Enterprise customer experiences need urgent help to seize 5G opportunities

Simplifying the enterprise customer experience is not an easy task. And extra challenges – and opportunities – are coming with the launch of 5G services. If done right, these services and experiences will lead to new revenue streams and monetization opportunities while also offering communication service providers (CSPs) the ability to differentiate themselves from traditional and emerging competitors.

Jun 02, 2022 | 5 min.

Hassan Iftikhar

Head of BSS Product Marketing, Ericsson Digital BSS

Jun 02, 2022 | 5 min.

Hassan Iftikhar

Head of BSS Product Marketing, Ericsson Digital BSS

Hassan Iftikhar

Head of BSS Product Marketing, Ericsson Digital BSS

Building a flexible BSS architecture is the steppingstone of exceptional enterprise customer experience in 5G. Let´s break down the key elements of BSS for enterprise 5G services. First, imagine a conversation between an enterprise and a CSP:

“Hello Jenny, this is Mark from enterprise X. Can you send me a quote for a 2Mbps dedicated link between our factories in the East and the North?”
“Sure Mark, let me contact my inventory team to check availability in that area. After that, I will talk to the delivery team to find out the implementation timeline, and finally check with my commercial team your discount levels. Please expect a quotation in your e-mail in a few days (or weeks…).”

This conversation may sound like something from the ancient past, but it was still happening a few years back. In some cases, it is still happening, at least partially, in a CSP’s sales process for enterprise services across different geographies. The point here is that selling to enterprises is more complex than selling to consumers. This is also an area where, in contrast to consumer facing BSS, service providers didn´t always put the same level of innovation effort and investment dollars.

This changes a lot with 5G. With the possibility of moving across the value chain and providing more than just connectivity to enterprises, CSPs must simplify the B2B customer experience to allow them to browse, negotiate, purchase and start using all the services as fast as possible - realizing new revenue streams quickly and cost effectively providing better, superior experiences. With the expected increase in enterprise business deals, size of market and type of services, a frictionless, automated user experience is key to tap that new revenue potential. And it all starts from a streamlined telecom BSS architecture that enables the best enterprise customer experience.

The role of BSS in the enterprise customer experience

Sitting between the network and subscribers, the BSS systems handle the end-to-end (E2E) customer and services lifecycle. From products creation and exposure to external channels to charging and billing for usage, there are several capabilities delivered by different BSS components that enable a service provider to sell their products and monetize their assets. The BSS systems determine the answer to key questions that are top of mind for CSPs, such as:

How do we build our product catalog to provide the best products to our customers?
How do we onboard partners into our ecosystem and bundle their products along with our offers?
How do we expose our offers to different channels so our customers can buy them?
How do we collect, decompose, orchestrate and fulfill customer orders so they can start using their services as fast as possible?
How do we charge our subscribers and settle payments with our partners?

All those questions directly relate to customer experience. With 5G introduction, the enterprise market contains many touchpoints. With each of these touchpoints there is much to be done to simplify the B2B customer experience. A recent Omdia report – Telco BSS: The 5G B2B CX challenge – details enterprise expectations along with the stepwise path forward that CSPs must take to meet them. Considering the extended ecosystem that will emerge from new 5G possibilities, it is crucial for service providers to evolve the BSS to meet those new demands as soon as possible.

Bring all onboard, streamline your product catalog and sell

Going beyond connectivity to become a service enabler, service providers will have to grow the 5G ecosystem to sell a greater variety of enterprise services. They will need to onboard different types of partners – content providers, application providers, hyperscale cloud providers, device manufacturers, etc. – into their network and allow them to co-create bundles and offers along with them. A quick, straightforward (yet secure) onboarding process make these new offers reach the enterprise customers quicker, give them more services options and provide relevant products for them to choose from. After getting all partners onboard, it is time for them to access the service provider product catalog and create their offers including both service providers´ and partners´ services. By using TMF Open APIs as the standard, integrations become easier and faster, reducing operational costs and encouraging more partners to get onboard.

The ability to flexibly build, manage, expose and sell product offers is one of the most important foundations for service providers to deliver on the 5G benefits. A product catalog-centric architecture, or catalog-driven architecture, enables service providers to dramatically improve the whole time to revenue process. It enables service providers to create building blocks, that can be re-used among many different offers; it also allows the partners in their 5G ecosystem to easily add their own services on top. This type of product catalog architecture allows CSPs to simplify the enterprise customer experience while browsing and purchasing products. With the digitalization and introduction of multiple new channels, it is important to provide an omni-channel experience for enterprises so they can use any channel, at any time, and maintain consistency across all of them.

Up to now, the product catalog was mostly used by the service providers themselves. But with the 5G ecosystem, different partners will have access to the product catalog to create, modify and delete product offers, including prices and network capabilities. This means that a multi-tenant catalog is mandatory to make sure each party in this process is only accessing the resources it is allowed to, while the service provider retains complete control of the overall system.

Selling is important, but delivering is even more important

Taking your product offers out to the market fast undoubtedly impacts how quickly the customers can purchase your services. And another aspect of the telecom order management process is even more critical to the overall customer experience: after the purchase, how do your customers access and start using your services? Only then can the service be utilized and monetized.

In technical terms, this fulfillment process is implemented by the order management domain as part of the order to activation process. It goes like this:

Order entry: irrespective of the channel used, the order is received at a centralized point. Before it is submitted, it can still be updated (remember the omni-channel concept?).
Order validation: once submitted, the order is validated across different rules to make sure it is valid and can be fulfilled.
Order decomposition: based on the contents of the order, (the products purchased), it is decomposed in as many sub-orders as needed so all services and resources can be activated. For example, one sub-order goes to billing to provision the enterprise in the invoice system, another one goes to OSS to instantiate the network slice in the core network, the next sub-order goes to cloud partner to provision the edge services, one more sub-order goes to the partner content provider, and so on.
Order fulfillment: Order management interacts with different systems and domains to make sure sub-orders are completed correctly.

It is easy to see that for new enterprise 5G services in collaboration with ecosystem partners in the evolving telecom value chain, this process becomes much more complex, involving not only a CSP’s own service and inventory but also partners’ services and products – including delivery of goods that may come from different providers. Laying strong foundations with a flexible order management system allows service providers to create order decomposition, fulfillment and fallout processes to ensure the final step of the enterprise customer experience journey is flawless.