By Moshe Peterfreund, Director of Marketing, FTS
December 21, 2015
Last year, we made a number of predictions for the telecoms market. One of our predictions for 2015 is now the one we think will have the most impact on operators, MVNOs, OTT and M2M/IoT providers – in fact, across the entire telecoms ecosystem – in 2016.
And the prediction that we believe will make the most difference? Smart revenue sharing. Partner management and smart revenue sharing will enable operators to deliver on all of the transitions that the industry is currently undergoing. As communications services providers (CSPs) continue their evolution to digital services providers (DSPs); as MVNOs continue to proliferate globally; as the Internet of Things becomes a reality, so smart revenue sharing will enable communications, content and M2M service providers to work smoothly with all the partners within their ecosystem.
Players in every segment of our industry face the same challenges: being able to bring new partners on board quickly; launch new, bespoke contracts; rapidly adjust existing contracts; understand and respond to the different needs and business logics of each industry; and to create revenue sharing schemes to fit various segments.
2016 will be about personalized relationships with partners as the telecom market becomes increasingly sophisticated, irrespective of whether they are MVNEs or MVNOs, OTT providers, content aggregators, application developers, mobile money and payment service providers, utilities or banks.
The benefits of smart revenue sharing are many. Service providers that implement solutions that can facilitate these complicated partnerships and revenue-sharing relationships will increase revenue, become more attractive to partner with, reduce total cost of ownership and ultimately, be able to cope and scale with any demands they are presented with.
We’re already well aware of how digital is transforming the telco market. 2016 will, we believe, be the year of the digital service provider (DSP). Operators are being forced to rethink the way in which they sell their products and services, market themselves and fundamentally operate.
Subscribers want data-heavy seamless services in real-time. Service providers need infrastructure that can handle high proportions of online customer transactions; offer the same service experience across any device at any time; think of users as accounts rather than individuals, with multiple devices and services at their disposal; and that can roll out new products or promotions in much shorter timeframes.
DSPs will have to manage a vast network of partners including OTT players, app developers and more. The same issue will be faced by MVNOs and MVNEs, who need to be able to offer innovative branded telecom services through real-time promotions and pricing plans, loyalty programs, and more.
We predict that 2016 will be the year of the MVNO, especially in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, LATAM and later on Africa, markets in which regulators are keen to introduce further competition to the telecom market.
Some MVNOs will be looking to offer application-based plans (for example, video- or Facebook-based) to enhance the customer experience and meet user demands for personalized pricing tiers and flexible data plans. To enable this, MVNO billing requires real-time policy control and charging capabilities in order to rapidly deploy personalized plans as quickly as the marketing department can create them.
MVNOs will also be looking for ways to manage their relationships with an ever-expanding number of business partners within the Internet of Things world. They will need to be agile enough to support a great variety of M2M verticals, each with its own business model, to ensure overall low TCO in a low-revenue, high-volume transaction environment.
2016 looks like it will be an interesting year, and we for one are looking forward to seeing how smart revenue sharing becomes a service provider’s best friend.
Read more about FTS’ telecom billing solutions.
By Moshe Peterfreund, Director of Marketing, FTS
May 11, 2015
In the last few years, the BSS landscape has undergone dramatic changes. With the growth in content, apps, the cloud, e-commerce, m-commerce, video and the Internet of Things (IoT) – in other words, the growth in digital – BSS now needs to support and manage a vast network of interconnected partners and relationships.
For today’s communications, content and payment service providers, the proliferation of digital content and transactions presents a unique set of new challenges as they begin to evolve towards being digital service providers. They need to be able to support the launch of innovative services and ensure smooth integration with multiple new partners in complex value chains; they face declining revenues from traditional services; they must adapt to new and non-familiar business models; they need to invest in new higher-growth services areas; and they must deal with new competitors.
The solution to these challenges lies in creating or supporting new business models and new relationships with new partners, which are increasingly interlinked and ever more complex. And with new partners come different requirements for revenue sharing models – and this is where smart revenue sharing comes in.
