Convergence Plus Journal

NEW DELHI -- Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., the country's major basic and other telecom services provider would be a hi-tech customer oriented company with emphasis on value addition and use world class technology for customer relationship at affordable prices, the company CMD Shri Prithipal Singh announced here today.

Shri Singh also announced that BSNL would extend customer care operations to 24 hours a day for all the 365 days and provide efficient business transaction facilities. He also promised single window operations for customer care and migrate from telephone number based system to customer based system. BSNL would also deploy new products and packages rapidly and introduce call plan flexibilities and bundled services.

Inaugurating a Billing and Customer Relations Management conference organised by Convergence Plus, the BSNL chief honcho said that the country's top telecom services provider was building " a countrywide intranet for billing and customer services reducing the cost of operations, increasing revenue realization, plugging leakage of revenue and minimising frauds besides providing round the clock, efficient customer care operations",

Shri Singh made it plain that the days of customers waiting for a mere voice telephone connection had gone forever. He stressed on the different requirements of different customers and the compulsions for the operator to meet them the way the customer wanted them to be met. "That is the opportunity and challenge in Billing and CRM", Shri Singh said.

There was tremendous business opportunity for providing a range of solutions in billing to meet the specific needs of customers, he pointed out. There was also need to identify the problems facing the billing and CRM industry in the context of global changes and analyse how billing processes must change as services are integrated. The regulatory angle from the Billing perspective also needed to be examined. He called for practical solutions that could be implemented.

Shri Singh cautioned that in the context of converging markets, competing technologies, multiple operators interconnect settlement and unpredictable customer behavior, "there is a high degree of uncertainty" in the telecom scenario in the country. The operators had to integrate divergent technologies to offer a bundled service to the customers with optimal satisfaction and bill them efficiently for revenue realization. "To remain competitive toady companies must be able to find, attract and be in a position to retain the right customers and manage those relationships for maximum value" he added.

Mr. Shailendra Singh, Country Manager, sales for India and SAARC, Portal Software (Asia Pacific) Ltd., said that the heart of the billing problem was the perceived value by the customer of the services provided to him. The billing system must respond to this perceived value. Mr. Andreas Huggel, Senior Consultant iSoftel Ltd, said his company had specific solutions for different customer needs.

Billing solutions for wireless, wireline and convergent communications that can meet most stringent and diverse market requirements is the focus of Billing & CRM India 2002, international conference.

As media, Internet, wireless and wireline communications converge, customer care and bill payment options have become critical for the service providers. This has created a need for convergent billing platforms, which require dramatic changes in business support systems. The conference provided insights into these recent developments in billing solutions worldwide. It provided a broad view of billing concepts, identified the major challenges and the major players in the sector, and highlighted how changes in the wireless, wireline, banking, call centers, Internet, broadband segments are affecting the billing processes worldwide.

The conference discussed the growing customer-centric, rather than network-centric environment where amplified competition have made customers expect more from their service providers. This new customer-centric paradigm, process must change to enable customer-focused action. To move the strategic focus from the network to the customer, systems must become customer-adaptive. Customer-relationship-management (CRM) tools combine network data with billing and other data and organize it to represent the customer's experience. The output enables customer-adaptive decision making.

Eminent industry speakers at the conference were Mr. Alok Kumar, Chief of Operations, Touchtel (Bharti Telenet Ltd.); Shri A.K. Bhargava, General Manager-IT, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.; Mr Andreas Huggel, Senior Consultant, iSoftel Ltd.; Mr Ashwani Vachher, Chief Solutions Architect-India & SAARC, Portal Software (Asia Pacific) Ltd.; Mr Jagmohan Marwah, Senior Consultant, Oracle India Pvt. Ltd.; Mr Karanvir Singh, President, Voxtron Dezign Lab Pvt. Ltd.; Mr Navaid Khan, CEO, Hexacom India Ltd.; Mr P Nigam, Director, Estel Communications Pvt Ltd.; Mr Robert Machin, Billing Business Manager, Global Telecoms, Logica; Shri RRN Prasad, Member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; Mr Shailendra Singh, Country Manager-Sales, India & SAARC, Portal Software (Asia Pacific) Ltd; and Mr Sudershan Banerjee, CEO, Hutchison Essar Telecom Ltd.

Other issues discussed at the conference were Convergent Billing and CRM highlighting the present billing solutions and opportunities for the future, Billing for quality of services, Integration of Billing & CRM applications and cost & revenue management focusing on solutions to reduce churn and greater control of the prepaid subscribers and leveraging CRM for profitability.

A few of the leading international companies associated with the event are Portal Software (Asia Pacific) Ltd, a leading provider of customer management and billing software, and iSoftel Ltd, an award-winning software developer for the telecommunications industry offering prepaid/postpaid enhanced services platform, convergent billing system, call center solution, and enhanced services.

Billing & CRM India 2002, international conference is supported by the Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association of India (TEMA), Association of Basic Telecom operators (ABTO), Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), VSAT Services Association of India (VSAI) and Institution of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineers (IETE).

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