CC&B: The Envelope, Please 

Paul Roemer, Principal and Co-Founder
Spectralliance, LLC

March 26, 2001

Imagine for a minute that the keynote speaker at the Billing 2001 convention asks all the attendees who are responsible for their present Customer Care and Billing (CC&B) system(s) to stand. In a room of several hundred people, only those individuals representing startups that have yet to select a system remain seated.

Next, the speaker asks those individuals whose firm only has a single CC&B system to sit down. Your eyes quickly scan the room and notice that more than half the people are still standing. You recognize many. Some work for cable television operators, some for CLECs and other for ISPs.

Slowly, the speaker ups the ante, gradually increasing the number of billing systems within each organization. As the number increases from three to four to five to six, faint chuckles grow to loud guffaws. As the number goes from six to seven to eight, the room grows strangely silent. By the time the speaker reaches number eight, only a handful are left standing. The speaker presses on. At nine, there's only one person remains standing.

The speaker beckons that individual to the podium to present the award for having the most billing systems. The award is three sealed envelopes, numbered One, Two, and Three. "Inside these three envelopes is the secret to managing your CC&B," begins the speaker. "Place them in the drawer of your desk, and each time you face an insurmountable problem open each one in turn."

Knowing that your billing system is not exactly a bed of roses, you raise your hand and ask the speaker to share the secret with the other attendees. The speaker pauses for a minute and then opens the first envelope. "Blame your predecessor", it reads. The humor seems to relax the audience. Envelope Two reads, "blame the CC&B vendors." A boisterous applause fills the room. The speaker continues. "In the event of a third serious problem in your area, I'll now read the only known solution: Prepare three envelopes."

If you were in this fictional setting, when would you have sat down? As the speaker announced 3, 4, 5 or more systems, would you still be standing? If so, may I respectfully suggest that you give consideration to preparing your own set of three envelopes? If you are with a startup, could you have done any better?

Chances are good that not a single person in that room, let alone their superiors, would pat themselves on the back for the performance of their present system(s). Call it CC&B, or CRM or CVM, the problem remains the same. In a world where telecommunications service offerings are becoming commodities, where price differences fade faster than last year's tan, a firm's best and perhaps only chance to compete is by offering superior CC&B and being able to do so at a lower cost than the competition. If you work for one of the few firms already offering superior service, please feel free to skip to another article. I don't mean to be impertinent, but I hope most of you are still with me.

Over the next few months this column will present a primer for what we believe are the key steps involved in selecting and implementing the best CC&B for your firm's particular requirements. Whether you are selecting your firm's first CC&B, or looking for a new solution, many of the challenges remain the same.

The topics we will address include:

1. The how-to's of defining your firm's technical and functional requirements before selecting a CC&B solution.
2. Why and how to align your firm's business rules and business processes prior to defining the parameters of your CC&B.
3. How many systems does your organization need? Which ones?
4. What type of system do you need (integrated or components, traditional or convergent)?
5. How to determine which vendors should be given consideration and which ones are just blowing smoke.
6. How to construct, issue and evaluate a Request for Proposal (RFP).
7. How to select a systems integrator.
8. How to negotiate the contract.
9. Should you consider a service bureau solution, or outsourcing?

Is the issue insurmountable? No. However, there are many more ways to get it wrong than there are to get it right. When was the last time you spoke with someone who got it right? We'll talk in upcoming columns.

Paul Roemer is a principal and co-founder of Spectralliance, LLC, an international telecommunications consulting firm that's focused on customer care and billing and business process redesign. Spectralliance has consulted to ten of the leading CC&B vendors, as well as to service providers with customer bases of more than 100,000,000 customers.