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Accenture Communication Solutions Achieving High Performance in the Communications Industry How Accenture Helps Operators Develop Superior Billing Capabilities

Accenture Brochure Communications Billing

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Page 1: Accenture Brochure Communications Billing

Accenture Communication Solutions

Achieving High Performance in the Communications IndustryHow Accenture Helps Operators Develop Superior Billing Capabilities

Page 2: Accenture Brochure Communications Billing

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Accenture:Helping telcos achieve high performance through superior billing

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Accenture is the trusted provider

that helps leading telcos around the

world address their most pressing

billing challenges and achieve high

performance. In fact, our successful

track record, and leading-edge

thinking and ongoing research on the

characteristics of high performance in

the communications industry have led

the industry analysts to rank Accenture

among the top professional services

firms in the billing arena. According

to Gartner, Accenture was ranked

second in the overall Telecom

Operations Management Systems

market worldwide in 2008.1

Our three decades of experience in

billing processes, organization and

systems implementation—which

includes working with the leading

billing software packages—gives

Accenture important insights and

an independent point of view on the

best approach to improving billing

operations. In fact, Accenture has

successfully completed billing projects

for more than 200 communications

clients around the globe and has one

of the largest installed bases of billing

systems in the world. Furthermore,

our portfolio of billing and revenue

assurance offerings covers the full

breadth of billing operations and

leverages the skills of more than 2,500

billing professionals and the Accenture

Global Delivery Network.

Drawing on these key resources and

assets, Accenture can help telcos

address their billing challenges by

transforming their billing function and

enabling it to meet the requirements

of today’s converged world. We do this

in three key ways. We can develop and

implement new billing systems and

processes that support convergent

billing, billing for content and prepaid

and postpaid billing. We can create a

superior revenue assurance function

that enables telcos to bill for and

collect all the revenue that is due.

Responding to increasing competitive challenges and shifting customer demands requires telcos to have a highly flexible, cost-effective billing function. Yet many global telcos face a major challenge when it comes to billing—especially in terms of leveraging their billing systems to support convergent billing and identifying and eliminating sources of revenue leakage.

And we can assume responsibility for

a part or all of a telco’s billing function

through an outsourcing or managed

services arrangement.

Telcos such as Telstra and Zhejiang

Telecom have benefited from Accenture’s

billing knowledge. They have realized

dramatic improvements in billing

efficiency and effectiveness, thus

reducing the cost of the billing function

overall while facilitating the timely

and accurate collection of revenue.

They have created a more compelling

billing experience, which serves as a

competitive differentiator that helps

attract and retain customers. And,

they have developed the ability to

more quickly launch new products and

services to capitalize on fast-emerging

growth opportunities.

We invite you to read on to learn

more about how Accenture can help

your organization transform its billing

function into a distinctive capability that

can help you achieve high performance.

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The case for change in the billing arena

The forces of convergence are reshaping

the communications industry. Service

providers everywhere are migrating

to all-IP enterprises and 3G at an

accelerating pace. For wireless, wireline

and cable companies alike, broadband

network capabilities and devices are

enabling next-generation, multiservice

offerings. Developing and profiting

from such offerings will be a key to

achieving high performance in the

coming years.

However, many operators face a

significant challenge: Their billing

and revenue management capabilities

and systems are not keeping pace with

the revolutionary and rapid changes

occurring at the network and device

levels which, in turn, has a significant

impact on telcos’ financial performance.

According to a recent Accenture

survey2 of 100 leading telcos worldwide,

ineffective billing capabilities caused

global telcos to lose an average of

4 percent of revenue annually among

enterprise customers and 9 percent

among consumers. Separate Accenture

research found that operators, on

average, lose at least 1 percent of

their revenue because of outdated

and incomplete revenue assurance

capabilities.

Increasingly, communications service

providers are turning to Accenture to

help them develop the next-generation

billing capabilities needed to achieve

high performance in the age of

convergence. Accenture Communications

Solutions that address next-generation

billing and revenue management

already are delivering measurable

improvements in performance for

providers throughout the world. These

new capabilities are helping telcos to:

• Increase revenues and profitability

by offering and billing for attractive

new product bundles with content/

broadband-based services, and

offering the same services to all

customers regardless of payment

methods.