In an environment increasingly dominated by digital transactions, service providers’ partners require dynamic and flexible contracts so they can keep up with the demand from fast-growing sectors. However each sector, whether it is traditional telecoms billing, MVNOs and MVNEs, payments, mobile money, video and content services, or M2M and IoT, has its own set of rules, its own business logic and its own way of doing business.
In the telecoms world, service providers can manage and monetize content and digital services through policy control, creating revenue sharing models that involve the customer on one side and OTT providers on the other. Mobile virtual networks operators (MVNOs) and enablers (MVNEs), on the other hand, need to be able to offer innovative branded telecom services through real-time promotions and pricing plans, loyalty programs, and more, supported by totally different partnership schemes.
For payments, the related billing and settlement transactions require the involvement of multiple partners with complex revenue sharing requirements. Mobile money demands operators have a set of comprehensive tools in place that support any payment or banking process over the mobile network in real time, at any time, thus ensuring the provision of mobile financial services including microloans, money transfers, utility bills and more.
Finally, when it comes to M2M billing and IoT, service providers need to be able to offer new deals, services and pricing models which are agile enough to support various business models of many different industry verticals, be it telematics, industrial, retail or utilities, quickly and easily to keep pace with this fast-growing sector.
From this, it’s clear that the evolving service provider must be agile enough to launch new marketing plans and services and process end user changes as quickly as its marketing department can dream them up. Launching new services turns a service provider’s back office into a genuine revenue generator.
However it’s not just about enabling relationships solely between the service provider and the end users, but also the enabling of relationships between all the partners in the entire ecosystem by onboarding new partners with a dedicated contract which can also be easily modified.
In addition, all the relationships between partners and users must be personalized to meet the increasing sophistication of the new industries, regardless of whether they are subscribers, OTT providers, content aggregators, mobile money and payment service providers, utilities or banks.
By implementing smart revenue sharing in this way, a service provider will increase its attractiveness to the entire ecosystem, with the benefits being personalized contracts and relationships with each and every one of the partners in its ecosystem; improved business relationships; reduced total cost of ownership; fast time-to-market and ultimately, increased revenues.
Moshe Peterfreund is a Marketing Director at FTS. FTS works with telecommunications, content and payment service providers globally to help them manage complex transactions and relationships with greater flexibility and greater independence.
By Ilan Benodiz, Solutions Architect, FTS
April 30, 2015
As we’ve known for a while, mobile telecoms is no longer simply about providing voice and messaging. As the communications industry becomes increasingly about digital services and content, traditional business models and traditional billing systems can no longer meet its needs. As Tony Poulos writes in his recent article, the telecoms industry has reached the digital crossroad, and it must examine its next steps in the connected era.
In order to effect the transformation from communications to digital, from being a CSP (communications service provider) to becoming a DSP (digital service provider), service providers need to be able go beyond billing effectively for the new services they are offering. They need to be able to offer new, innovative propositions to current and potential customers in order to avoid becoming irrelevant, uncompetitive or simply the dreaded ‘dumb pipe’ for others’ traffic.
With a good billing system in place, CSPs should be able to drive product innovation, enable new business models and generate new revenue with greater flexibility and greater independence than ever before. They need to be able to implement changes without having to ask their billing provider to do it for them, so that they can get great marketing offers to their subscribers quickly. They should be able to provide a great customer experience to their subscribers no matter what channel or what device they are using and regardless of how they want to interact with their provider.
Billing for content and digital services is complex, however, requiring the management of multiple partnership relations. Negotiating with OTT, payment and other partners, whether managing relations with existing partners or onboarding new ones, is a delicate process because the processes can be both sensitive and complicated. CSPs need to be able to create multifaceted billing and settlement relationships that meet the needs of all the partners in the arrangement.
Providers need to use smart revenue sharing solutions that not only enable revenue to be split in multiple ways but which also show where revenues have come from so that they can tell, for example, where they are most successful. Smart revenue sharing benefits providers with personalized contracts and relationships with each and every one of the partners in their ecosystem, thus increasing their attractiveness and improving business relationships. It also reduces the total cost of ownership and ensures a remarkably fast time-to-market and ultimately, increased revenues.
