Many marketers know the term ”marketing loyalty” as a form to retain existing customers through incentives.  But how do marketers ensure that they get it right in the mobile market, where competition is fierce on one hand, while  technology evolves every changing minute?  The simple solution is to combine these two elements with the way people are consuming other technologies these days; quick, real-time and targeted consumption and the answer is simple: Contextual Loyalty. What does this mean? Take a leaf from Google’s book and offer  customers  relevant offers at the right time… time and time again.The question of loyalty schemes usually arises when a service provider struggles with brand awareness or with low differentiation in his product portfolio, as the case is in most telecom operators, and therefore has high churn rates when subscribers drift to the competition. That is why it is important not to start with a loyalty strategy scheme once the service providers realizes that a big chunk of its customers is churning; as the saying goes: prevention is better than cure, and therefore  it is crucial that the operator build the relationship with the customer from day one.

Service providers need to be able to follow their entire customer base as if they were following each and every one of their customers individually. They need to understand what each customer needs, based on individual behavior and, based on these factors, utilize  the right channels to present the best offer which will generate satisfaction and loyalty. This becomes even more complex when one needs to do this in real time, as customer needs changes constantly. Another hurdle marketers face is how to keep track of the number of consumers taking action as a direct result of offers received?

This requires a contextual marketing solution providing real-time context detection, enabling marketers to follow real time behavior and, based on this, follow up with better and more specific personalized offers. The challenge is how to prevent offering free cups of Starbucks coffee  to a customer that does not even drink coffee.

This offer itself can be communicated to the subscriber through SMS to the mobile device but also through other channels such as mobile applications and micro sites offering customers personalized selection of Telco rewards, personalized selections of third-party offers, as well as  other kinds of personalized incentives tailored to each customer based on behavioral patterns. This also means that the solution will be able to classify the customer as high, mid, or low – based on its loyalty which is measured by MOU, service usage and frequency of spend patterns and then follow up with a rewards, according to a customer previous reward selection and his relative importance to the operator

For example: For heavy SMS users, select SMS bundles/ discounts and for customers who spend only  around 10% of their usage on off-net calls, prefer on-net bundles over cross-net bundles. Another example is to tailor the type, size, duration, and pricing of the Telco rewards to each participant, per his individual usage and spend pattern, e.g.: Offer a bundle of Mobile Internet volume for a longer duration to low data users, and for shorter duration to high data users.

By using  methods such as the ones described above,  service providers will ensure that each individual customer will receive relevant and personalized offers , based  on the customer’s value and churn risk, as well as being fully in-line with the marketing objectives the service provider has set for each specific customer. 

 Why Churn Management is more than complex statistical tools and techniques

With penetration of mobile phone usage approaching and even exceeding 100 percent in many countries, mobile carriers are becoming more and more dependent on data generated by their legacy transactional systems to innovate new products and implement customer retention campaigns. Customer churn has become one of the major indicators that mobile operators keep their eyes on, when planning and reporting market share dynamics. And although most of the carriers have their strategies and a complex of measures to reduce churn and increase customer loyalty, industry wide researches, including the one implemented by Enders Analysis on UK mobile market in 2010 (Diagram 1), demonstrate the persistence of customer churn management challenges and its growing concern.

Since the recognition of customer churn as one of the major drivers of success in mobile service businesses, numerous researches were made and studies published on usage of various statistical and data mining techniques to model and predict customers prone to churning. Most of these studies however concentrated on the effectiveness of certain techniques to “calculate” which customer will most probably churn, so as to find the main target for a new product or service proposition. Academic researches covering customer churn in telecommunications provide little evidence on development of special products and price offers related to variety of very specific groups of churners. In most of the cases the churners are just one group to target the new offer.

There is a strong evidence that many managers responsible for churn reduction coupled the underlying technology for service provision with statistical techniques to make their best estimates on the subject of “Who will most probably churn”. The input and output of data mining tools where in their majority limited with the “technological centricity” that most of telecommunications and other infrastructure technology businesses exhibit. A number of academic and empirical studies argue that these companies are “businesses organized around technology” and not “Technologies designed to make the business more efficient”. One of the key manifestations of the “technological centricity” is that many mobile carriers are making their strategic decisions under constant pressure of recovery from sunk coasts and not guided by short term market consideration. In terms of data mining for churn prediction, this approach guides the companies first of all to utilize the existing transactional, billing and contract management technology, which, in the first place, was not designed with churn prediction consideration in mind. 

