How do you rate 2007 in terms of revenues coming from OSS/BSS solutions? What are your expectations from 2008?

There's still good momentum in the Indian telecoms market, and we're seeing signs of growth being driven by higher value services/NG/VAS as well as new subscriber penetration. But it's the growth in revenue quality, amongst our large-base customers, that's particularly exciting.

Growth in demand for higher value services/NG/VAS has led to a spike in demand for OSS/BSS solutions; operators are looking for competitive advantage and they see that investing strategically in their back-end OSS/BSS can help deliver that, by helping to grow their topline as well as better enable them manage their margins.

The emergence of new VAS along with more sophisticated use of content settlements and optimal routing solutions has contributed to this, and we see all of the above market drivers enable us to continue to outpace industry growth rates.

Kindly comment on the major market segments and their percentage contribution to the overall size of the OSS/BSS market.

The major market segments from Intec's perspective are mediation, interconnect billing and retail billing and the company's offerings span both OSS and BSS, providing a unique knowledge of the interworking between network and customer process.

In general OSS relates to the network facing applications (network management, inventory management, engineering system, QoS monitoring, provisioning, mediation and workforce management), while BSS relates to the end customer facing applications (CRM, billing, charging, fraud management, interconnect)

Under this categorisation the OSS element is considerably larger than the BSS element and network management and provisioning account for the bulk of this (~60% globally). Within the BSS category, CRM and Billing account for the vast bulk of the segment (~75%+ globally).

What is the total installation base of OSS/BSS solutions in the country till date? What is your share?

Intec is a leading player in the market with installations in all the major operators in India, each one adopting more than one of our solutions from our broad integrated portfolio. At the same time, we're enjoying discussions with the new start-ups as well. Our leadership in voice and content settlement areas is unparalleled globally and we see it reflected in our base in India too. We obviously cannot comment on installation share for commercial reasons.

What are the factors driving the OSS/BSS market in India? What growth prospects are projected for the market in the next three years in terms of volume and value?

There are a number of factors that make the Indian market exciting for OSS/BSS vendors, from new GSM operators and new services like WiMax, to 3G and the convergence of media with voice and data. India's tele-density today is touching late 20's - we consider early 30s to be the tipping point when we'll see a significant revenue boost for service providers through increased ARPU. Many of the current platforms installed today may not be able to scale and perform to the levels market would expect, and, competitive options will force some changes too. It's fair to say that the next three years will see significant investments in OSS/BSS though one cannot say they will all be in the CAPEX mode.

What are the new and emerging technological platforms in the OSS/BSS market in India vis-à-vis the global market?

The Indian telecoms market has grown continuously not by being unique, but from being consciously mainstream from a technology stand-point. India has always driven the exploitation of functional usage of application platforms, as well as stretching them from a scalability and performance perspective

What we're likely to see are developments in single integrated and convergent BSS/OSS architectures, and more new integration approaches based on having a single customer and product database. The improved customer experience - no duplication, reduced errors and a consistently approved experience across multiple channels - will enable operators to focus on evolving new models of customer engagement and revenue generation.

What are the challenges and opportunities faced by the OSS/BSS vendors in India?

All challenges are opportunities in my view. Access to a wide pool of talented resources is a huge opportunity for Intec and many of our global projects are being managed and executed from India. We have also already embarked on moving critical areas of product engineering and testing to India.

With a plethora of new services being introduced by the telecom service providers, what are the complexities that an OSS/BSS vendor has to take care of?

Customers value simplicity so, from their first interaction with a prospective customer, operators need to ensure everything is clear and simple: advertising; rate plans; phone offerings; options; bills; bundles; discount structures; special offers; payment methods; call handling; revenue collection; technology. Operators need an architecture that enables them to do the hard things more easily.

What OSS/BSS needs to be able to manage and simplify, is this apparent complexity. This means a convergent architecture, employing a single data model, single product catalogue, single database, single rating engine, single balance manager and single interface for customer management; both for prepaid and postpaid services and customers. For the operator CIO this means fewer integration headaches and costs, fewer staff involved in keeping the systems running and happy internal customers, because projects are less likely to overrun. For the operator CMO, products can be brought to market more quickly, opportunities open up to attract new customers and ARPU goes up. The Customer Services Director will see fewer billing enquiries and complaints, higher customer retention, happier call centre staff and rate plans that suit customers rather than systems. The CFO sees Day Sales Outstanding reduce, better financial reporting and revenue assurance, and receivables management and auditing that enables smooth compliance.

What are the key factors for success of few domestic OSS/BSS vendors in comparison to the others?

Domestic BSS/OSS vendors need to evolve their capabilities to meet the requirements of next generation services and next generation commercial models. In any market, where cost starts to become a dominant supply side factor, many suppliers will seek to re-align product value. What this means is that innovation becomes the basis upon which vendors compete, rather than pure cost. In this way total cost of deployment is re-aligned to focus on Operator ROI, improved margins, more innovative approaches to product development and subscriber services. Vendors place more focus on customer service, integration technologies, better product packaging, improved pre- and post-implementation support and related value added services. Cost ceases to be the sole basis for competition and value becomes a new basis for competition.

Please comment on the consolidation of legacy systems.