A typical use case scenario would be a video content value chain consisting of a mobile provider, to serve the content; a content service provider, aggregating content from various content producers; the content producers themselves; and the end users, to whom the content is being served. Smart revenue sharing enables all the above benefits because it permits the CSP to manage and monetize the relationships in this entire ecosystem; not only its customers on one side, but also its entire chain of partners (mobile provider and content producers) on the other side, each based on its own, personalized contract and revenue sharing model. These models can be based on various criteria, including for example the amount of content being produced, the content type or popularity, the number of downloads and many more aspects.
To find out more about how our smart revenue sharing solution can help you monetize content and digital services, get in touch.
By Moshe Peterfreund, Director of Marketing, FTS
March 31, 2015
We’re seeing a significant shift in the way CSPs charge for services. Rather than measuring for each service and charging accordingly, the move to charging for services on a flat rate means much less metering is needed. It’s clear that the existing telecom billing model cannot work for much longer in the traditional sense.
However, just because billing models are changing, it doesn’t mean that billing data is obsolete – quite the opposite in fact. Data is important – and its significance is continuing to grow. Customer information, usage information, social media activities and behavior details – in fact anything about the customer that has been captured and stored – are valuable ammunition for service providers.
Feeding billing data into big data analytics enables improved marketing based on context and other subscriber experiences. Not only does it bring the CSP closer to its customer, it also gives them a valuable edge over competitors who are not making optimal use of their data.
Big data analytics can help operators understand, even in real time, what the subscriber is interested in. By knowing their usage habits – how much data they’re using and for what purposes, the device they’re using, where and when they’re using it, for example – and proposing a related and relevant promotion, subscribers will feel that their CSP not only knows and understands them but is also willing to put together contextual offers tailored exactly to what they want. Even better when implemented in real time.
By analyzing billing data, CSPs can serve subscribers with relevant, personalized and immediate offers in a non-intrusive and helpful fashion that, if executed correctly, will generate them additional revenue. With the right billing system in place, it is also very easy to implement. For example, a user who reaches their maximum data limit during an online gaming session can be offered an on-the-spot promotion for extra data for gaming only usage at a special price.
The result? A happy customer and a boost for the provider’s revenues.
Another example might be a service provider who wants to provide subscribers with the highest standard of service possible, whilst at the same time ensuring that this is effectively monetized. The CSP can implement a real time charging and policy control solution to adapt service and network behavior in response to customer interaction, using billing data and analytics tools. This enables them to generate new revenue from digital services by initiating a sophisticated service program that, for example, provides quota-based data credits for the data used on premium services.
By taking billing data and analyzing it, CSPs put customers – rather than campaigns or products – at the center of everything they do, using big data to increase revenues and reduce the challenges that flat rate presents to the bottom line.
Want to find out more? Get in touch to talk to us about FTS’ policy control, charging and billing software solution.
By Nir Asulin, CEO, FTS
February 26, 2015
FTS’ recent inclusion in Gartner’s IRCM Magic Quadrant for the first time is recognition of our focus on providing innovative BSS solutions to service providers, who face an increasing number of challenges in today’s increasingly digitally-driven telecoms market.
Whether its traditional telecom billing, M2M/IoT, video and content services, payments or mobile payments, FTS enables MNOs and MVNOs alike to offer innovative new deals, services and pricing models to their end users, whilst at the same time establishing dynamic and flexible contracts with their partners.
In its recently published Magic Quadrant for Integrated Revenue and Customer Management for CSPs, Gartner placed FTS in the ‘Niche Players’ quadrant, citing our focused investment and marketing strategy; our additional targets for billing for M2M, MVNOs, mobile money, e-commerce and revenue sharing; our comprehensive IRCM product portfolio with integrated PCRF; and FTS express, our lightweight entry-level solution, as our key strengths.
As we’ve discussed previously, at whatever level of maturity the business is at, communications, content and payment service providers need to be able to meet the same challenges: supporting innovative services and improving collaboration with all the partners as they move towards being digital service providers. Our solutions provide unlimited flexibility in creating revenue sharing models across a number of innovative markets in the telecoms industry and beyond.
