Posted on: Feb 18, 2018 by Brigitte Barberon

How long have the business support systems telcos rely on for order management, charging and billing, account management, marketing and customer engagement been in place?

Ten years? Twenty? Sure, there have been upgrades and changes – but essentially, many core business systems were designed and built for a world that no longer exists.

Few telcos have really broken down the siloes from which their business systems operate. As a result, the genuine 360-degree customer view is rarely achievable or affordable. Even fewer telcos have addressed the challenges of realtime integration with their operational systems. With the rise of software-defined networks and network function virtualization, this now becomes a serious impediment to business excellence.

Reticence to major change is understandable: it’s costly; the risk of discontinuity is an unknown; and system engineering and integration skills are in short supply.

It’s a dilemma. Major change is a challenge – but standing still is not an option. So how do you break the deadlock? How do you move forward while minimizing the risks and containing cost?

How do you create a foundation for business system development and delivery that is going to serve you long into the future?

And most importantly, how do you create a business support environment that is going to speed new product delivery and sustain outstanding quality-of-experience for your customers?

Breaking the deadlock

You find the solution in the roots of the problem. The landscape has changed because of mobility, universal access to data services, and radically heightened customer expectation.

These changes are all rooted in virtualization and automation. We bank virtually; we shop virtually; we even live among communities in which half our friends are virtual.

The answer lies there.

The development and delivery platforms telcos need for new products and business services must also be virtualized and automated. Cloud delivery becomes the only viable option because only cloud delivery can provide the necessary agility and scalability. Only a cloud architecture can enable the telco to rapidly and dependably connect and converge previously isolated business functions.

Balancing the bold and the cautious

Major change is scary. For telcos, the cornerstone of client-satisfaction is availability – disrupt a service or a service relationship, and loyalty starts to crumble fast.

The good news is that you can simultaneously embark on new business support system approaches without unwanted impact on continuity of customer-service.

Atos has invested in extensive cloud development resources and services precisely so that our clients can explore and experiment without business risk or capital expense.

Perhaps more importantly, through our digital transformation factory, we make it possible for our telco clients to minimize the gap between serious proof-of-concept and full-scale adoption. By introducing containerization, in which bundles of business services can be readily combined to create new value, we are helping telcos change the rules of innovation and engagement.

The MWC and beyond

At the Mobile World Congress we’ll have our telco Business Support System team on stand, ready to share expertise and demonstrate the practical . They will place special emphasis on the benefits of use-cases and how these can help fast-track your priority challenges.

We’ll also be showcasing hybrid cloud development platforms as a means for rapid product development.

And beyond Barcelona and the MWC, we welcome telcos to join us across our network of Business Technology Innovation Centers to explore practical approaches to the digital transformation of business support systems.

Connect. Converge. Create.