• How consumer demand for service, quality and a complete customer experience is driving technology innovation
• How business and service management systems enable next-generation networks to flex their capabilities and achieve their potential
• How OSS/BSS solutions improve efficiency and reduce operating costs as part of a total business transformation initiative.

• Aims and architecture of the NGN
• Management principles - NGOSS/Service Oriented Architectures
• The need for well-defined, standard and re-usable OSS system capabilities
• Engaging the standards and vendor worlds to deliver

• Outlining requirements for efficient Telecom management
• Creating, managing and evolving new consumer services and technologies
• Telecom Management as a tool for operators to run their businesses profitably

• What are the most important components defining next-generation OSS/BSS? What are the main goals? What is the current state of development and implementation?
• What are the most important applications involved in achieving a 360 degree view of the customer?
• How important is SOA in developing a next-gen OSS/BSS? How extensive is the use of Web services? What is the timeline for the evolution from an EAI based architecture to a SOA?
• What are the primary technologies involved in an SOA framework? What hurdles are encountered in developing an SOA framework?
• How to derive the SOA benefits related to loosely-coupled services, without suffering the performance degradation of multi-tiered data access?
• Assessing the results obtained from a study and survey of 17 major service providers worldwide

• What are the main components defining a next-generation OSS/BSS? What are the main goals?
• What is the role of Customer Profile Management and Data Hubs in a SOA in Telecommunications?
• How do you evolve from an EAI based architecture to a SOA? Are there intermediary steps?
• What are the principle services in BSS? Do they align with eTOM? NGOSS? Do these standards illuminate or confuse the evolution to SOA? Should we define generic services or create the building blocks for enterprise centric services?
• How to derive the SOA benefits related to loosely-coupled services, without suffering the performance degradation of multi-tiered data access? How to ensure that architects do not use web services to create yet another tightly coupled architecture?
• How do models proposed in other industries – e.g. retail – help us create an SOA in telecommunications?

Session background
Developing and implementing a next-generation operational and business support system (OSS/BSS) represents one of the highest IT priorities for most telecom service providers. As service providers pursue goals from consolidating back office applications to reducing the time required to introduce new services, next-generation OSS/BSS is viewed as a primary means to achieve these goals. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) plays a highly important role in developing a next-generation OSS/BSS for almost all service providers. SOA promises greater flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness in the way that companies produce and use services and as service providers look to enhance self-service offerings, they rely not only on next generation OSS/BSS but also consolidation of back-office systems and real-time access to information through SOAs.

• The CEO and the Customer
• The organizational impact of convergent charging
• Closing the loop between Voice of the Customer, projects and operations
• Developing cross-functional thinking and collaboration
• Beyond Billing & CRM – self service and transactional customer relations
• The ultimate goal: delivering a consistent customer experience

• Understanding how to deploy a fully converged system for prepaid and postpaid services and support this across the entire customer base
• What types of converged charging models are evolving and how do they impact billing?
• How will changing customer behaviour and enhanced expectations of service quality impact the way operators and service providers manage customers?
• How are leading operators and vendors developing convergent charging models?
• How are vendors developing their platforms to support converged charging structures – IN vs. IT
• Bringing them together: IN/IT & Prepaid/Postpaid
• What is the gap between operator needs and vendors response (in terms of their products and strategies) and how can it be addressed?
• Identifying key trends and developing a clear roadmap to accommodate future requirements

Session background
As more advanced mobile services have become available and the advent of an all-IP world has become a reality, convergent charging has taken an increasingly important role. Services such data, m-payments, video, etc must all be authorized and rated in real-time, and the balance has to be accurate at the moment the charge is applied, irrespective of whether the user is using prepaid or postpaid. Competition within the converged charging market is also heating up as vendors from opposite ends of the payment spectrum develop and implement solutions. At one end are the intelligent-network (IN)-based vendors which have gained a lot of experience developing the real-time, high-availability functionality associated with delivering prepaid solutions. At the other end of the scale are the IT players that historically have a strong position in billing for traditionally postpaid services and have concentrated on developing highly scalable and flexible rating engines with back-end customer-management functionality. As an integrated single charging platform becomes the norm for prepaid and postpaid subscribers, a unified strategy will be needed.

• Mediation's role as a central control point for next gen network services
• Forecast of merchant mediation software market
• Significance of convergent, on-line, and value-based billing mediation
• Build vs. buy of mediation capabilities
• Relationship to revenue, customer, and partner assurance
• Leading global vendor players and market trends

• What are key mediation challenges in an IP value-added world?
• What are the most important mediation priorities?
• Dealing with the challenges:
  • Legacy billing systems integration
  • Demand for prepaid vs. postpaid
  • Reducing call record volumes
  • Unmanaged service usage collection (e.g. SIP-based services)
  • Balance management and online-charging for third-party transactions
• Contrasting the significance of new mediation approaches: IP-based, convergent, active, and value-based mediation.
• The link between mediation and revenue assurance - monitoring prepaid money balances and postpaid credit limits
• Looking to the future: Addressing the need for highly flexible, scalable, and real-timebased mediation platforms to control advanced 3G mobile services
Moderator:
Dan Baker, Research Director, Dittberner OSS/BSS KnowledgeBase, Dittberner Associates