The major issues stem from legacy business processes focussed on delivering a particular service, rather than delivering an easy, seamless customer interaction for the new bundled offers that meet contemporary customer requirements. Unfortunately, business processes often reflect the underlying complexity of disparate legacy OSS/BSS architectures built up over many years.

For many operators this has required a fundamental shift in strategy and a true whole-of-business transformation. From the service provider's perspective, making life simple for customers is actually very difficult, because most legacy services have been constructed around the network, not the customer.

Transforming to customer-centric business processes across all the areas that impact the customer experience requires a convergent architecture. Moving to a convergent architecture enables a consistent experience to be offered to every customer, regardless of service, product offer or payment method.

What is the impact of OSS/BSS on QoS?

QoS measurement has become increasingly important, particularly with the growth of IP enabled services, including voice, content and commerce applications; a number of specialist vendors have developed products to provide measurement and metrics as part of a broader OSS infrastructure.

For some time there has been discussion within the industry of the idea of charging based upon differential levels of QoS. With IMS enabled services for example this becomes increasingly possible, as voice and data traffic is controllable and is not restricted by best effort routing. This is all well and good, however QoS measurement has tended to be defined around measurable in-house metrics, rather than metrics associated with external subscriber satisfaction. This is now changing with the introduction of a new phrase, which describes a quote traditional idea, which is the concept of customer experience management.

In highly competitive markets, differentiation becomes increasingly difficult. US and European operators are now focusing on superior customer service as a key area where they can excel against their competition, reduce churn and increase revenue. In many Asian markets operators have tended to focus on price and customer acquisition, but strategies are now changing to focus more on margins and customer retention. Customer retention strategies are varied and complex, but one area to consider is simplification of the customer experience, to make it as easy as possible for customers to interact with operators and services.

The shift to a focus on simplifying the customer experience is evidenced by an increasing emphasis on subscriber needs, not only by those parts of the operator's organisation that are directly involved in dealing with customers, but also finding its way into other areas. When operators are thinking about replacing legacy billing systems, they want to be sure that they consider how this will impact the customer, and what business processes and interactions the entire OSS/BSS has to support, rather than just concentrating on the billing component. This is a major shift from previous years.

Billing plays an important role in helping operators to retain their customers or a billing solution is directly linked with overall customer satisfaction. Please justify.

A significant proportion of incoming enquiries an operator receives from its customers, are billing related. Notwithstanding the payment method (ie prepaid or postpaid), customer satisfaction is directly linked to the commercial transactions that a subscriber has with his or her operator. Trust in the bill being correct is therefore paramount for a customer to be satisfied with his or her service provider.

But the Billing system takes care of far more than just billing and invoicing and is a key business tool. Operators need to be able to use their billing systems to enhance customer service in terms of efficient order management and customer responsiveness. The Billing system should also be an integral part of product management, providing a central catalogue and means to launch and test new products. The billing system fulfils a clear marketing role, including its use for campaign management, new offer development, bundling, discounting, control of new offers and promotions and also ensuring use of the monthly bill for promotional purposes. Finally the billing system should be regarded as an integral part of the finance management processes within an operator. It is the primary Accounts Receivable and collections system, and also provides a revenue management and cash flow forecasting tool.

What are the basic requirements from the billing and customer care systems by an Indian operator?

We do not see anything unique that separates the requirements of Indian billing and customer care systems in terms of functionality and feature. However the volumes, scalability and performance thresholds required thereof are getting higher every month. Certainly Indian operators will require systems that can help them scale to significant volumes and that are future proof - to help them grow further as their business models evolve with time.

What are your company's plans for India?

The Indian market is a very important one for Intec, especially at this time when operators are starting to see a growth in demand for their higher value services. By default, the customers subscribing or using these higher value services want a seamless and simple customer experience, hence the need for single, integrated and convergent BSS/OSS architectures, and more new integration approaches based on having a single customer database.

The improved customer experience - no duplication, reduced errors and a consistently approved experience across multiple channels - will enable operators to focus on evolving new models of customer engagement and revenue generation.

What are your offerings for the Indian telecom service providers? How does your product range differ from your competitors? Kindly describe your global operations and your worldwide customers?

Intec supports a comprehensive range of OSS/BSS applications, addressing Wholesale Business Management processes, Total Service Mediation processes and Customer Care, Charging & Billing processes. This product breadth makes Intec unique, in that no other comparable vendor has such a comprehensive product portfolio and no other vendor offers Intec's depth of professional services expertise across all three areas. The fact that Intec also happens to be the market leader in both Wholesale and Mediation is no accident and its convergent billing suite is the system of choice for many Tier 1 and Tier 2 Telecoms operators. This means that Intec understands and can deploy end-to-end OSS/BSS processes, which other, more limited vendors are unable to do.

Intec supports a global customer base, from regional centres of excellence located in Asia, EMEA, North America and Latin America. Intec's local support is further enhanced by a network of more than 30 offices, providing support and professional services. In India Intec maintains regional offices in Mumbai and Delhi; the company has also invested in the development of a large professional services centre of excellence in Bangalore, employing about 300 software engineers, solution architects and consultants.

Intec's customer base comprises more than 450 operators, including wireline, wireless and next-generation operators, MVNOs and Cable MSOs, as well as customers in non telecoms industries, including Government, Transportation and Financial Services.