IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions for Communications
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IBM B2B and commerce solutions empower communications providers to operate efficiently by integrating traditional connectivity with media and IT services, thereby enhancing customer experience and growing revenue. The solutions streamline product management, sales, and partner integration, leading to faster time-to-market and reduced sales costs through personalization and agile management. Notable case studies demonstrate significant improvements in billing collection rates, sales, and customer satisfaction following the implementation of these solutions.
IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions for Communications
- 1. IBM Software Communications IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions for communications IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions enable communication providers to become demand driven Executive summary Communications companies are delivering convergent services: traditional communications connectivity plus media, entertainment, and information technology products and services. Success now means operating like a world-class retailer whose products are a mix of goods and services from other suppliers. It means having visibility to virtually all the links in supply and distribution chains, and a robust, comprehensively integrated set of selling and distribution channels providing a consistent, high-quality experience for the customer. IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions enable communications providers to meet these imperatives, resulting in lower investment and operating costs, while growing customer experience and revenue. IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions enable providers to transform and help optimize their business collaboration networks of internal stakeholders and external partners and suppliers. Providers can better streamline their product management, customer sales, and partner integration processes to speed time to market, increase new revenue generation, and lower the cost of sales. The solutions also enable the personalization of products and services for the individual needs of customer segments and requirements of sourcing and sales channels. IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions can help: Improve time to market and reduce the cost of new market segment• offerings and model introductions through agile and adaptable offer management Build market segment specific products and promotions through• segmentation and personalization capabilities supporting particular target market segment offer models Increase revenue per sale and reduce the average cost per sale through• cross-channel selling and ordering Cost-effectively expand marketplace presence and offer breadth• through flexible partner and supplier integration and digital collaboration. Overview One communications service provider• increased its billing collection rate by 76 percent within one year of implementing IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions A broadband communications service• provider doubled their average sales in the first three months with IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions A U.S. cable, TV and broadband provider• migrated a significant portion of its sales and ordering to the lower-cost e-commerce channel A U.S.-based broadband provider• deployed one order management system to orchestrate and execute virtually all fulfillment transactions
- 2. “With IBM® Sterling Multi-Channel Selling,prospects can come to RCN.com and,through the online shopping cart,buy cable,phone and Internet services.The solution allows us to offer a variety of new services to our customers as well as the appropriate add-ons and customizations that you would expect for those services.” — Director of Web Strategy, Major US Communications Service Provider IBM Software Communications 2 Dynamic business network: IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions help communications services providers transform and optimize their dynamic business networks. Providers can better connect, communicate and collaborate to grow their revenue streams while reducing their risks and costs. Demand Communities Creative Communities Finance Communities Infrastructure Communities Fulfillment Communities Businesses Wholesale VARs/OEMs Dealers/ Distributors Consumers Outsourced Services Product Supplies Equipment Suppliers Network Providers Traditional Fulfillment Digital Fulfillment Digital Rights Management Partner Interconnection Product Providers Service Providers Arbitrators Content Developers Banks Selling Media Provider Creative Services Sourcing Fulfillment Payment and Settlement Credit Billing Settlement IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions portfolio for communications IBM ordering solutions: IBM• ® Sterling Configurator IBM• ® Sterling Configure, Price, Quote IBM• ® Sterling Order Management
- 3. CommunicationsIBM Software 3 Optimizing time to market A North American digital TV provider relied on a manual process to manage offer updates across multiple, disjointed systems. The result was a data migration that took up to three weeks to complete, costing the provider rework, brand equity and customer churn. Using existing infrastructure and partnerships, the IBM B2B and Commerce Solution was deployed to provide a single and centralized offer catalog and order capture rules for their sales channel systems resulting in faster time to market, higher customer satisfaction, and an increase in sales and profitability. Issue Capability Potential benefits Improve time to market for implementing new offers across virtually all sales channels • Import and utilize product and price rules from internal and external sources in centralized offer modeling • Enables re-use of product and pricing data eliminating rework and speeding time to market with offer • Web-based offer modeling environment for business users to construct offers • Eliminates the need for IT to lead offer management efforts, thus cutting the cost of offer introduction and time to market • Structure and rules for users to create multiple bundle and package options • Drives new revenue by enabling marketing and product management to be creative in structuring offers for the marketplace • Advanced pricing, promotion, and discount models including volume and terms plans • Improves responsiveness by providing automated tools to introduce new offers more quickly • Segmentation and personalization capabilities support granular target marketplace offer models • Drives new revenue by providing marketing with the tools to segment offers by customers channels, and target market The IIBM B2B and Commerce Solutions portfolio for communications (continued) IBM business-to-business integration solutions: IBM• ® IBM Sterling B2B Integration IBM• ® Sterling File Gateway IBM• ® Sterling Managed File Transfer IBM• ® Sterling Collaboration Network Transforming the sales experience A provider of triple-play voice, video, and data services covering 24 states in the U.S. relied on multiple regional selling and ordering systems. The provider consolidated its systems and processes using IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions to reduce the average cost per sale, and training time from three months to a few days.
