CONSIDERATIONS FOR CUSTOMER-CENTRIC,

NEXT-GENERATION BSS SOLUTIONS –

AND THE ROLE OF INDUSTRY STANDARDS
White Paper
Considerations For Customer-Centric, Next-Generation BSS Solutions –
and the Role of Industry Standards
In today’s telecommunications world, the customer (end-user) experience should be the absolute – with businesses working
from end-to-end to serve the customer. This is especially important given today’s rapidly changing and highly competitive
telecommunications market. Today, customers – shaped by their experience with the Internet - want personalization,
flexibility and innovation. They want a telecom provider to make it easy to purchase new services on-line, tailor plans, and mix
payment types.
As communication service providers (CSPs) begin to face the challenge of meeting these customer demands, they are
realizing more and more that their current infrastructures are not up to the task, and so they search for and evaluate new
product-based approaches. Industry experts recognize that CSPs “face the impossible task of bridging yesterday, today and
tomorrow with software systems designed in the past.”1
CSPs have always relied on networking standards to ensure their network elements interacted properly and integrated
smoothly into the communications network. Now they are turning to IT-related standards to ensure their support systems
interact easily. A key organization in defining these IT standards for telecommunication operations is the TeleManagement
Forum (TMF). The goal is that by using “standardized” or “compliant” products, CSPs will achieve greater efficiency through
streamlined processes, fewer systems, and lower integration costs. Of course, while focusing on standards compliance, CSPs
must be careful to keep the customer at the center of their thinking and not focus on standards compliance at the cost of the
end-to-end customer experience.
From a solution provider perspective, there is a way to integrate core industry standards – using them as important guidelines
while also retaining innovation and a focus on the customer. Comverse has found success in that approach with the
Comverse® ONE™ Billing & Active Customer Management solution.

A Look at Comverse ONE and Specific Industry Standards

Comverse’s highly innovative product portfolio enables CSPs to unleash the value of the network for their customers
by making their networks smarter. This is achieved with end-to-end solutions that leverage industry standards and are
interoperable – yet keep the customer as the main focus. This allows CSPs to effectively meet customer demands for service
innovation while also ensuring the smart monetization of new services.
TMF agrees with Comverse that the “customer is king.” It also asserts that standardization is a key business practice, and that
the industry is wise to “invest in OSS/BSS systems that create true value by developing end-to-end solutions that are reusable,
flexible and extendable.”2
The Comverse ONE Billing and Active Customer Management solution hits this target by adhering to key elements of the
TMF’s New (Next) Generation Operating System Solution Framework (NGOSS). Here is a broad overview of how Comverse
adheres (a closer examination will follow):

1 Banerjee, Arindam and Vellody, Ashvin, “Building the Anywhere Software Experience,” Yankee Group Research, July 2009:1
2 “Solution Frameworks (NGOSS),” http://www.TMForum.org

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 DISTRIBUTED ARCHITECTURE
Comverse ONE is designed to be deployed in a modular
nature (modularity is at the business function level) and
to fit easily in an operator’s overall architecture.
COMMUNICATIONS VIA WELL-DEFINED INTERFACES
Comverse ONE’s single API and security SDK use well-
defined services-based interfaces for integration with
other applications. Additionally charging interfaces (real-
time transaction control) use industry standards.

INFORMATION FRAMEWORK (SID) EXTERNALIZED PROCESS CONTROL

Comverse ONE meets the main Information Framework Comverse ONE’s internal process management
principles of clearly establishing what applications/ (workflow) can be integrated with other process
components master or utilize data by providing a SINGLE management systems for end-to-end management.
data model across the entire unified framework.

