An Overview of Digital Business Support Systems (BSS)
Faster time to market is the main objective of digital transformation strategies of most organisations in recent times. With the digital innovation bringing agility and scalability into business processes, organisations are now able to quickly develop and deploy products. The communications industry is not excluded. While other industries are being able to quickly realign their business strategies to digitalize their offerings, the telecom industry faces several challenges on the roadmap to digital transformation. Legacy infrastructure, consolidation of back-end solutions that run on monolithic architecture and redundant systems, shrinking IT budgets are some of them. As customer demands are dynamically changing, businesses now need a dynamic solution that can digitalize their BSS.
The need for Digital BSS
Business support systems are the heart of any organization. In today’s fast-paced business world, having the best BSS is the key to successfully running any business. However, the rapid changing in technologies and customer behaviours have forced communication service providers (CSPs) to offer highly interactive and scalable BSS systems. With the Internet revolution that has been augmented with mobile and IoT, customer interaction modes have significantly changed. New interactive channels such as mobile apps, web and retail etc. and mode of communication such as emails, chats, social media and self-serving apps etc. are the need of the hour. Today, customers expect a quick, flexible and personalized interactive experience that is consistent and holistic across all channels. However, current BSS are bogged down with large monolithic architectures and traditional systems.
Adding to this challenge is the entrant of over-the-top (OTT) players and social networks such as Apple, Google and Facebook. As they offer video and voice calls, chats and other interactive channels that are easy, intuitive and fast, CSPs face a tough challenge in matching this agility. Secondly, there is a decline in voice revenues as data services are getting popular in recent times. To make up for this loss, CSPs are required to invest in new channels and upgrade existing networks while integrating them with existing BSS networks. The ever-increasing cloud solutions pose another challenge as they should be properly integrated into the existing infrastructure while streamlining the data warehousing infrastructure. A new digital BSS architecture is the answer.
Digital BSS Architecture
A digital BSS solution consolidates backend infrastructure, optimizes interoperability to offer a superior customer experience. At the heart of digital BSS sits the BSS API Framework. A Cassandra database can be used to facilitate faster data processing of thousands of requests per second. Complimented by the High Performance Data (HPD) Framework, the BSS API integrates all channels into a common information layer to deliver a unified communications system that is modular and highly scalable.
The BSS API Framework should support all types of APIs running on different domains. Whether you use a public API for externally processing applications or run a private API for communication between core components, Events API that update users with change in state or a data loading Import API, all APIs can seamlessly interact via the BSS API Framework.
A robust and comprehensive digital BSS should contain subsystems such as Product Order Management, Predictive Analytics, Revenue Management etc. for a comprehensive management of business processes.
Product and Order Management: It defines customer profiles from technical and commercial perspective enabling you to flexibly offer differential pricing with higher customer satisfaction while eliminating the need to manage multiple catalogues across the organization.
Revenue Management: For any business, revenue management is the key. A BSS revenue management subsystem offers a centralized billing system that allows you to manage billing, invoicing, collections etc. with business agility and centralized control, you can optimize costs and improve revenues.
Predictive Analytics: Closely monitoring changing technologies and customer trends, Predictive Analytics analyses business data and offers data-driven decision making systems.Predictive Analytics: Closely monitoring changing technologies and customer trends, Predictive Analytics analyses business data and offers data-driven decision making systems.
Similarly, you can add other sub-systems such as Intelligence Channel system that offers predictive customer service, Customer Profiling, Credit Decision Tool, Reporting & Analytics tool, Office management etc. An intuitive dashboard is a key component that allows you to monitor and manage entire BSS operations from a centralized dashboard. When rightly implemented, digital BSS solutions bring a new level of intelligence to your business processes.
The State of Digital BSS Market
According to MarketsandMarkets, the global digital market was valued at $2.8 billion in 2018. This value is expected to touch $5.8 billion by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 15.2%. similarly, Transparency Market Research reports that the Operations Support System (OSS) and the BSS market which was valued at $29.11 billion in 2015 is expected to touch $70.97 billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 10.5% during this period.
The Bottomline
The telecommunications industry is going through a digital transformation. Digital BSS solutions are poised to disrupt this space. Communication service providers that embrace this trend are going to stay ahead of competition. Ignoring this digital transformation will leave you out of business. The key here is to choose the right IT service provider to help you make a smooth transition to the digital BSS era.
Contact CloudTern right now to embrace the Digital BSS revolution!