• Reduce revenue leakage by achieving

real-time credit control and revenue

management reporting and

monitoring.

• Rationalize legacy billing architectures

to increase internal efficiency and

reduce operating expenses by

supporting all services on a single

converged billing and revenue

management solution, and sharing/

reusing billing capabilities across

multiple affiliates and/or business

segments.

• Achieve faster time to market when

launching new offers or tariff plans.

• Support new business models (for

instance, by supporting revenue

control and sharing across the value

chain).

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How Accenture can help

1. Developing and implementing a new billing system and processes to support convergent billing, billing for content and prepaid and postpaid billing.In developing new billing systems for

our clients, we leverage the Accenture

Next-Generation Billing Solution. This

solution is built on leading assets,

including a convergent billing

architecture, to support high

performance through coverage for a

wide-range of billing capabilities, all

supported by a common integration

framework. The framework helps

deliver rapid, modular integration of

the various products necessary to

create a robust solution in today’s

varied communications environment.

Capabilities supported by the Accenture

Convergent Billing Solution are

comprehensive across the spectrum

of voice, data, content, wireless,

wireline and interconnect billing. This

end-to-end view provides the necessary

level of solution integration, beginning

with the business strategy phase,

through vendor capability analysis,

and on to delivery and support of the

billing system. The solution enables

telcos to accommodate real-time

rating, billing for content, and prepaid

and postpaid billing.

See the sidebar on the opposite page

on how one telco has benefited from

Accenture’s billing system experience.

Accenture helps telcos address their billing challenges

by transforming their billing function to support

the requirements of today’s converging world.

We can do this in three key ways.

Page 7: Accenture Brochure Communications Billing

Implementing a new billing system at a European mobile operatorOne telco that has benefited from

Accenture’s billing system capabilities

and experience is a European mobile

phone operator. With the launch of its

3G mobile phone services, the company

needed a new billing system that would

support both prepaid and postpaid

customers, as well as track and bill all

types of usage on its network.

Working with Accenture, the telco

modified the global billing portion of

a leading billing software package and

put it into operation. Accenture was

involved in the entire spectrum of

systems development—from collecting

requirements and defining feasibility,

to designing the software, to building

and testing the system, and finally to

helping test the platform to confirm it

met the company’s needs.

The billing system now supports nearly

9 million customers and has helped

enable the carrier to take major strides

toward high performance by:

• Launching (and collecting revenue

from) a number of important mobile

phone video events.

• Reducing bad debt and fraud, while

increasing cash flow, through the

system’s online rating function.

• Reducing the high expense of credit

collection.

• Offering “tryouts” of services on a

prepaid basis.

• Reducing billing costs by generating

invoices for different services with

the same software.

Case studies

7

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Creating a new revenue assurance function at VimpelComVimpelCom, a leading Russian mobile

telco experiencing robust growth,

hired Accenture to help develop the

revenue assurance capabilities the

company would need to identify and

eliminate sources of revenue leakage.

Accenture worked with the telco’s

professionals to design and build

VimpelCom’s first-ever revenue

assurance function and implement

both a set of effective quick-win

solutions and a new cutting-edge

switch-to-bill monitoring system.

Together, the new function and system

help managers quickly prevent, detect,

analyze and fix revenue leakages all

along the revenue stream.

With its new capabilities, VimpelCom

is better positioned to drive high

performance. The company now can

closely monitor the revenue chain

from the point at which a new

subscriber begins using the company’s

network to the generation of accurate

invoices for that usage. The new

capabilities helped the company:

• Achieve 99.8 percent reconciliation

accuracy, despite processing more

than 1 billion call data records (CDRs)

in 26 different data formats per day.

• Save several million dollars in just

four months after the new revenue

assurance capabilities, which is

twice the cost of the solution itself.

• Save more than three percent of

the company’s total revenue annually

and identify more than one percent

of revenue losses to be controlled

and minimized.

2. Creating a superior revenue assurance function.A major challenge for telcos today

is verifying they are billing for and

collecting all the revenue they are due.