This is why the rich information that customers leave with us throughout all touch points travels through the wealth of statistical modeling tools and techniques, just to arrive with true and false alarms limited to divide between churners and non-churners.However the more data customers leave with mobile carriers in form of reached phone numbers, sms and data usage quantities and accessed web contents and services through a variety of applications, the more opportunities they raise and ask for innovative services at more affordable price

Today the customers expect from the mobile carriers rich context aware propositions similar to the ones they receive from various web services utilizing all the wealth of behavioral data. The customers probably want to enjoy the same relevance of offers as they see with amazon.com, offering relevant books bought by other customers who bought a particular book.

Mobile customers are demanding their offers to be made at the most relevant time, at the most meaningful price in terms of value proposition for a tailored service-product. The customer wants these offers to change with seasonal and their own age cycles, to travel with them, when they are travelling and to go for vacation with them when they are away from their everyday business activity. The customers want the offer to acknowledge their relationships with local and international friends and partners.These are all contextual marketing considerations that, can be extracted from the data generated by legacy platform. 

By recognizing non-relevance and resulting low response rates of offers, telecoms make an important move towards new promises that customer centric technology developers bring to get mobile operators out of the trap called “Technological Centricity”.

To read more: :Churn Management in Telecommunications

• Aumentar el uso llevando a cabo una venta dirigida de paquetes y ofreciendo precios privados.
• Aumentar el ingreso fijo mensual implementando una venta dirigida de paquetes recurrentes, migración entre planes de precios, y venta de complementos y abonos.
• Aumentar el uso de datos y de servicios de valor agregado proporcionando períodos de prueba, venta dirigida de mayores paquetes de datos, migración de usuarios de bajas entradas a paquetes y ventas cruzadas entre servicios de valor agregado.
• Reducir la rotación con ventas dirigidas de paquetes, precios privados, actualizaciones  de aparatos, y renovación de contratos.

Alcanzar estos objetivos requiere capacidades en tiempo real. Por ejemplo, George tiene un plan de datos, pero ha alcanzado un 90% de uso en la segunda semana del mes. Como operador, usted debería poder alertar automáticamente a George que debe actualizar su plan, así como actualizar automáticamente el backend (incluida la facturación) – todo en tiempo real.
Entonces, ¿cómo puede alcanzar estos objetivos utilizando el marketing contextual?

El primer paso consiste en un análisis tridimensional de su base de datos de abonados, que incluye: variables de segmentación, eventos y activadores contextuales.

La segmentación se realiza utilizando variables de datos generales de clientes, tales como valor, proximidad al fin del compromiso, tipo de plan de precios, número de líneas, cartera de servicios, permanencia, etc.

Los eventos incluyen datos de acciones del cliente con respecto a cambio en plan de precios, actualización de terminal, itinerancia, acceso a datos, activación/desactivación del servicio, respuesta, etc.

Los activadores contextuales incluyen contadores de tiempo real basados en el uso, relojes (desde X, antes de X), umbral de tendencia (disminución, aumento, puntos …), aniversario, y más.Los resultados de este análisis tridimensional le permiten avanzar al paso siguiente y poner en práctica un plan de marketing contextual, en el cual las ofertas personalizadas (basadas en la segmentación y los eventos) se entregan en el momento y contexto adecuados (en base a activadores contextuales). Tales ofertas obtienen unas tasas de respuesta mucho más altas y mayores posibilidades de alcanzar sus objetivos empresariales.

Aquí hay un ejemplo que muestra cómo un operador puede aumentar el ARPU a través de la venta dirigida de paquetes de minutos. En este ejemplo el objetivo es una venta dirigida de paquetes de tarifa mensual a clientes existentes.

Una vez que el grupo objetivo es identificado, se envía la oferta. Es importante entender que la oferta se envía a cada cliente individual sólo cuando él o ella son parte del grupo objetivo, en lugar del envío en un tiempo pre-definido por el equipo de TI. En base a la respuesta de cada cliente, el operador realiza un seguimiento. Los clientes que no respondieron a la oferta inicial recibieron una más atractiva con el fin de cumplir con la venta dirigida. 

Es importante destacar que el cumplimiento automático realizado en tiempo real es probablemente la variable más importante en el éxito de este proceso de marketing contextual.

