Newly formed alliance results in successful integration of Vodafone Czech’s essential line-of-business applications
Microsoft and SITRONICS Telecom Solutions Czech Republic (formerly STROM Telecom) announced that they will work together to offer operators an end-to-end billing solution that integrates with their primary line-of-business applications, customer care and billing solutions. The first customer to benefit from the allianceÊ is Vodafone Czech Republic, which is using the integrated managed services solution to enhance its billing, customer care and ordering processes to deliver new, more sophisticated packaged services to market faster.
SITRONICS Telecom Solutions (SITRONICS TS) is a developer and producer of high-end communications equipment and business and operations support systems (BSS/OSS). The collaboration brings together Microsoft¨ Customer Care Framework and Microsoft Dynamicsª CRM 3.0 with the FORIS NG BSS/OSS real-time convergent billing system from SITRONICS TS, and the solution will be available to customers in Western, Central and Eastern Europe; the Asia Pacific region; the Middle East; and Africa.
“The increasing demand for content-intensive services is opening up new revenue streams, and operators must be able to provide a superior experience to their customers to take advantage of this,” said Rainer Grumann, executive vice president of sales and marketing from SITRONICS TS. “Working with Microsoft, we are making it easier for operators by helping them streamline processes and integrate their back-end systems so that they can focus on the most important thing: providing a good quality of service to their customers.”
Vodafone Czech Republic selected the SITRONICS TS/Microsoft solution for its focus on business processes and for its inherent scalability and flexibility in defining service bundles. In addition, it is based on industry standards. The solution is designed to help Vodafone retain its leadership position among enterprise customers by facilitating the effective creation of tailor-made fixed and mobile convergent offerings. The implementation will also include IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) platform integration. Customer Care Framework will help Vodafone’s customer care processes by simplifying and speeding up the time taken to fulfil complex orders from its corporate subscribers. Call centre agents, through a single sign-on and a user-friendly interface, will get a 360-degree view of the person they are speaking to and, as a result, can help reduce call handling times. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, a powerful marketing and sales tool, is also providing users with customer intelligence, within a familiar Microsoft Office environment.
“Mobile operators are increasingly expected to deliver personalised services to their customers, and advances in technology have made this possible to do quickly and easily,” said Michael O’Hara, general manager for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “We must not forget, however, that for any service to be rolled out successfully, it must be accompanied by a seamless and informed customer relations strategy. The contact centre is still the main point of interaction between an operator and its customers and is therefore a key component for any services strategy.”
The FORIS NG solution provides Vodafone Czech Republic with increased flexibility for creating unique, individually tailored offerings for corporate customers, combining both new and existing fixed and mobile services, including IMS-based services. Customers can create personalised tariff schemes and allow operators to provide numerous combinations of tariffs and special offers depending on, for example, the time of day or the region.
The joint solution is interoperable with different types of networks, combining the benefits of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), the public switched telephone network (PSTN), Next Generation Networking (NGN) and IMS. FORIS BSS/OSS provides Vodafone with a cost-effective, dependable platform that allows for the easy and rapid deployment of new services and tariffs.