The Accenture Event-to-Cash Solution

is an end-to-end approach to addressing

revenue leakage that overcomes the

shortcomings of traditional efforts and

helps telcos take major strides toward

high performance. On average, telcos

that have adopted Accenture’s

solution—which addresses both the

business and technology sides of

revenue assurance—have realized cost

savings of between 2.5 percent and

3.5 percent in little more than three

to four months for a comparatively

minor investment.

Accenture’s approach to revenue

assurance spans four phases, each of

which encompasses a set of activities

that address specific revenue-

assurance challenges. In the Startup

Phase, Accenture conducts a detailed

assessment of a telco’s revenue-

assurance function and capabilities,

as well as all areas of the company

in which revenue leakage can occur.

In the Definition Phase, we work with

the telco to develop a set of target

business results it would like to achieve,

define new key performance indicators

that will help the telco measure its

progress toward reaching those targets,

and design new revenue-assurance

business processes that will enable the

telco to more effectively identify and

address sources of revenue leakage.

In the third phase, Deployment, we

implement the newly designed

revenue-assurance business processes

and design and roll out the relevant

prepackaged technology solutions that

support the new revenue-assurance

organization and processes. The final

phase, Tuning, involves refining and

enhancing the revenue-assurance

business processes and solutions for

optimized performance, enabling the

telco to support the ongoing review,

detection and repair of future issues

that could lead to revenue leakage

and bottom-line degradation.

See the sidebar below on how a leading

Russian mobile telco experienced the

value of Accenture’s revenue assurance

capabilities.

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Outsourcing and managed services at an Italian mobile operatorThe Poste Italiane group, which

provides postal services and integrated

communication, logistics and financial

services and products throughout Italy,

hired Accenture to help the company

begin selling mobile phone services

as a mobile virtual network operator

under the name ”PosteMobile.” In its

role of mobile virtual network enabler,

Accenture built and maintained all the

IT infrastructure needed to support

PosteMobile’s core business processes.

In addition to providing and maintaining

the IT platform, Accenture was asked

to provide operations and management

services as well as business process

outsourcing services that included

service configuration and testing of the

handsets and SIM cards (the "Subscriber

Identity Module" cards that identify

each unique mobile device).

Accenture completed the design and

implementation of PosteMobile’s

infrastructure in fewer than five

months, during which Accenture built

102 interfaces and integrated 41

systems, including those from Poste

Italiane and the company's selected

network operator. Accenture helped

enable 60,000 dealer users and 13,800

Poste Italiane Offices to sell mobile

services. In the first month of operation

as a startup company, PosteMobile

attracted 100,000 subscribers and

captured 7,000 activation orders

per day at the peak of this growth.

Within two months of the launch date,

PosteMobile became the leading Italian

mobile virtual network operator in

terms of customer base and is well

on the path to high performance in

a highly competitive industry.

3. Outsourcing billing operations and providing managed services.Numerous global telcos have opted

to outsource their billing operations

to Accenture. In such an arrangement,

Accenture provides a solution that

encompasses a telco’s entire billing

capability: from strategy, business

processes and technology to systems

operations, human resources and

economic structures. This typically

involves the following:

• Billing transformation, including

the consolidation or replacement of

outdated billing systems and processes

and the migration and retirement of

old legacy systems and processes

while insuring business continuity.

• Billing application development

outsourcing to deliver new billing

capabilities that improve a telco’s

time to market and helps the company

launch new offerings and services

more quickly and efficiently.

• Billing maintenance outsourcing to

reduce a telco’s billing systems

maintenance cost and increase the

service quality.

• Billing infrastructure outsourcing

to operate and maintain the billing

platform's hardware, data centers

and applications in a cost-effective

manner.

• Billing business processes outsourcing

to operate a telco’s billing business

processes as a managed service,

including part or all of the company’s

billing functions.

See the sidebar below on how a

new Italian operator capitalized on

Accenture’s outsourcing and managed

services capabilities.

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Accenture is a leader in telco billing solutions

For leading telcos around the world,

Accenture plays a key role in helping

them address their most pressing

billing challenges.