Enquanto a migração para o pré-pago é uma tendência global, ela parece ser particularmente intensa nos Estados Unidos. Os primeiros resultados financeiros da operadoras dos Estados Unidos indicam uma queda sem precedentes nos números de pós-pagos em comparação com os pré-pagos. No quarto trimestre de 2009, 65% dos 4,2 milhões novos assinantes da rede de celulares dos Estados Unidos eram clientes de pré-pagos (Pesquisa Tecnológica IDC).

Junte essa tendência à comoditização de telefones inteligentes e a questão aparece claramente – como as operadoras de telefonia móvel dos Estados Unidos devem reagir a essas tendências, e elas devem reajustar suas estratégias de comercialização para reter clientes de pré-pagos obviamente descrentes?

Marketing criativo acima da linha

Há, ultimamente, uma abundância de campanhas criativas acima da linha, assim como RPs anunciando como os provedores de serviços pretendem premiar seus clientes e manter sua fidelidade. Recentemente, uma operadora ofereceu como prêmio uma conta reduzida, para cada seis meses de fidelização, a seus clientes fiéis de pré-pagos.  Outra operadora ofereceu aos proprietários de tabletes a opção de um plano de pagamento pós-pago, sem exigir qualquer contrato a longo prazo. Outras tentam cortejar os clientes com ofertas atraentes de novos aparelhos.

Comercialização efetiva abaixo da linha 

Uma estratégia diferente para vencer a batalha pelos pré-pagos seria uma abordagem de comercialização personalizada, em conjunto com opções de tarifas atraentes (e personalizadas), com ênfase à oferta de planos da dados e aparelhos.  De acordo com a pesquisa do IDC, as estratégias de preços são um fator determinante para clientes de pré-pagos – que podem desafiar futuramente o atual método de ‘mensal ilimitado’,  adotado por algumas operadores dos Estados Unidos.  Imaginem, em vez disso, ser capaz de oferecer a cada cliente um plano de tarifas personalizado com base em seu comportamento, preferência e padrões de uso de voz, dados, mensagens etc.

A experiência europeia, usando metodologias de personalização, tem mostrado que a efetiva separação entre marketing acima da linha publicado, uma base ampla, estratégia de preços e o marketing abaixo da linha personalizado ajudam a reter o cliente e, mais importante, aumentar sua receita média por cliente (ARPU). À medida que mais assinantes usarem dispositivos de dados centralizados, especialmente os clientes de pré-pagos, que passarão a se importar mais com a tecnologia do que com o “baixo custo”, as operadoras de serviços serão capazes de expandir sua carteira e aumentar sua receita. Planos de fidelização também podem ser implantados em um contexto personalizado, de modo que sejam relevantes, oferecidos no momento e contexto adequados, e com uma oferta econômica com base no comportamento individual relacionado ao celular.

Tempo é um outro fator importante para o tipo de marketing abaixo da linha, personalizado. Proporcione a oferta certa, no momento certo e as suas chances de receber taxas mais altas de resposta aumentam dramaticamente. Por exemplo, imagine um sistema de recomendação personalizado da Amazon estruturado na história de compra de cada usuário.

Marketing através da linha

Resumindo, campanhas acima da linha não são suficientes e devem ser habilmente combinadas com o marketing abaixo da linha O marketing de massa acima da linha reforça mensagens importantes, enquanto as campanhas personalizadas, abaixo da linha, trazem benefícios claros para o cliente com ênfase em tempo real e contexto.

As operadoras comumente aplicam programas de fidelização a seus assinantes de pós-pago, oferecendo descontos em planos de serviços  aos  clientes que renovam contratos de tarifas elevadas. Outros oferecem bônus aos clientes fiéis, esperando mantê-los por mais tempo no seu plano de serviço ou distante dos rivais. Entretanto, isso  parece não funcionar. Os consumidores atuais – mesmo os mais bem informados – não acompanham ou estão alheios às ofertas  e aos serviços atraentes que podem receber. Ao mesmo tempo, o cliente de pós-pago espera ter a mesma experiência ‘personalizada’ da Internet/Google com sua operadora de telefonia celular – receber ofertas relevantes sem ser incomodado com publicidade e promoções impertinentes. Como operadora, seu desafio, então é – identificar cada necessidade do cliente e fazer a oferta pertinente no contexto adequado. Isso deve ser implantado por um canal de comunicação confiável, através do qual você possa criar conscientização e estimular  a resposta e adesão.