TMF describes NGOSS as a tool that “will rapidly drive down operational costs … streamline software development by
enabling unprecedented reuse and risk reduction … and reduce full lifecycle systems costs through standardization of
interfaces.”3 Some analysts, however, feel that initiatives such as NGOSS are “heavily customized by service providers so what
exists at the end are custom APIs that are not transferable among operators.”4
To break this paradigm, Comverse leveraged its more than 20-year history of in-network and IT-based billing and customer
management expertise delivering to CSPs a unified approach to BSS convergence: a single, unified BSS that will handle any
combination of service, content, network, and payment type. This was accomplished by working with NGOSS principles to
build a solution built on a single code base around a single data model. The Comverse ONE solution effectively is designed
to address the challenges and possibilities of true convergence. It also removes complexity, reducing deployment time and
risk by reducing the number of integration points and increasing operation efficiency through more streamlined processes
and less need for data synchronization– all while adhering to base NGOSS principles. Of course, Comverse ONE also offers
open, services-based APIs for inclusion in an overall ecosystem – whether through a Services-Oriented Architecture or other
approach.
Customers using Comverse BSS solutions are receiving positive results:
1. Lower TCO: Nucleus Research, a leading IT research firm, found that “by deploying Comverse ONE, a telecommunica-
tions provider will avoid $16 million in custom development costs that would have been required to launch planned
new products…”5
2. Faster Time to Market: A new operator in South East Asia was able to penetrate the market quickly with an innovative
offering due to the Comverse ONE solution’s unified approach, which minimized integration efforts and time, enabling
them to focus on their product offering, rather than spend time on integration and customization.
3. Consistent Real-Time Customer Experience: By enabling customer service representatives to more rapidly handle
customer inquiries, change requests, and complaints, the Comverse ONE solution improves customer satisfaction levels
and lowers churn. Additionally, by integrating self-service, Comverse ONE empowers subscribers to self-manage their
accounts by having access to the same up-to-date, comprehensive information. Research shows that when subscrib-
ers have access to integrated Web-based and interactive voice response systems, they are more likely to use these
self-service tools rather than calling a call center.6

So Comverse is able to provide significant benefits for CSPs while working within the principles of TMF’s NGOSS framework.
Following is a closer look at how Comverse maximizes these standards while moving forward as an industry leader:

3 “Best Practices and Standards,” http://www.TMForum.org

4 Banerjee, Arindam and Vellody, Ashvin, “Building the Anywhere Software Experience,” Yankee Group Research, July 2009:5
5 “Research Note: Comverse ONE Reduces Complexity for Telcos,” Nucleus Research Inc., Nov. 2009:2
6 “Research Note: Comverse ONE Reduces Complexity for Telcos,” Nucleus Research Inc., Nov. 2009:3

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 Application Framework (TAM): Provides a common language between service providers and their suppliers to
describe systems and their functions, as well as a common way of grouping them.

Key Advantages: The Application Framework handles
collaboration between more partners and greater
numbers of systems, providing a standardized model for
grouping function and data into recognizable applications
or services. The move towards convergent billing requires
billing applications to move towards a customer-centric
model.
How Comverse Adheres: Comverse mirrors Application
Frmework standards on rating & pricing of events
for retail billing (in real time and offline); discounts,
including cross-product discounting; flexibility of rating
algorithms to accommodate new tariff plans; throughput
and accuracy; pro-rating of charges services.

Business Process Framework (eTOM): Provides logical groupings of processes for building management systems.

Key Advantages: Establishes a common vocabulary
for business and functional processes. Used to
analyze existing processes while enabling quantitative
assessments of value, cost and performance of
processes. This standard clearly illustrates to SPs the
applications they should have in place to fully support
business operations. Key business processes need to
be represented using the Business Process Framework,
especially true for key ones that cross systems, like new
customer acquisition.
How Comverse Adheres: Comverse ONE received
Business Process Framework (eTOM) certification, achieving
the highest conformance level attainable. Comverse ONE
uses this framework to represent its functions: market sales
management, product management, service management,
and so on that align with the core processes of the
Business Process Framework in support of the deployment
of a convergent BSS infrastructure. Business Process
Framework business processes have been mapped in the
Comverse ONE solution and incorporated into Comverse’s
Implementation, Planning and Analysis (IPA) methodology
to improve the effectiveness of deployments through
the use of standard and consistent processes. Comverse
ONE applies the Business Process Framework map,
while moving towards increasing applications in resource
management, and active customer management.

