Service providers still believe that KPIs are a valuable tool in running an efficient BSS operation. In a recent poll by the TM Forum, 88% say they are in favor of using KPIs, the same result generated by a similar poll the year before.
Those who actually use KPIs in their BSS operations increased from 55% of respondents last year to 73% of participants to this year’s poll. However, and quite surprisingly, 22% still do not believe in the value of KPIs.
Despite the increase in the number of service providers who believe in the value of KPIs, there was a decline in the number of those who developed their own KPIs from last year’s 54% to this year’s 49%. What seemed to explain this disconnect was the increase in the number of entities using KPIs from other sources. For this year’s poll, 37% said they were using KPIs from third parties, as compared with 13% last year.
For TM Forum, most heartening was the increase from 7% to 12% of those using KPIs developed by the group’s Business Benchmarking Program, which is open to all members free of charge.
Asked if real-time charging will replace traditional mediation and billing in next-generation networks, those who said “yes” dropped from 53% last year to 48% this year.
It also seems that almost two-thirds of those polled still believes that prepaid and postpaid converged billing systems will be required, with the only major change being among the "uncertain" camp, which is firming up against the majority feeling.
It also looks like transformation projects are in full swing as well. Last year, only 59% of respondents said projects were underway. This year, the number jumped to 77%.
The 18% that were making no plans last year had dropped to just 4%, which meant that it could be deduced with some certainly that transformation was not only in the minds of service providers, but were being actively pursued. Many claimed they were taking advantage of the economic downturn and the abundance of technical staff in the market to implement their transformation projects.
When it comes to replacing traditional paper bills with electronic web presentment, there was only a slight increase in those that favored web-only consumer billing, and the business billing firmed up around the traditional combination of electronic and paper bills.
True to form, we are an industry that is very quick to adopt new technologies on the network and services side, but a little more conservative when it comes to any major overhaul of the BSS heart.