Panellists:
Tomislav Lovric, Billing Mediation Solution Designer - IT Department, Mobilkom Austria
Gareth Rees, IT Program Manager, Energis UK
Iulia Manolache, Senior Manager Technology and Services Development, Connex (Mobifon SA)
Fergus O'Reilly, VP Product Strategy, Highdeal
Brian T. Kassa, Senior Marketing Manager, Nokia

• Distilling many vendor relationships into a few strategic partnerships
• Creating a unified and strategic people, process and technology architecture for reliability and flexibility
• Having a focus on I.T. never being in the way of progress
• Measuring results (the use of Six Sigma)
• Staying the course

• Strategic OSS challenges for Wireless Service Providers deploying IMS and delivering multimedia services
• Strategies of key OSS vendors and relative market position
• Strategies for the consolidation of Wireless OSS
• Overview of OSS Observer market analysis and forecast

• What are the key issues concerning the current operational environment?
• Challenges faced by service providers: need for leveraging previous investments in service delivery and support systems with seamless introduction of next generation networks in the management infrastructure
• What are the current OSS investment trends and target OSS architectures?
• Evaluating the functionality provided by different approaches and the respective OSS implications
• Transitional strategies: Buying, building or integrating?
• Quality of customer experience: the importance of Service Quality Management, Integrated Service Assurance and Fault Management & Network, Application and Traffic Performance Management
• Challenging OSS areas: introduction of multimedia wireless services and IMS infrastructure
• Next-generation OSS Targets: opex reduction through automated service fulfillment, ‘service velocity’, service assurance and ROI
• Future outlook into possible market outcomes

As network convergence and integration marches forward, service providers must have an up-to-theminute understanding of critical OSS challenges and opportunities that impact their current and future business. Service Providers are looking for solutions that will inter-work wireless, IP, and traditional PSTN elements within their enterprise, and extend a comparable level of management throughout the organisation. Service Providers today are being asked to deliver multiple services to as many customers as possible with the highest quality of service (QoS) possible. To keep revenue high, providers must provide adequate diversity, consistently high value, quality customer care, competitive prices, and smooth provisioning, trouble-shooting, and service maintenance. Providers can commit to investing the time and money to migrate to an organisation-wide OSS strategy, or to manage OSS costs by slowly evolving on a demand-driven basis and suffering potential inefficiency in the meantime.

• CRM in an electronic world – fact or fiction?
• UK Telecoms review – a user perspective
• Towards Customer Centric Operation Performance Management
• Technology trends

• How has CRM practice in the telecommunications market evolved in the last 2- 3 years? What are the key CRM requirements towards achieving a competitive edge?
• Customer Analytics: How is customer analytics a top potential area where CSPs can drive more value out of CRM tools? What solutions are available in the market?
• Data Warehousing: How are data warehouses delivering business intelligence capabilities to support business functions in the telecommunications industry?
• Data Integrity: Consistency and accuracy of data is critical to success with business intelligence - data quality must be viewed as a business issue and responsibility
• Pulling BI analytics, data warehousing and data integration toward actionable, "real-time" intelligence

The evolution of CRM products in the telecoms industry has come to a vital point where the justification for carriers’ continued use of CRM mandates integration of customer analytics into their CRM strategies. CRM benefits need more justification than generic claims of business progress, revenue growth or subjective assertions of happy customers. As carriers face increasing pressure to maximize revenue, they are compelled to become more adept at understanding the value of a satisfied customer. Customer analytics, data warehousing as well as data integration will be key factors for optimizing CRM tools to ensure that enhanced customer interactions and ROI enter a highly profitable relationship.

• Where does Revenue Assurance sit?
• What does Revenue Assurance consider?
• How do you empower Revenue Assurance?
• The 3 key activities of Revenue Assurance
• Future of Revenue Assurance

• Key success factors for preventing revenue leakage and improving your bottom line
• How big a problem is fraud and how are operators tackling it
• How Sarbanes-Oxley will permeate your organisation?
• The impact of new services and related networks on revenue leakage
• Data integrity management for improved cost management and revenue assurance
• OSS and potential leakage areas: Product Design, Service Provisioning & Activation, Network Operations, Mediation and Collections
• What needs to be addressed in the future?

The wireless industry is undoubtedly experiencing growing difficulties as it tries to accurately rate and bill for content transactions. As telecommunications companies look for ways to improve their financial footing, they have to seriously evaluate their complete order-to-cash process and then plug the gaps where they are experiencing significant leakage. Problems such as inadequate visibility into mobile content transactions, inefficient settlement processes with content partners, poor data integrity management, advertised services that cannot be billed for and fraud are all creating substantial revenue leakage. As the importance and full scope of revenue assurance is recognised, there is a vital need to develop a holistic approach to revenue and profit management covering all revenue-related areas such as fraud management and prevention.