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own particular needs. It is evident that effective policy management, with customer satisfaction as the most important business objective, should be top-of-mind for CSPs worldwide.
Getting Things Right Requires Effort
To make a policy-based business strategy work, it takes a refocus on the way an operator conducts business—its systems, its processes and its work functions. CSPs need to ensure that traffic volumes do not affect network performance and users' quality of service, which might discourage them from future use. At the same time, they need to monetize new service offerings by providing customers with more personalized and responsive capabilities.
To maximize revenue potential, the three policy management functions—policy definition, policy enforcement and usage discovery—must be integrated with a real-time rating and charging engine. In addition, CSPs will need to develop detailed steps that define what has to be done and in which order, to manage resources and deliver business value. The multiple workflow steps involving the order-to-cash, troubleshooting and bill payments processes, for example, will
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Effective policy management... should be top-of-mind for CSPs worldwide. |
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likely involve some level of change. Finally, policy management bridges the gap between business support (or IT) and network operations. Both groups must work closely together to create business value. Although this is easier said than done, it is especially important when it comes to interfacing the BSS with both IT databases and network nodes.
The rapidly increasing level of customer usage data is proving to be a significant catalyst for operators' real-time business functions and policy-enabled customer satisfaction management. Personalization is the key to revenue growth; while subscribers are only prepared to pay for "vanilla" services up to a certain level, they are willing to pay more for services that are customized to their needs and aspirations. It is clear that, if CSPs are to retain brand recognition and customer loyalty in the advanced communications marketplace, user choice and flexible pricing for lifestyle services must be the top priorities throughout all geographic areas.
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