Information Framework (SID): A common information model for aligning data with pertinent business processes.

Key Advantages: Establishes a clear understanding
around stewardship of data (and creates a “language;”
so everyone is using the same terminology). Without
standardized information models, data may require
extensive transformation each time it passes among
applications – requiring costly, customized integration
across multiple system interfaces.
How Comverse Adheres: Comverse ONE Billing &
Active Customer Management follows this standard –
and extends it to allow for maximum functionality in its
products. The key aspects of the Comverse ONE solution’s
data model have been mapped to SID so that it can be
discussed with a common understanding of terminology
and concepts; Comverse plans to undertake Information
Framework certification in 2011. Additionally, the Comverse
ONE solution addresses the main SID principles of clearly
establishing which components/applications master or
utilize data by providing a SINGLE data model across
the entire unified framework. This allows flexibility and
consistency throughout the system.

As illustrated, the Comverse ONE data model adheres to the Information Framework by unifying critical business functions
(sales, marketing, ordering, customer management -- including self-service, real-time rating, and billing) around a single data
model. By sharing a common terminology with clearly defined responsibility and ownership of data and elements, Comverse
creates fully comprehensive BSS/OSS solutions that streamline key cross-system Business Process Framework (eTOM)
business processes.

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These include:
• Customer interface management
• Order handling
• Lead tracking and management
• Problem solving
• Bill invoice management
• Problem handling
• Bill payment and receivables management
• Rating and discounting
• Billing events management
Comverse did not stop there, however. When defining the Comverse ONE data model, the company went beyond “standard”
and included a major factor: ever-changing customer expectations.
In doing so, it provided for leading-edge attributes such as multiple service-specific balances, multiple payment types, and
multiple identities (e.g. enterprise vs. personal). The Comverse ONE solution’s data model provides these extensions and
many other next-generation ready, subscriber-centric attributes. Given that the solution covers so many of the Application
Framework components in a pre-integrated fashion, CSPs are ensured that all of the extensions within the Comverse ONE
solution will work together seamlessly.

Going Beyond “Standard”

By building “beyond” the Information Framework, the Comverse approach ensures that CSPs do not have to worry about
purchasing proprietary extensions from multiple vendors (something that, in fact, ultimately defeats the purpose of the
Information Framework).
This is crucial to a unified approach to convergence, as found in the Comverse ONE solution. Recent industry reviews
indicated that “to stay relevant, software vendors have to transform their solutions and build intelligent, real-time and event-
driven software systems that will enable the ideal customer experience. However, to do that, the software system must be
built with core architectural principles that keep the needs of the end-customer at the center.”7
This is at the heart of the Comverse ONE solution. Its single-system support for sales, marketing, order management,
customer management, charging, and billing (along with its built-in in-network capabilities and extended Information
Framework attributes) ensure a consistent next-generation user experience. This unique architecture enables a holistic view
of market offerings and rich customer information that is consistent across the ecosystem, including all customer touch points
(e.g. Web, customer care, IVR, handset). Moreover, the real-time nature of the Comverse ONE solution means that customer
data is current – truly allowing CSPs to deliver an interactive and personalized real-time experience.
Given that the Comverse ONE solution is in the network and enables a full view of the customer, it can blend network
knowledge with customer profile information empowering targeted location and context-aware marketing. Additionally, the
solution supports multi-dimensional policy management to enable a seamless, converged and consistent next generation
subscriber experience. This is done by enforcing policies related to authorization, rating and charging, identity (enterprise and
personal) management and financial liability management.
By extending this unified approach further upstream to sales and marketing functions (such as campaign management, sales
force automation, and interaction management), the Comverse ONE solution transforms the traditional order-to-cash cycle
into a prospect-to-cash cycle. This allows the consistent end-user experience to start earlier during the sales and acquisition
process.
By streamlining business processes across sales, marketing, care, fulfillment and charging the Comverse ONE solution
simplifies the support for converged business models (multiple-accounts single number, hybrid rate plans and complex
7 Banerjee, Arindam and Vellody, Ashvin, “Building the Anywhere Software Experience,” Yankee Group Research, July 2009:1

