The two launch what they claim is world’s first AI-optimised “concept-to-care” SaaS solution for billing and customer management for telcos
Cloud billing company Aria Systems and cloud CRM specialist Salesforce have integrated their cloud platforms to offer telcos a new AI-optimised “concept-to-care” monetisation platform. The companies say the platform will provide enterprises and service providers with the tools to launch personalised services, expand their offerings and automate customer journeys.
The two SaaS companies have been selling into the same telco accounts for several years, but this new strategic partnership directly addresses telco worries about potential BSS integration costs and project timeline stretches.
Overall, the Salesforce front-end is the leading interface (single pane of glass) for all stakeholders with occasional deep links in Aria for specific billing functionality. Aria works in a headless fashion automating billing and payments for customer orders.
“Service providers are under more pressure than ever to deliver personalised customer experiences, while increasing efficiencies and reducing operational costs,” said Salesforce VP and GM of communications David Fan. “Together, Salesforce and Aria are helping customers use AI and automation to help deliver personalised experiences at every touchpoint, while increasing productivity and delivering faster service, at scale.”
“Our partnership with Salesforce introduces a comprehensive SaaS solution that unlocks and monetises tailored services,” said Aria Systems president and CEO Tom Dibble. “Designed for large-scale, sophisticated enterprises, this transformative solution, powered by advanced generative AI capabilities, enhances stakeholder experiences, productivity, and business agility at every level.”
Pure but discrete public cloud
“We are not porting our platforms into each other’s public cloud infrastructures or combining our cloud operations teams. Both Aria and Salesforce only operate on public cloud infrastructure. We don’t offer private, on-premises or hybrid options for multiple economies of scale benefits,” Aria co-founder and chief innovation officer Brendan O’Brien told Mobile Europe. “Our public cloud infrastructure is flexible: we offer everything from multi-tenancy (standard) to private instances, based on customer requirements.”
Telcos will be able to enhance products in their catalogues, integrate them into business and operational systems, and offer automation and generative AI capabilities from Salesforce Einstein to personalise customer touchpoints. They will also be able to manage their increasingly complex subscription and usage-based services on one platform.
The companies emphasise they are not trying to replace existing subscription management systems already in use at many telcos. “Our combined solution focuses on BSS and does not offer a real-time balance management/OSS solution like an OCS/CSS, as offered by Nokia,” said O’Brien. “We typically partner and integrate with players like Nokia…Matrixx [like at customer Liberty Latin America] or previously Openet [with M1 Singapore] for this solution where the customer has not already selected a preferred vendor.”
It’s AI, Einstein
Salesforce’s Einstein and Generative AI like GPT sits at the heart of the platform which aims to improve productivity and user experiences for product managers, sales reps and ultimately, customers. Specifically, billing data from Aria is being used to train and refine the Einstein GPT prompts. Given that approximately 40% of inbound inquiries relate to billing, the partners believe this data exchange is vital for maximising the benefits of generative AI.
An example of how AI changes the game would be when a customer service representative is explaining to a customer why their bill is higher this month than last month and what they can do about it for next time, without the agent having to analyse the bills or service – which can be time-consuming. It also sometimes requires an escalation to sort out.
The platform uses a GPT based LLM model to provide a natural language-based response as a copilot solution to the agent – which can readily be made directly available to the customer.
Go-to-market strategy
Aria and Salesforce are aligning their roadmap planning, marketing initiatives, sales enablement, and channel partnerships for Aria Billing Cloud and Salesforce Customer 360 respectively. This alignment will continue to expand into commercials, services and system integrators.
“We both believe that we’re offering the first complete multi-industry BSS solution that from inception was a SaaS offering – not faux SaaS/cloud like many legacy vendors are claiming – and optimised for AI,” said O’Brien. “This gives prospects a big cost and competitive agile edge versus using our traditional competitors.”
The partners believe the platform’s ability to personalise services means it works for telcos and enterprises alike. In practical terms, Aria Billing plans can be tailored through customer management platforms like Salesforce.
Salesforce offers “CPQ” for customising enterprise sales orders and “Experience Cloud” for self-service interfaces. These aren’t limited to just individual customers; even resellers and agents can use them for their business-to-business transactions. Aria Billing can then manage the billing (including so-called BOBO – billing on behalf of) for these resellers and agents.
“We also support other business models, like wholesale, MVNO/E, and NaaS/CaaS, where personalised propositions or commercial autonomy is also required by the agents and channels they are sold through,” he said.
Aria structures its sales teams differently across regions. “In Europe, we use a common CSP account-based marketing strategy, where our account teams collaborate with theirs to target specific CSPs,” said O’Brien. “On the marketing front, we’ve jointly sponsored multiple events set for 2023, such as TM Forum DTW, a webinar, and an upcoming event in Amsterdam.”
“We’re also aligned with several system integrators, including Prodapt and Capgemini; although these alliances are global, we engage locally,” he added.
Telcos already making choices
EXA Infrastructure is the latest customer for the two partners and is using the platform for various enterprise and CSP products, including dark-fibre capacity, data centre services, and WAN connectivity across North America, Europe, and Asia. Ther platform manages thousands of large invoices annually, each encompassing hundreds of product orders and generating significant revenue (in millions) per invoice.
It also helps remove telcos headaches like, in EXA’s case, serving all 33 legal entities across North America and Europe through a single platform – while also sorting out tax.
Another customer, M1 Singapore chief digital officer Jan Morgenthal said: “The combination of two best-of-breed solutions offers a new standard for sophisticated subscription and usage-based service management that will create a step-change in delivering a heightened customer experience, like we did with our first made-to-measure plans at M1.”
Australian incumbent Telstra told Mobile Europe it was still using Aria Systems for a small number of its enterprise mobility products, but these are being migrated to its Salesforce platform.
Standards-based rules
The companies say the integration is based on TM Forum Open APIs and are realised as MuleSoft Connectors available on the Anypoint Exchange. This includes: enterprise product catalogue integration; customer order and service management integration; and customer bill integration.
Beyond the TM Forum MuleSoft connectors the two companies utilise Salesforce Omnistudio, Aria CCP deep links, Aria AI Datashare and Aria Workflow (Business Process Automation) to further integrate the platform.