ACCELERATE OFFERS WITH CATALOG DRIVEN CAPABILITIES By Liron Golan, Amdocs

CONTENTS

Sigh. No rest for the weary 4Documenting the challenge 6Requirements for a solution 18The way forward 20Building the business case: The payback from a master

catalog The Amdocs Master Enterprise Catalog Solution 32

SIGH... NO REST FOR THE WEARY.

If you’re dealing with enterprise product management, you’re probably running twice as fast just to keep up. On one hand, you’re packaging new offers as quickly as possible to generate new revenue streams. On the other hand, you’re struggling with multiple systems, inconsistent data, and manual workarounds to keep the process moving forward.

No matter what your specific role is, you’ve got a huge portfolio to manage, relentless pressure to get new offers to market faster, and stakeholders who expect a reduction in operation expenses across the board.

inconsistent data

multiple systems

manual workarounds4 5

DOCUMENTING THE CHALLENGE

The speed at which state-of-the-art technology is evolving is nothing short of staggering

Services are becoming more complex with data services pushing complexity to new levels. As a result, service providers are struggling to remain competitive by differentiating themselves through innovation as they endeavor to expand into new markets.

At the same time, product lifecycles are getting shorter. Service providers need to get new products, promotions and bundles into the hands of customers quickly, and that means streamlining the processes for creating, approving, implementing and testing consumer-ready product content. Aggressive time to market puts stress on the information technology (IT) division, which also faces operational cost challenges on top of time to market pressures.

Delayed product releases mean a high probability that the service provider’s business goals of acquiring new customers and improving ARPU will be negatively impacted.

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Service Managment

Serf Service

Customer Managment

Point of Sale

Serf Services

Content

Ordering

Campaign managment

Fulfilment

Billing

RCMInventory

Point of Sale

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FIVE DIMENSIONS PUT SEVERE STRESS ON THE TIME TO MARKET OF NEW OFFERS:

1. The size of the portfolio. The number and complexity of product and service offerings has exploded in recent years. The majority of service providers have more than 450 distinct products and services in their portfolios, and the search for new revenue sources virtually guarantees that the numbers will keep growing.

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3. The demand for new products. Service providers today are launching at least 50 and sometimes 200 or more new offers each year to remain competitive and satisfy an ever widening range of subscriber expectations and demands for personalized services and packages. Service providers in emerging markets, on average, launch almost twice as many new products as those in more mature markets.

2. The length of the implementation process. Implementation into the catalog demands expertise and knowledge of the data model and capabilities. So the translation of a new offer from business/marketing lingo to catalog model may lead to back and forth bouncing between business and IT, which has a negative effect on time to market.

NEW

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4. Federated catalogs. Many of today’s service providers have to manage information relating to tens of thousands of products, all of which are scattered throughout a multitude of catalogs. No wonder there is difficulty in releasing new products or updates in a timely fashion as service providers are forced to adapt their business to catalog abilities.

5. Modernization. Many legacy systems are unable support new business models and services. So an additional silo sometimes needs to be built in order to support new services, and new business models are often bent to compensate for the limited abilities of legacy systems.

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Translation of business request to catalogue model, may lead to back & forth between Business and IT

THE END RESULT: critical gaps in process efficiency, severely impacting time to market. Implementation Process - Outlining Challenges & Bottlenecks

Need for tracking approvals, notifying all the teams, and tracking changes efficiently

Implementation in the catalogue requires expertise and knowlege of the data model and capabilities

Implementation TestingRequest Initiation Evaluate, Plan & Aprove Design

!IT MEC

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REQUIREMENTS FOR A SOLUTION Centralized repository with a 360° view of product and service information to enable high levels of collaboration and flexibility across the organization to accommodate different offerings. Cross-functional collaboration today is rife with slow, manual processes, miscommunication, and missed handoffs.

A comprehensive process-led business solution to optimize business and IT interaction capabilities and serve as a self-service portal for business requests.

Modernization: A product catalog is used to centralize all product data from all relevant systems. By means of integration, all legacy systems work with the product information now contained in a master enterprise catalog, which abstracts the legacy constraints and different information models from other systems.

Smooth integration all BSS/OSS components. The strength of a modern BSS/OSS is in its ability to follow a well-defined business process that is driven by an enterprise product catalog which can store each product, offer or bundle to the relevant business process.

Looking at specific functionalities, four key requirements stand out:

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SO WHAT does a product catalog need in order to be effective and address the challenges that are common to service providers across the globe

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THE WAY FORWARDThere are four guidelines which service providers should consider when exploring or deploying new product catalog solutions

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Invest in a master product catalog: The one critical gap in many service providers’ environments is a central product catalog. Multiple catalogs result in fragmented and inconsistent product data which form the base of essential systems and processes.

In this context, critical steps such as product configuration demand elaborate and often manual efforts to ensure product quality. As such, attempting to streamline and better integrate product lifecycle management across the organization in the absence of a centralized catalog greatly increases the difficulty of the initiative.122 23

Maximize existing assets:

Many legacy systems are unable support new business models and services. At times, an additional silo needs to be built to support new services, and new business models are often adjusted to enhance the abilities of the legacy systems. Modernization of these legacy systems is needed, while replacing them all at once may not be appealing to all service providers.

This is where an enterprise product catalog enters the picture.224 25

3Emphasize incremental improvement:

Although a product catalog implementation project is clearly a priority with substantial revenue implications, “big bang” overhauls are extremely difficult to manage and finance. It’s generally better to focus on a series of incremental steps that make a difference in their own right, such as consolidating ordering and billing data, streamlining the order to activation process, moving toward a single product catalog, and to the most relevant, high quality, product model.

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4Get the business owners committed to the process: A new breed of product catalog users has emerged. They are the brand marketers, business planners, and product owners responsible for the sales and marketing of multi-play offers to customers.

By leveraging a common language for both business and IT personnel, a product catalog creates greater collaboration enabling proactive, timely actions that monetize improved customer experience.

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THE AMDOCS MASTER ENTERPRISE CATALOG

is a holistic, centralized data repository to consolidate and manage all products and related information in the various business support systems (BSS) and operational support system (OSS), while supporting the product structure that corresponds with the business needs.

The solution is an enterprise business enabler at the heart of critical business processes. Vertically, the Amdocs Master Enterprise Catalog bridges the gap between BSS and OSS, and horizontally, it leverages product assets across lines of business. Its support goes beyond the Amdocs portfolio, integrating with any BSS product catalog and/or OSS service catalog, whether home-grown or third party.

MEC

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MEC

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is used to centralize all product data from all relevant systems. By means of integration, all legacy systems work with product information now contained in the enterprise product catalog, which abstracts the legacy constraints and different information models from other systems

MEC

MEC THE AMDOCS MASTER ENTERPRISE CATALOG

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MEC CORE ELEMENTS OF THE AMDOCS MASTER EXPERTISE CATALOG PRODUCE SOLUTION INCLUDE:

MEC

Amdocs Product Catalog: A single, centralized source for all product and service information that enables faster and cheaper product development, greater accuracy in order management and fulfillment, and more transparent and reliable portfolio management

Business Implementation Studio: An innovative, user-friendly user interface (UI), which serves as a self-service portal for business requests. By utilizing business lingo and terminology, it allows non-technical users to drive product changes and launch new offers quickly, eliminating most IT dependencies

Amdocs Implementation Design Center (IDC): Offering complete solution coverage (from scoping to implementation) of the entire order to fulfillment process, and strengthening the integration between Amdocs MEC and the OSS/BSS components.

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For more information on the Amdocs Master Enterprise Catalog, visit

www.Amdocs.com/MEC