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 group accounts). For example, customer acquisition processes no longer are dependent on customer payment type choice
– thereby boosting efficiency and effectiveness. This is a natural expectation of next-generation networks and the next-
generation subscriber experience.
Of course, the real test of a product is when it is deployed in the operator’s environment. Transformation is not an
instantaneous process; nor is it business as usual. Therefore it is critical, as the Yankee Group states, for service providers to
“embrace manageable risk to the business today to build a back office that enables them to compete tomorrow.”8
So, the right approach – the ‘how’ – is very important as disrupting existing business operations is not an option. Of course,
experience is also an important part of getting one’s methodology right and the right product forms a solid foundation for a
solid methodology thus lowering risk.
The objective of the Comverse solution becomes making the software work and honing the client’s operational infrastructure
to deliver a true strategic advantage. Comverse offers its own professional services organization (and partners with leading
systems integrators) to deliver services that focus on:
• Operational optimization
• Software integration
• Knowledge transfer
• High-value support
These services are key components of the Comverse ONE Billing and Active Customer Management solution – and follow the
company’s mission to work with clients to develop internal best practices based on optimal use of Comverse software within
their environment.

A Look Forward
As illustrated, Comverse acknowledges and adheres to standards within the TMF NGOSS framework. These allow the
company to remain steadfast in its end-goal: to help the operator maximize the end-customer experience, while reducing
complexity and TCO.
While this commitment is consistent with Comverse’s operating philosophy, it is also justified by industry projections of future
marketplace needs. At least 90 percent of service providers today identify OSS/BSS capabilities as being of high importance
for effective customer management (particularly regarding service provisioning, service fulfillment, and service assurance.)9
Additionally, experts are recommending software systems “be architected to meet the requirements of a business process. For
example, unifying and automating a complete end-to-end first contact-to-cash process would help service providers deliver a
differentiated customer experience. In this context, SES (Software Experience Systems) needs to unify and automate customer
facing and processing systems to achieve a better relationship with their customers at all channels—the Web, stores, kiosks
and the call center. Vendors that offer broad product suites (like Comverse) offer the most promise in this area.”10
Staying customer focused will also reap benefits for providers who are looking to increase the ROI on both existing assets and
new projects. In fact, analysts note that Comverse ONE delivers “opportunities to achieve cost reductions, accelerate time to
market, and increase revenue growth.”11
Customers are bound to get what they demand from next-generation telecommunication products and services. The
customer experience will continue to reign in this environment; and Comverse will continue to lead the way in both leveraging
TMF standards and enabling service providers to create a consistent and interactive next-generation customer experience.

8 Banerjee, Arindam and Vellody, Ashvin, “Building the Anywhere Software Experience,” Yankee Group Research, July 2009:12
9 “Delivering the Next-Generation Subscriber Experience,” Forrester Consulting, Sept. 2009:12
10 Banerjee, Arindam and Vellody, Ashvin, “Building the Anywhere Software Experience,” Yankee Group Research, July 2009:10
11 “Research Note: Comverse ONE Reduces Complexity for Telcos,” Nucleus Research Inc., Nov. 2009:5

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 About Comverse
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 125 countries and covers over
450 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.
For more information please visit www.comverse.com
Copyright ©2011 Comverse, Inc. All rights reserved.
Comverse, its logo, the spark design, Kenan and Netcentrex are registered
trademarks of Comverse Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United
States and other selected countries. Other denoted product names of
Comverse or other companies may be trademarks or registered trademarks
of Comverse, Inc. or its subsidiaries, or their respective owners. The materials
presented in this communication are summary in nature, subject to change,
and intended for general information only.
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