and even with integration, discrete applications speak different languages, according to the study. (The study, “Delivering the Next-Generation Subscriber Experience,” is available online.)
To bridge the capability gaps, it is essential to extend a convergent BSS approach upstream to encompass sales and marketing. In July, Comverse announced a strategic partnership with Infor to integrate three key CRM features — sales force automation, campaign management and interaction management – into Comverse’s flagship convergent BSS offering.
“We are addressing these gap areas in a cost-effective manner by aligning BSS, customer management, and sales and marketing as an out-of-box converged, product-based solution built around one single data model,” said Gabriel Matsliach, General Manager and Vice President, Billing and Active Customer Management at Comverse, the world’s leading supplier of software and systems enabling value-added messaging and content services, converged billing and active customer management and IP communications.
“We are taking a refreshed approach to both CRM and the network to deliver a consistent customer experience across the web, sales force, call centre, point-of-sale (POS) and all device touchpoints,” Matsliach said. “Our solution combines network intelligence and profile analytics with real-time functionality, which transforms an operator’s BSS into a strategic asset.”
Comverse is the world’s leading provider of software and systems enabling value-added services for voice, messaging, mobile internet and mobile advertising, converged billing and active customer management and IP communications. Comverse’s extensive customer base spans more than 130 countries and covers over 500 communication service providers serving more than two billion subscribers. The company’s innovative product portfolio enables communication service providers to unleash the value of the network for their customers by making their networks smarter. Comverse’s solutions support flexible deployment models, including in-network, hosted and managed services, and can run on circuit-switched, IP, IMS or converged network environments. Comverse is a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, Inc. (CMVT.PK). For more information, visit www.comverse.com.