To be a successful utility or telecommunications company, your business processes must be constantly evolving to keep up with the ever-changing regulatory and market conditions of your industry. While many companies realize this, they often feel that making meaningful changes to their business is too complicated to do independently and end up having to rely on external consultants for costly system implementation and configuration support.
The problem is partly to do with overly complicated software ecosystems comprised of stand-alone solutions for core processes such as billing, customer care, field service, metering and inventory management. Not only does the use of disparate systems create inefficiencies, but it can also bring innovation to a standstill. While technically it is possible to setup and modify business processes in such an environment, significant resources would need to be invested in reprogramming and reconfiguration; furthermore, the complicated web of interactions between these elements is difficult to untangle and put together again without creating problems.
Eventually, companies realize they need a solution that is working for them, not against them, and decide that overhauling their entire software ecosystem is the easiest way forward. For a Utility or Telecommunications company, the Customer Information System (CIS) is the centerpiece of the greater software ecosystem, so this is naturally the best place to start. There are many CIS solutions available on the market, so it is important to consider the following points to make sure you choose the one that will help you most in your business transformation:
- How long will it take to implement the solution?
- How many core business processes does the solution cover?
- How complex will the structure of the new software ecosystem be?
- How much ongoing external support will be needed and how much will this cost?
- How much time and effort will be required to set up new products and services?
Implementing a new CIS solution is a long-term commitment and, by asking these questions, you can have a better idea of how the arrangement will work for you in the years to come.
Moving to a consolidated software solution which covers a wide range of business processes, and absorbs existing satellite applications, is a strong first step towards autonomous evolution as it clears away the complications of an overly-convoluted software ecosystem; however, this is only the first step. It does feel good to clean out inefficient legacy systems from your organization, but you may then find yourself dealing with a CIS solution which doesn’t let you grow and adapt the way you wanted. Many CIS solutions require extensive and costly external support if you want to make any meaningful changes to your operation; so even after overhauling the entire software ecosystem, your business may still lack the agility it needs to adapt and grow.
At Open, we believe that autonomy is the key to fast and effective business evolution. With a flexible and fully-customizable solution, we give you the power to innovate quickly and effectively without having to rely on external support. Our consolidated CIS, Customer Self-Service, and Field Service solution covers the full range of customer, commercial, and field service processes to provide a simplified software ecosystem complete with inbuilt tools for configuring business rules autonomously, as well as a natively integrated reporting toolset to constantly keep on top of business performance
We offer world-class support services to help you get the most out of our solution, but when you get started with Smartflex, you will find working with the solution so easy that you can do it yourself!
