New to the conference are the TM Forum Intensive Debates:
- Delivering interactive, in-depth, peer-driven discussions that will get you thinking outside the box
- Across the 4 Conference Summits it will help you identify new ideas and solutions
- Providing a unique conference experience, with real-life take-a-ways that you can start using the moment you leave the event
New Services & Business Models Summit
Thursday November 11, 2010 | | | | Intensive 1: Digital Service Innovation
The New Era of Service Provider Innovation
What part can service providers play in digital services innovation? We‘re used to seeing it from the likes of Apple, not service providers. But should, and CAN this change? Attendees will review practical approaches to enable service providers to capture a role in the rapidly-emerging digital service innovation domain and look at examples – both successful and otherwise – and debate what we can learn from these, moving forward. | Speakers: | Tal Givoly, Amdocs Chief Scientist, Amdocs Management Limited |
| | Intensive 2: Mobile Advertising
Mobile Advertising: What Will Drive its Success
The first wave of mobile advertising generated much hype around its success – but let’s face it, nothing lives up to hype. This guided group discussion will debate some of the key success factors that were not addressed in the first wave of mobile advertising and will explore the opportunities that are present in today’s mobile advertising ecosystem. The discussion will look at: How to encourage subscribers to opt in and create a virtuous cycle? What is the role of interactivity? What is the interaction between billing plans and advertising? What is the role of real-time context in creating effective ads? What is the current ecosystem and how must the telcos, brands and agencies collaborate in the future? And finally we’ll address other topics raised by the peer group. | Speakers: | Grant Lenahan, Vice President and Strategist, Service Delivery; Chief Strategy Officer, Telcordia Technologies
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Operational Excellence Summit
Thursday November 11, 2010 | | | | Intensive 1: Managed Services: Outsourcing
How to Build an Effective Managed Service Partnership
Competition is driving CSPs to embark on complex transformation programs. These programs increase CSPs’ competitive edge by introducing new services, reducing cost, optimizing operations and service delivery, and improving customer experience. While transformation programs' objectives are similar, the approach varies because of differences in each CSP’s business and operating environment. A key success factor for transformation programs is harmonizing the CSPs’ approach and objectives with managed service providers’ (MSP) capabilities – an effective managed service partnership. This will be a thought-provoking, interactive, role playing working group session to: - Discuss how to use outsourcing solutions and managed services to assist CSPs effectively transform their operations and business
- Identify synergies and gaps between CSPs and suppliers viewpoint supported by research data and experience in the telecoms professional services market
- Debate and conclude on the key characteristics of a managed service partnership for a successful business transformation
| Speakers: | Glen Ragoonanan, Senior Analyst, OSS Observer |
| | Intensive 2: Business IT Governance
If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It: How to Make IT Complexity Part of CEO Agenda
Making visible to top management how IT complexity impacts business performance is critical to improve momentum for IT transformation and modernization initiatives, which most often lose against product and market initiatives in the battle for funding. From this intensive session attendants will learn: - how to measure IT complexity, and use KPIs related to IT complexity in regular top-management reporting
- how to link IT complexity KPIs to economical impacts and business performance
- how to promote IT modernization and transformation initiatives
The audience will be invited to share their challenges, views and experiences. The session will be a combination of brain-storming, interactive presentations and discussions. The session should suit participants which struggle to manage complexity, as well as those having interesting experiences to share and discuss. | Speakers: | Erik Odberg, Senior Enterprise Architect, Telenor ASA
Vidar Vetland, Senior Adviser, Telenor ASA
Borger Warlo, Head of IT Architecture, Telenor ASA | | |
Cloud Summit
Thursday November 11, 2010 | | | | Intensive 1: Security in the cloud
An extended session, with roundtables and interactive and peer-to-peer learning, to tackle the practical challenges of cloud security. Security remains the number one concern for enterprises, and represents a major barrier to user adoption. Service providers need to recognise this, and develop robust, and yet flexible, solutions which address the needs of customers. This session will bring together service providers and enterprise users, to focus on the real world challenges and the practical solutions available. | Speakers: | Don MacNeil, VP Carrier Services, XO Communications
Ken Owens, Security and Virtualization Technology, Savvis |
| | Intensive 2: Billing and Pricing Models in the Cloud
This extended workshop-style session will tackle billing head-on, dealing with the challenges from both the service provider and user point of view. Discussion will centre around how to deliver scaleable and reliable cloud-based billing and business support systems (BSS), address agile and integrated end-to-end billing, how to drive down the total cost of ownership for back office operations, and the challenges of interfacing with other cloud-based services. What is the basis for billing – what is the billable unit? The different types of charging models (flat rate, service level based, usage based) will be analysed, and spot pricing vs. fixed price contracts. Will a cloud futures market develop where cloud processing units are traded like other commodities? | Speakers: | Ed Laczynski, Founder & CTO, Ltech
Rene Sotola, Vice President – Global Telecoms, CGI | |
Customer Experience Summit
Thursday November 11, 2010 | | | | Intensive 1: Contact Centers
25 Cost Reduction Opportunities for your Contact Center
If cost reduction or revenue-to-contact improvement are on your agenda, you’re in good company. Funding is harder to come by for new projects, ROI is required in half the past expectations and existing budgets are getting slashed to meet business mandates. Now, facing an uncertain economy, an important step to realize the greatest return on the initial technology investment is to optimize the contact center by analyzing your customer’s experience and your center’s performance. We’ll share experiences and situations to enable all to come away with a list of considerations to balance the common key business imperative to reduce costs while simultaneously improving relationships with existing customers, and providing additional services to attract new ones. No matter where your contact center is at in the technology evolution, we’ll discuss and develop suggestions of areas that require minimal or no initial capital expenditure outlay to realize or plan for future | Speakers: | Robert Lamb, Director - Contact Center Services, AT&T, Inc. |
| | Intensive 2: Real-Time Billing
Will Real-Time Rating and Charging Ever Be Real?
In the era of instant information, twitter, and 24 hour news channels – subscribers should expect the same visibility and access to information about their spending on communications services as they do on their credit card or iTunes account. Traditional billing relationships have led to bill shock and customer churn. The industry must shift to real-time financial relationships with all subscribers to drive a compelling customer experience thru informed, dynamic relationships. But the mobile data avalanche is rapidly diluting profitability. To reap profits from the mobile data explosion, operators should transition to real-time charging and policy systems that predictably process more transactions at a dramatically lower operational cost.
This intensive, interactive session will include: - A hands on exercise around the value of calculating and tracking Cost Per Transaction (CPT)
- Group case studies where groups will be challenged to analyze if and how real-time can improve the customer experience and present their findings
- A lively on-the-fly panel discussion/debate between attendees of the audience on the challenges faced in implementing cost effective real-time solutions
| Speakers: | Dave Labuda, Founder & CEO, MATRIXX Software
Ian Williams, EMEA Billing Practice Lead, Infosys | | | | | | | |