A day in the Life of a BSS Architect: Convergence

If someone had asked me 10 years ago what digital BSS would look like in 2021, I’m pretty sure I would have gotten in wrong!  During the time I’ve worked with Ericsson’s Digital BSS systems – for over a decade – technological innovation has advanced at such a rapid rate that back in 2011 it would have been difficult to fathom the importance of the systems that I was working on and how they would be revolutionizing our daily lives. So, in my current work-from-home mode - at 8:30am when I open my laptop and start looking at my emails or calendar schedule – it is awe-inspiring to imagine how my day-to-day work culminates in an ecosystem that empowers innovation and allows CSPs’ to control and extend experiences all over the world. This is what Ericsson’s Digital BSS enables us to do!

Let’s travel back in time to a decade ago… 

The journey for Ericsson Digital BSS has been a long one spanning several decades. However, about a decade ago some of the key components – charging system, mediation, billing systems and customer relationship management (CRM) – were driving all aspects of an intelligent network and helping CSPs in the monetization of their subscriber base – irrespective of their customer segmentation, technology segmentation or payment orientation. In those days, during my regular discussions at work, each topic revolved around one important aspect – convergence!

Convergence was mainly applied over the three biggest divergent factors:

• Customer segmentation (demography, hierarchy, value groups, risk groups and similar segmentation);
• Technology segmentation (Fixed line, xDSL, GSM …)
• Payment orientation (prepaid/postpaid/hybrid accounts) as a remainder of the original view of convergence

The impact of convergence across an organization can be illustrated with a convergence matrix that joins the divergence factors with standard process chains, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Convergence matrix joining the divergence factors with standard process chains. Source: Ericsson

Using this matrix, it is easy for the CSP to identify the still divergent aspects of operations. It is also a depiction of how a CSP can initiate an idea and create an experience for the end-user.

• Convergence in BSS is a journey for each CSP. While it has many long-lasting benefits, such as time to market, customer demands, total cost of ownership (TCO) control and the ability to cater to business diversity, one of its most important qualities is its ability to provide a simple and personalized experience for all subscribers: consumer and enterprise alike.

 Coming back to today’s world…

Today, when my life is a mix of working-from-home and ‘living-at-home,’ the most important factor that enables me to stay connected is having each connected device provide me with a unique personalized experience. This includes my laptops, tablets, mobile phones, connected televisions, smart speakers, gaming systems, virtual reality headsets, etc. Each of these connected devices depend on the reliable and expansive connectivity that is provided by a CSP’s underlying network. What’s behind these networks? Digital BSS – it’s allowing us to take an idea and create a truly converged experience across all these connected devices.

So now on any given day at work for me, the most interesting discussions revolve around connectivity, use cases and their monetization. With 5G, there are numerous devices requiring different types of products, service offerings, real-time event management, finance and resource management. There are also many ‘likely new offerings’ that haven’t been shaped into business models yet. Consequently, the consumers and enterprises receiving these services will need a simplified and personalized experience that’s consistent with their usage and complementing their needs. This requires a convergence of BSS, so the underlying framework evolves organically to meet the market needs and ensures ease of use for simplified monetization and cash flow for the all the services of CSPs. Ericsson Digital BSS is comprised of market-leading products with an unrivalled combination of out-of-the-box features and supports a high degree of confirmability, as opposed to expensive customizations. It encapsulates the overall customer journey and helps create synergies in the omni-channel experience across all the devices of a subscriber.

We also discuss pain points with CSPs and then brainstorm side by side about how we can innovate and improve the complete customer journey. Sometimes I am brainstorming cloud- native BSS deployments, fully pre-integrated OSS, BSS and 5G Core solutions, while at other times I get to work with our Digital Experience platform (DXP) solution that provides context-based customer journeys supported by AI/ML based customer intelligence. Some discussions revolve around creation and fulfillment of different types of enterprise, IoT and consumer products and their seamless fulfillment and lifecycle management. Interestingly, yesterday in one of my discussions with a CSP using our Digital BSS portfolio, we were conceptualizing a product that subscribers could share a data package across all of their connected devices. We discussed how upon depletion of their package it should renew automatically with a zero-touch mechanism. All this happens while providing dynamic discounts on the deducted balance at each renewal. Today, I finalized the deployment of this package by publishing it from Ericsson Catalogue Manager towards Ericsson Charging and Ericsson Billing. I am excited to be able to subscribe to this service soon, so that I can enjoy a hassle-free experience across all my devices.

So, CSPs are already playing the role of a network provider with their prevalence in terms of network connectivity. Now they are looking beyond connectivity to how 5G-enabled services, edge services, IoT services, or private networks can be established and monetized. This must be done in a way that provides a simplified and frictionless experience for consumers and enterprises when ordering and consuming these services. A paradigm shift is happening with CSPs evolving to become service enablers and service developers, thereby orchestrating end-to-end activation flows, and tapping in on the immense potential of innovation and service excellence that 5G offers. This forms the main perimeters of my thought process and day-to-day work.

The Future… Technology Trends & the Crystal Ball…

Now, let’s ponder what will Ericsson’s Digital BSS’s role be in 2031. The journey into the future is a continuous one and it is never disconnected from the past and the present. While the journey of convergence has eased CSPs offering towards all the connected devices of the end-subscribers, the cloud enabled Ericsson Digital BSS will provide a platform ready for on-demand expansion to cater to an influx of connected devices. In the future, we predict the current edge computing trends to lead to ’data everywhere’ and ’connected everything.’ These are not just buzzwords, instead they represent where we are headed. There are numerous possibilities about what such advancements could do both in a constructive way for medical sciences, education, entertainment – and in a ’destructive way’ in some respects as well: with increasing machine-to-machine connectivity and multiple avenues of connectivity leading to a tremendous increase in the amount of data flow across networks. The BSS of future will rely on minimal touch for any enhancements, scalability and operations, so that the monetization of billions of connected devices will be done in a seamless manner.

We can be certain that data consumption and connectivity will keep on increasing and we need continuously evolving BSS systems to intelligently manage such consumption in a simplified way. Ericsson Digital BSS has always remained ahead of technological trends and will be ready to support the CSP journey. In 10 years down the track, in my day-to-day work, I aspire to continue to be part of this technological revolution as we move towards Industry 5.0.

Read more

Read our blog – Day in the life of a Digital BSS Consultant: Addressing the strategic challenges of monetizing 5G

Explore our OSS/BSS solutions

Explore our OSS/BSS services

Read more about Telecom BSS

Read more about 5G monetization