By Ilan Benodiz, Solutions Architect, FTS
April 30, 2015
As we’ve known for a while, mobile telecoms is no longer simply about providing voice and messaging. As the communications industry becomes increasingly about digital services and content, traditional business models and traditional billing systems can no longer meet its needs. As Tony Poulos writes in his recent article, the telecoms industry has reached the digital crossroad, and it must examine its next steps in the connected era.
In order to effect the transformation from communications to digital, from being a CSP (communications service provider) to becoming a DSP (digital service provider), service providers need to be able go beyond billing effectively for the new services they are offering. They need to be able to offer new, innovative propositions to current and potential customers in order to avoid becoming irrelevant, uncompetitive or simply the dreaded ‘dumb pipe’ for others’ traffic.
With a good billing system in place, CSPs should be able to drive product innovation, enable new business models and generate new revenue with greater flexibility and greater independence than ever before. They need to be able to implement changes without having to ask their billing provider to do it for them, so that they can get great marketing offers to their subscribers quickly. They should be able to provide a great customer experience to their subscribers no matter what channel or what device they are using and regardless of how they want to interact with their provider.
Billing for content and digital services is complex, however, requiring the management of multiple partnership relations. Negotiating with OTT, payment and other partners, whether managing relations with existing partners or onboarding new ones, is a delicate process because the processes can be both sensitive and complicated. CSPs need to be able to create multifaceted billing and settlement relationships that meet the needs of all the partners in the arrangement.
Providers need to use smart revenue sharing solutions that not only enable revenue to be split in multiple ways but which also show where revenues have come from so that they can tell, for example, where they are most successful. Smart revenue sharing benefits providers with personalized contracts and relationships with each and every one of the partners in their ecosystem, thus increasing their attractiveness and improving business relationships. It also reduces the total cost of ownership and ensures a remarkably fast time-to-market and ultimately, increased revenues.
A typical use case scenario would be a video content value chain consisting of a mobile provider, to serve the content; a content service provider, aggregating content from various content producers; the content producers themselves; and the end users, to whom the content is being served. Smart revenue sharing enables all the above benefits because it permits the CSP to manage and monetize the relationships in this entire ecosystem; not only its customers on one side, but also its entire chain of partners (mobile provider and content producers) on the other side, each based on its own, personalized contract and revenue sharing model. These models can be based on various criteria, including for example the amount of content being produced, the content type or popularity, the number of downloads and many more aspects.
To find out more about how our smart revenue sharing solution can help you monetize content and digital services, get in touch.