As service providers develop new business models and forge new relationships with partners, smart revenue sharing models enable them to establish relationships with all partners in the ecosystem, to rapidly on-board new partners, and to implement changes as quickly as the marketing department creates them.
Aimed at service providers’ CIOs, the IRCM Magic Quadrant evaluates solution suites that provide billing, customer care, rating, charging, pricing, partner relationship management, policy management, mediation, self-service, analytics and other related functions. FTS joins 18 other providers that met Gartner’s criteria.
Gartner advises CSPs’ CIOs to simply not choose players from the Leaders quadrant, as selections should be buyer-specific. Vendors from the Challengers, Niche Players or Visionaries quadrants may be a better match for a CSP’s individual business goals and solution requirements.
Published in October 2014, Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Integrated Revenue and Customer Management for CSPs” report by Norbert J. Scholz, Journi Forsman and Kamlesh Bhatia, can be viewed here.
If you’d like to discuss your billing, charging, policy control or payments requirements, we’d love to hear from you.
By Moshe Peterfreund, Director of Marketing, FTS
January 28, 2015
It used to be that the service provider ecosystem was much simpler. Based on a one-to-many model, billing software ensured that the service provider’s customer was charged appropriately for the services they were provided via mobile, wireline or cable, or a mixture of all three. Today, the model is many-to-many: thanks to the growth in content, apps, the cloud, the Internet of Things, video, e-commerce and m-commerce, billing now needs to manage a complex web of partners and relationships.
Imagine a band dividing up royalty payments amongst six band members according to how much time each one has played on a record, or a group of kids dividing up a bag of sweets according to how many goals they each scored in a football game. Everyone needs to be ‘paid’ based on how much they brought to the relationship. The more parameters that are involved – such as partners, services provided and bandwidth consumed – the more complex those relationships become, and that’s where smart revenue sharing can help, at least in the billing world.
Today’s communications, content and payment service providers, whether growing or established, face the same set of challenges: to support innovative services and improve integration with all the partners in their ecosystem as they move towards being digital service providers. Revenue from legacy services is declining, new business models are flourishing, new higher-growth services areas require investment, and new services mean new competitors. As they seek to find solutions to these challenges, they must embrace new business models and new relationships with new partners, which are ever more interlinked and increasingly complex. And with new partners come fresh requirements for revenue sharing models.
As we move into the era of digital services, service providers must be able to offer new deals, services and pricing models to their end users, and dynamic and flexible contracts to their partners in order to quickly and easily to keep pace with fast-growing sectors. Whether it’s traditional telecoms billing, M2M, video and content services, payments or mobile money, each has its own business logic and its own way of doing business.
A critical requirement for the evolving service provider is being agile enough to deploy new marketing plans and launch new services at the speed of marketing thought for its end users, whilst simultaneously being able to onboard new partners into their ecosystem with personalized contracts that meet the requirements of each of the specific business models.
The differences in each of these service areas and their associated business logics and models are clear to see when looked at side-by-side:
Whatever the industry, the requirements are the same: being able to process and implement end user changes as quickly as the marketing department creates them. Being able to smoothly launch new services turns a service provider’s back office into a real revenue generator. However, it’s no longer just about enabling relationships solely between the service provider and the end users. These relationships also need to be enabled between all the partners in the entire ecosystem with the onboarding of new partners with a dedicated contract which is also easy to modify.
On top of this, the relationships between each and every partner and user must be personalized as the new industries become increasingly sophisticated, irrespective of whether they are subscribers, OTT providers, content aggregators, mobile money and payment service providers, utilities or banks.
Enabling smart revenue sharing across all partners and users will increase your attractiveness to the entire ecosystem. And the benefits? Personalized contracts and relationships with each and every one of the partners in your ecosystem, increased attractiveness and improved business relationships with them; reduced total cost of ownership; a remarkably fast time-to-market and ultimately, increased revenues. It’s a win-win for everyone, however many there are.