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The State of Prepaid Technology
Expanding Your Business In a Changing Market: Part 2, A Look At Platforms
By Ken Osowski |
In the January issue, we looked at some new subscriber features that can help you create and drive incremental revenue streams that help you grow despite the industry’s increasing margin pressures and consolidations.
Beyond compelling subscriber features, more economical service minutes and attractive ongoing Capex & Netex, a SIP ‘cap & grow’, or all out migration to IP services and SIP trunking, can yield powerful back end capabilities that will further support your bottom line. In particular, IP service delivery platforms can offer unprecedented information management and operational support that can sharpen ongoing decision-making, subscriber service usage tracking and business management.
With that in mind, here’s a brief review of the key operations management capabilities and specific criteria that your IP service delivery platform should support.
Reporting and Analysis Tools
1. Comprehensive Business Analysis Capabilities: When you’re analyzing potential new services and routes, the ‘stickiness’ of existing service products, and looking at account fees, breakage levels, profitability by channel and outlets - your service delivery platform has to provide the numbers you need. This is particularly true if you’re driving web-based signups, automated top-offs, etc. For example, you’ll need both flexibility to support an IVR offer of promotional discounts during call initiations, and the reporting capabilities to accurately assess take rates for subscriber retention features such as time-based (monthly, quarterly, etc) or account usage-based automatic top offs driven by available minute thresholds, for example. You’ll want the ability to break these out by routes, service products, and the ability to synthesize demographic and subscriber information that can be collected during sign up.
2. Accessibility & Usability: Reporting and analysis tools are only useful when they’re usable. Your service delivery platform shouldn’t require you to become an SQL expert to use reporting and analysis features. They should be invoked and exported to standard management applications through common commands and accessible menus and features. This is tough to gauge just from the screen shots you might be shown during the selection process, so beyond seeing the reporting screens, be sure you take some time to think about the account reporting metrics you’ll want, and work with the account generation procedures before you make your selection.
3. Separate Call Processing & Reporting Databases: Don’t be swayed by a “one size fits all” database if you want to avoid the immediate revenue impact and longer term customer attrition that downtime and degraded call processing cycles can cause. A separate reporting database is unquestionably the optimum mechanism for reporting and analysis in an IP-based prepaid calling service platform. This is an important one because a separate database, that’s not involved in call processing, enables you to conduct and administer your business without the risk of potentially degrading or otherwise impacting call processing whenever you’re running routine line of business analysis procedures. Some IP-based systems promote the ability to directly access reporting databases in real time as though that’s a good thing, but keep in mind that such direct access can take down your call processing.
Wholesaling Management Features
IP service models let you increase your overall service capacity with minimal risk and incremental expense, giving you the opportunity to create new revenue streams by expanding both your own services and subscribers, and by wholesaling these competitive, affordable and high quality service minutes to other prepaid service providers. Even if this isn’t on your immediate business plan, your IP service delivery platform selection criteria should support the addition of wholesaling services to your business model. To leverage the wholesale expansion opportunity, there are fundamentally three types of service feature requirements you should look for:
1. Channel & subscriber-centric account processing features: Such as zero-touch, Web-based subscriber creation and account management, and retail point-of-presence database PIN number creation and authentication.
2. Business control features: These help proactively prevent loss while supporting prepaid service providers and sales channel retention and building loyalty. For example, your IP service delivery platform needs to enable you to easily establish, track, control and modify credit limits and policies per individual service provider basis. It also needs to invoke multiple types of real-time or near real-time billing reconciliation systems to prevent loss, much as you would with a subscriber. Lastly, you’ll of course want to know which prepaid service providers are profitable partners, and have the flexibility to invoke different policies and incentives as take rates and usage thresholds rise. These criteria require a real-time rating engine, self-contained and well-integrated into your billing and reporting tools.
3. Reseller interface features: Such as multi-language prompt support, perhaps multiple currency support, and definitely reseller management and service branding capabilities.
These are some of the most important platform capabilities that will support you in cutting the costs of service minutes, understanding the profitability of your downstream reseller channels and retail service providers. Careful platform selection will give you the new levels of information, insight and control to expand your model, sustain profit margins and grow your business during this challenging cycle.
Next month, we’ll answer recent questions from Prepaid Press readers, so please keep emailing your questions and comments to me at Keno@pactolus.com.
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