- 4. CommunicationsIBM Software 4 Issue Capability Potential benefits Create a unified and compelling sales and order environment across virtually all sales channels. • Presentation and execution of complex order rules (e.g., compatibility and exclusivity rules) are designed to be available at the point of sale • Helps ensure order accuracy without over-complicating ordering, which reduces costly order rework and speeds revenue recognition by reducing delays in order completion • Open architecture supports the integration of data and rules, including product rules and customer data, from practically any source • Helps maximize reuse of customer and product data from existing systems and data stores, thus minimizing deployment costs and risks. • Value-added sales capabilities including offer search, discovery, and guided selling • Helps increase sales closing rates and the average revenue per sale • Service contracts provide process and rules for managing practically any customer change scenario • Improves customer satisfaction and reduces churn through enhanced customer experience. • Multi-channel and cross-channel architecture • Improves revenue and market share through greater marketplace presence Optimizing order orchestration A U.S. broadband provider needed to upgrade its order management infrastructure to speed time to fulfillment as well as eliminate costly order errors. The provider turned to IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions to provide a one-stop “promising” engine across virtually all customer channels (call-center, Web, reseller) to support the fulfillment of broadband (xDSL) offers while enabling triple-play offers with wireless and video partners. Issue Capability Potential benefits Support an increasingly diverse set of provisioning and fulfillment points while reducing operational costs and fulfillment errors • Decomposes the order building service-to-service, and service-to-product dependencies. Helps ensure virtually all products/services/features in a bundle are linked • Helps ensure bundle order integrity is maintained across virtually all order types including move, add, change, disconnect, suspend and resume • Provides one seamless product view to the customer, by linking the system on the back end with virtually all fulfillment and provisioning channels • Improves customer satisfaction by providing comprehensive visibility into order status across virtually all transactions and systems. • Orchestration services automatically create alerts for user exceptions such as errors and in-jeopardy tasks. The system or users can quickly resolve the exception • Reduces delays caused by processing errors, thus increasing the ability to recognize revenue on schedule • Open APIs and services provide a common face to front- office systems and back-office OSS, provisioning, billing, and partners’ systems • Enables one solution to operate as a centralized solution to manage and orchestrate virtually all orders and eliminates the cost of managing multiple order management systems
- 5. CommunicationsIBM Software 5 Issue Capability Potential benefits Enable a faster and cost-effective implementation and management of partners and suppliers • Allows community management support for the rapid onboarding of new partners and partner connections. Provides self-service onboarding capabilities • Speeds time to implementation and reduces costs for supporting new partners and suppliers by simplifying onboarding through one view • Supports communication with partners using a variety of standards. Large files can be exchanged via a security-rich environment called Connect:Direct, billing information can come in via EDI over AS2, and sales documents can arrive through e-mail, Web services or Web extensions • Enables providers to build a diverse and security- rich global partner and supplier base by supporting multiple methods, protocols, and formats for smooth integration with virtually all partners and suppliers • Automates business processes and process/system connectivity inside and outside the enterprise with capabilities such as document routing, business rule validation, exception handling, alerts and archiving • Enables IT to rely on a business integration solution that improves operational efficiency by replacing costly manual processes with comprehensive automation Transforming business-to-partner integration One of the world’s largest wireless telecommunications companies needed a business-to-business integration platform to collaborate with hundreds of digital content providers, value-added service providers, equipment suppliers, and sales and distribution channels. The provider deployed business-to- business integration capabilities from IBM B2B and Commerce Solutions to support the transaction and file based exchange of data with external partners. The provider reduced new partner integration from several months to a few weeks.
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