Alguém poderia argumentar que isso poderia ser feito usando sistemas de gestão CRM. Mas esses sistemas possibilitam ofertas em tempo real e, mais importante, satisfação?  Manter clientes de pós-pago pode incluir os seguintes objetivos comerciais:

• Aumentar o uso vendendo mais pacotes de unidades e oferecer preços individualizados.
• Aumentar o rendimento fixo mensal com a implantação de uma venda superior de pacotes recorrentes, migrando de plano de tarifas, e vendendo mais complementos e assinaturas.
• Aumentar o uso de dados e serviços de valor agregado oferecendo períodos de teste, vendendo pacotes de dados maiores, migrando usuários com poucas entradas para pacotes e realizando venda cruzada entre serviços de valor agregado.
• Reduzir a rotatividade  aumentando a venda de pacotes de unidades, preços individualizados, atualização de aparelhos, e renovações de contrato.

Para atingir esses objetivos são necessários recursos em tempo real. Por exemplo, Jorge tem um plano de dados, mas usou 90% na segunda semana do mês. Como operadora, você deveria ser capaz de alertar automaticamente Jorge que ele deveria atualizar seu plano, assim como atualizar automaticamente o processamento final (incluindo o faturamento) – tudo isso em tempo real.Então, como você pode atingir esses objetivos de marketing contextual?

A primeira etapa envolve uma análise tridimensional da base de dados de seu assinante, que inclui: variáveis de segmentação, eventos e acionamento contextual. 

A segmentação é realizada usando variáveis de dados gerais do cliente tais como valor, proximidade do final do compromisso, tipo de plano de tarifas, número de linhas, serviços na carteira, tempo de permanência, etc.

Os eventos incluem os dados de ações do cliente tais como modificação do plano de tarifas, atualização do aparelho, roaming, acesso de dados, ativação/desativação de serviço, resposta etc.

Acionamento contextual inclui o uso de contadores de utilização em tempo real, relógios (de X, antes de X), patamares de tendência (redução, aumento, pontos…), aniversário, e mais.

Os resultados dessa análise tridimensional permitem passar à etapa seguinte e implantar o plano de marketing contextual, onde as ofertas personalizadas (baseadas em segmentação e eventos) são oferecidas no momento e contexto adequados (com acionamento contextual). Tais ofertas atingem taxas de respostas muito mais altas e chances superiores de atingir seus objetivos comerciais.

Aqui está um exemplo que mostra como uma operadora pode aumentar a ARPU através do aumento da vendade pequenos pacotes. Neste exemplo, o objetivo é o de aumentar a venda mensal de pacotes de tarifas para os clientes existentes.

Após identificar o grupo pretendido, a oferta é enviada. É importante entender  que a oferta é enviada para cada cliente somente quando ele se ajusta ao grupo pretendido, em vez de um período pré-definido estabelecido pela equipe de TI. A partir da resposta de cada cliente, a operadora faz o acompanhamento. Os clientes que não respondem a oferta inicial recebem outra mais atraente para atingir a meta de vendas. 

É importante enfatizar de que o processamento automático efetuado em tempo real é provavelmente  a mais importante variável para o sucesso do processo de marketing contextual.

La noticia es pública. Los consumidores conscientes del costo se están desplazando hacia los planes prepago (a veces también llamados “sin contrato”) para reemplazar sus planes postpago contratados y poder controlar el gasto reduciendo a la vez los costos.
Si bien el cambio a prepago es una tendencia mundial, parece particularmente fuerte en los EE.UU.. Los resultados financieros iniciales de las compañías de EE.UU. indican una caída sin precedentes en números postpago vs prepago. En el cuarto trimestre del 2009, el 65% de los 4,2 millones neto de nuevos abonados a telefonía celular en EE.UU. fueron clientes prepago  (IDC Technology Research).

Juntemos esta tendencia con la transformación de los teléfonos inteligentes en un producto de consumo masivo y surgirá claramente la pregunta – ¿Cómo deben reaccionar las compañías de telefonía móvil de EE.UU. ante estas tendencias y cómo deben reajustar sus estrategias de marketing para retener a los clientes prepago notoriamente agnósticos?

