The “Internet of Me”: Increasingly the telecom industry is shifting from a “technology-centric” to “customer-centric” business approach. With most telecom providers offering core services that meet a standard level, there is a need to create differentiation, particularly through personalised customer experience. OSS and BSS systems are beginning to harness their technology even more towards gathering consumer data, which can be used to profile customers and their needs.

Analysing consumer behaviour: As operators increasingly focus on the consumer, they need to be able to respond to the market quickly to bring in new services, offers and promotions. OSS and BSS systems can serve as a strategic business resource in this case, using analytics to predict consumer behaviour and move the OSS/BSS ecosystem away from being driven by a single event, and towards analysis of consumer trends.

The ecosystem: Telcos are no longer looking for individual components of excellence in their business processes. With various products and services intersecting across customer interactions and business operations, telcos require support systems that will perform on a unified platform. The future model for OSS/BSS is evolving into a platform-based ecosystem that offers flexibility, rather than a rigid linear network. OSS and BSS vendors are building their infrastructures to support the scope of service providers.

Multivendor BSS: The BSS ecosystem is moving from being based on a single vendor to multivendor ecosystems. This is becoming all the more relevant as voice and messaging revenues begin to decline in the telco industry. Telcos should be looking to create revenue purely from services based on data, involving multiple parties.

Cloud-based implementation: As the telecom industry’s profits are incoming from redistributed sources, telcos are looking to expand their investments into cloud-based services. This is particularly interesting to telcos when innovations such as VoWiFi (Voice over Wi-Fi) are increasingly picking up in the technology space.

Policy and systems: Most telecom OSS/BSS vendors are in the process of acquiring policy control and charging systems, integrating these with their support systems. Conventional Customer Relationship Management systems are becoming simpler systems of records, rather than based on a system of interactions. Customer interactions are increasingly moving into self-service driven digital channels like mobile apps and web channels. Specifically in the OSS space, vendors are in the process of merging the boundaries between fault, performance and assurance systems. This approach brings relevant information into a single data “lake”, and helps to bring out meaningful information using analytics.