We have nearly three decades of

experience in billing processes,

organization and systems

implementation—covering completed

billing projects for more than 200

telco clients around the globe—which

gives Accenture unique insights and

an independent point of view on how

to transform billing operations to

support the pursuit of high performance.

In fact, Accenture has one of the

largest installed bases of billing

systems in the world: The billing

solutions we have implemented or

maintain currently support more than

220 million subscribers every month,

while our revenue assurance work has

helped these organizations recover

more than $90 million in lost revenue.

Our portfolio of billing and revenue

assurance offerings covers the full

breadth of billing operations, and

includes proven software packages

assembled within a robust integration

framework. With more than 2,500

billing professionals, Accenture has one

of the largest pools of highly skilled

billing resources. Plus, the Accenture

Global Delivery Network provides an

efficient and cost-effective delivery

model for our clients, helping them

save significant deployment costs while

reducing time to market. Furthermore,

our longstanding relationships with

billing and revenue assurance software

vendors provide Accenture with deep

knowledge of existing best-of-breed

technologies and platforms as well as

future development roadmaps.

Leading industry analysts rank

Accenture among the top professional

services firms in the billing arena, and

Accenture’s prominence is widely

acknowledged in the industry. According

to Gartner, Accenture ranked first in

data processing and hosted services

and second in customer billing

management and professional services

based on 2006-2008 global market

share based on revenue for those

years.3 Forrester Research also named

Accenture the leading Oracle billing

implementer in 2008.4 In addition,

Accenture has won its share of awards

for its billing work. For instance, we

received the Best Project award from

Billing China for our work at China

Telecom Zhejiang in 2007 with

Comverse. The billing system we

developed for Slovak Telecom also

was recognized at the seventh annual

World Billing Awards ceremony—which

acknowledges excellence in billing

solutions—and was the first-place

winner at the 2008 CTIA Emerging

Technology Awards.

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On the journey to high performance

In an era when telcos are under

increasing pressure to attract and

retain customers while managing

the change and complexity spawned

by convergence, the billing function

is more important than ever.

Accenture’s proven track record,

deep experience and extensive skills,

and strong alliances with leading

billing software vendors enable us

to help telcos address their billing

challenges—helping to reduce the risk

to clients’ operations while delivering

substantial business benefits.

In short, Accenture is the trusted

business provider telcos need to help

transform their billing function into a

true competitive differentiator that

helps them achieve high performance.

Page 12: Accenture Brochure Communications Billing

Copyright © 2007 Accenture

All rights reserved.

Accenture, its logo, and

High Performance Delivered

are trademarks of Accenture.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture

All rights reserved.

Accenture, its logo, and

High Performance Delivered

are trademarks of Accenture.

About AccentureAccenture is a global management

consulting, technology services and

outsourcing company. Combining

unparalleled experience, comprehensive

capabilities across all industries and

business functions, and extensive

research on the world’s most successful

companies, Accenture collaborates

with clients to help them become

high-performance businesses and

governments. With approximately

177,000 people serving clients in

more than 120 countries, the

company generated net revenues of

US$23.39 billion for the fiscal year

ended Aug. 31, 2008. Its home page

is www.accenture.com.

Contact UsFor more information about how

Accenture's distinctive solutions and

services can help you achieve high

performance by creating, developing,

delivering and managing innovative

services more efficiently and

effectively, please send us an email

to [email protected]

or call +1 312 842 5012 or toll free

at +1 877 889 9009.

Notes1 Gartner Dataquest, Market Share:

Telecom Operations Management Systems

(BSS, OSS and SDP), Worldwide, 2006-

2008, Martina Kurth, Kamlesh Bhatia and

Norbert Scholz, May 2009

2 Achieving High Performance in

Telecommunications through Superior

Billing, December 2008.

3 Gartner Dataquest, Market Share:

Telecom Operations Management Systems

(BSS, OSS and SDP), Worldwide, 2006-

2008, Martina Kurth, Kamlesh Bhatia and

Norbert Scholz, May 2009.

4 “The ForresterTM Wave: Oracle

Implementation Providers, Q1 2008”.