Marketing creativo sobre la línea (ATL)

Recientemente ha habido un desbordamiento de campañas creativas sobre la línea, así como RR.PP. anunciando cómo los proveedores de servicio pretenden recompensar a sus clientes para mantener su lealtad. Una compañía ofreció recientemente recompensar a sus leales clientes prepago con una factura reducida cada seis meses de actividad leal. Otra compañía ha ofrecido a los propietarios de Tablets la opción de un plan de facturación pospago, sin necesidad de contrato a largo plazo. Otros están tratando de atraer clientes con atractivas ofertas de nuevos dispositivos.

Efectivo marketing  por debajo de la línea (BTL)

Una estrategia diferente para ganar la batalla prepago sería un enfoque de marketing personalizado, unido a opciones de precios atractivas (y personalizadas), poniendo énfasis en planes de datos y ofertas de dispositivos.  Según un estudio de IDC, las estrategias de precios son un factor crucial que afecta a los clientes prepago – el cual podría desafiar en el futuro al actual método “ilimitado mensual” adoptado por algunos operadores de EE.UU.  Imagínese, en cambio, ser capaz de ofrecer un plan de precios personalizado en función al comportamiento de cada cliente, sus preferencias y patrones de uso de voz, datos, mensajería, etc.
La experiencia europea en la utilización de metodologías de personalización ha demostrado que la disociación efectiva de ATL publicados, base amplia, estrategia de precios y ofertas personalizadas BTL ayuda a retener clientes y, lo que es más importante, a aumentar su ARPU. Mientras más usuarios utilicen dispositivos centrados en datos, en particular clientes prepago, que tengan conocimientos tecnológicos en lugar de ser de “bajos ingresos”, los proveedores de servicios serán capaces de ampliar su cartera y aumentar sus ingresos.
También se puede implementar planes de fidelización en un contexto personalizado, de tal manera que sean pertinentes, se ofrezcan en el momento y contexto adecuados, y contengan una oferta económica basada en el comportamiento móvil individual.
El tiempo es otro factor importante para el tipo de marketing personalizado, por debajo de la línea. Proporcione la oferta adecuada en el momento correcto y sus posibilidades de recibir una alta tasa de respuesta aumentará drásticamente. Por ejemplo, piense en el sistema de recomendación personalizada de Amazon basado en el historial de compras de cada usuario.

Marketing a través de la línea

Resumiendo, las campañas sobre la línea (ATL) no son suficientes, y deben ser combinadas en forma inteligente con la comercialización por debajo de la línea (BTL). El marketing masivo por encima de la línea aplica mensajes clave, mientras que las campañas de marketing personalizadas, por debajo de la línea, presentan los beneficios claros al cliente, con énfasis en tiempo real y contexto.

While the prepaid shift is a global trend, it seems particularly strong in the US. Early financial results of US carriers indicate an unprecedented drop in postpaid vs. prepaid numbers. In the fourth quarter of 2009, 65% of the 4.2 million net new U.S. cellphone subscribers were prepaid customers (IDC Technology Research). Couple this trend with the commoditization of smartphones and the question clearly arises – how should US mobile carriers react to these trends and should they re-adjust their marketing strategies to retain the notoriously agnostic prepaid customers?

Creative Above-the-Line marketing

Recently there has been an overflow of creative Above-The-Line campaigns, as well as PRs announcing how service providers intend to reward their customers to maintain their loyalty. One carrier recently offered to reward loyal prepaid customers with a reduced bill every six months of loyal standing. Another carrier has offered tablet owners the option of a postpaid billing plan, without requiring any long-term contract. Others are trying to woo customers with attractive new device offerings.

Effective Below-the-Line marketing

A different strategy for winning the prepaid battle would be a personalized marketing approach coupled with attractive (and personalized) pricing options, placing emphasis on data plans and device offerings.  According to IDC research, pricing strategies are a crucial factor impacting prepaid customers – which might challenge in the future the current ‘monthly unlimited’ method adopted by some US operators.  Imagine, instead, being able to offer a personalized price plan based on each and every customer behavior, preference and usage patterns of voice, data, messaging etc.

The European experience using personalization methodologies has shown that effective decoupling of ATL published, broad base, pricing strategy and BTL personalized offers helps to retain customers and more importantly, increase their ARPU. As more subscribers will be using datacentric devices, particularly prepaid customers, which will be tech savvy rather than ‘low income’, service providers will be able to expand their portfolio and increase revenues.
Loyalty plans can also be implemented in a personalized context, such that they are relevant, offered at the right time and context, and contain an economic offering based on individual mobile behavior.Timing is another important factor for personalized, below-the-line type of marketing. Provide the right offer at the right time and your chances of receiving a high response rates climb dramatically. For example, think of Amazon’s personalized recommendation system based on each user’s purchase history.

Through-the-Line Marketing

To summarize, Above-The-Line campaigns are not enough, and they should be cleverly combined with below the line marketing.Above-the-line mass marketing enforces key messages, while personalized, below-the-line marketing campaigns bring forward the clear benefits to the customer with an emphasis on real time and context.

Operators commonly apply loyalty programs to their postpaid subscribers, offering customers who renew their high-priced contracts discounts on service plans. Others provide loyal customers with bonuses, hoping to keep them longer in their service plan or lure them away from rivals. However, this does not seem to work. Today’s consumers – even the most engaged ones- lose track or are unaware of the attractive offers and services they can receive. At the same time, postpaid customers expect the same ‘personalized’ web/Google experience from their mobile carrier – receiving relevant offers without being bothered with intrusive ads and promotions.  As an operator, your challenge, therefore is  - how to identify each customer’s needs and provide the relevant offer in the right context. This must be implemented through a trustworthy communications channel, through which you can generate awareness and stimulate response and enrollment.

Some would argue that this can be done using CRM management systems. But can these systems provide real time offerings and more importantly, offer fulfillment?  Holding on to postpaid customers may include the following business goals:

• Increase usage by carrying out Up sell of unit buckets and providing private pricing.
• Increase fixed monthly revenue by implementing up sell of recurring packages, price plan migration, and Up sell of add-ons and subscriptions.
• Increase usage of data and VAS by providing trial periods, Up sell of larger data buckets, migrating low entry users to buckets and cross sell between VAS services.
• Reduce churn by up sell of unit buckets, private pricing, handset upgrades, and contract renewals.

To achieve these goals requires real time capabilities. For example, George has a data plan, but has reached 90% usage in the second week of the month. As an operator, you should be able to automatically alert George that he should update his plan, as well as automatically update the backend (including billing) – all in real time.So how can you carry out these goals using contextual marketing?

The first step involves a 3-dimensional analysis of your subscriber database, which includes: segmentation variables, events and contextual triggers.         

• Segmentation is carried out using customer’s general data variables such as value, proximity to commitment end, price plan type, number of lines, services in portfolio, tenure, etc.        
• Events include customer’s actions data regarding such as price plan change, handset upgrade, roaming, data access, service activation/de-activation, response, etc.        
•  Contextual triggers include usage-based real time counters, clocks (from X, before X), trend threshold (decrease, increase, points…), anniversary, and more.

The results of such a 3-dimensional analysis allow you to move to the next step and implement a contextual marketing plan, where personalized offers (based on segmentation and events) are delivered at the right time and context (based on contextual triggers). Such offers achieve much higher response rates and superior chances of achieving your business goals. Here is an example which demonstrates how an operator can increase ARPU through up sell of minute buckets. In this example the goal is to upsell monthly fee buckets to existing customers. Once the target group is identified, the offer is sent out. It is important to understand that the offer is sent to each individual customer only when he or she fit the target group, rather than at a pre-defined time set by the IT team. Based on the response of each customer, the operator follows up. Customers who did not respond to the initial offer received a more attractive one in order to fulfill the up sell.  It is important to stress that automatic fulfillment performed in real time is probably the most important variable in the success of such a contextual marketing process.

My name is Atzmon Hen-tov and I am the Chief Software Architect at Pontis (

First, some background about Pontis. Pontis provides Targeted Marketing in the Telecommunications and Cable-TV domains.  Targeted Marketing means that end-users get only offers and promotions that are relevant to them and they get them at the right time.  For example, just before you load money to your pre-paid phone, we’ll offer you to extend the amount and get a special bonus (e.g., 100 free short messages).  We deploy our systems at the customer premises and typically integrate with 10-15 customer systems.  Each customer has a distinct set of systems we need to integrate with and a lot of other differences from other customers.

In Pontis, we follow the rule – “if it changes a lot, move it to the GUI”.  The motivation behind this rule is to reduce changes in Java/Scripting/Technical code and allow our system users to define, configure, tune and operate the system without needing to get help from technical people.  Getting help from technical people often means a new, full blown software delivery.  Although many companies practice Continuous-Delivery these days (See this book for a great reading on the subject), it is better to avoid code changes and the consequent risks and project overheads.

We discovered that “what changes a lot” is the customer domain model.  That is, each customer has different attributes for the subscriber (“Subscriber” is “customer” in Telco slang), different types of price-plans, and different structure of events (e.g., for voice-call, money charge, short-message send).   At first, we developed the generic part of the system (the part that is used by all customers) in Java and then defined the customer specific parts in DSLs (Domain Specific Languages) from which we generated Java code.  When the model grew to more than 1000 classes, this proved to be a poor choice.  After every change in a DSL you had to wait 20+ minutes for code-generation, compilation, packaging, deployment, etc.  In other words, the Edit-Execute Cycle became really bad.

Enter AOM.

AOM is an interpretive approach; the model (meta-data) is interpreted and executed at runtime.  No code generation, no more “let’s make a coffee or two and come back to see if the build is done”.  This doesn’t come out easily.  You need to write sophisticated code that accounts for all the variability you give the end-users in defining the domain model.  Luckily the Adaptive Object Model site provides you with handful of patterns to do just that.

We started with a few variability points, that is, model classes that can be extended in the AOM GUI and added more as needs were identified.  Today we have a rich AOM application with 50+ variability points that allow non developers to fully customize the application model for each new customer.

AOM is so critical to our business model that we have an official AOM Engineer role in Pontis whose responsibilities are to customize the generic product and to maintain the customer’s AOM metadata in configuration management.  By having non-developer AOM engineers we gain better communication between the stakeholders; AOM engineers are not occupied with technical stuff (Java, Patterns, Performance, third-party libraries, etc.) and talk the language of the business.  But since they are the actual implementer they close things up with the developers to the very last detail (e.g. when a new generic feature is required to implement a business use-case).

Looking back at the last year or so, I can confidently say that AOM made a big difference in Pontis. A difference in the way we work, in the way we deliver software, and in the way we think; most notably in the frequency and quality of our deliveries.   Whenever a new requirement arises, the first thing we do is try to figure out how it can be satisfied by AOM-only changes. If it’s indeed possible (and an impressive amount of times it is; I actually have some numbers on this, but it’s a story for another day), the AOM engineer can implement the change via the GUI and spare the cycle of Java delivery.

We’re still learning as we go. There are many challenges, not all of them technical – in particular, we haven’t worked out the kinks of merging changes between different environments. I invite you to learn together with us – come back here for more!

Two important trends in the telecommunications market cannot be overlooked: the penetration of Smartphone and the fact that prepaid customers outnumbered postpaid customers in 2010. True, these two trends seem completely unrelated. Yet, the combination of both trends may have a significant effect on service providers’ revenues and marketing strategy.

According to Gartner research, by end of 2012 over 75% of enterprise mobile users will have a Smartphone, driven by low service costs (Gartner Hype Cycle for Wireless Devices, Software and Services, 2010). Frost and Sullivan, ICT Practice supports this by claiming that Asia Pacific will be driven by price decline and application richness, with Smartphones expected to be mass marketed by 2015 and account for 60% of mobile sub base in Asia Pacific.

Add to this rapid growth the remarkable pace of technology adoption. Today’s coolest device becomes old fashioned in about six months. This makes the whole “exclusive” positioning of Smartphones very short lived. If iPhones and various Smartphone devices used to be perceived as luxurious items, today this socio-economical-mobile-device segmentation seems irrelevant. Welcome to the prepaid world.

2010 was characterized by new prepaid customers outnumbering new postpaid customers. The global shift of contract-based customers becoming prepaid customers will reshape the marketing approach of service providers. Operators will need to invest extra efforts, provide improved service, and deliver more attractive offers in order to lure new customers and retain them.

Need a specific example? You guessed. Offer prepaid customers Smartphone devices.

Nevertheless, gifts are not enough to build loyalty, particularly with prepaid customers who will not stick with a mobile carrier if not satisfied with the service received. Once prepaid customers have Smartphone, providing the right price plans and offers will be key to retention and profit generation. Getting to know individual customers usage and behavior patterns, and then delivering offers in the right context and timing are essential to success.

Contextual marketing generates a dialogue with each and every subscriber, and in turn helps understand what each customer is willing to spend on. Smartphones can expand the portfolio of services that can be offered to prepaid customers, and can significantly increase ARPU. Assuming, of course, that marketing is done in context…