Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008 
Time: 11am EST
Speakers:             

                       Catherine Michel, CTO and Founder, Tribold
                 Barbara Lancaster, President, LTC International
                 Keith Willetts, Chairman and CEO, TM Forum

Chairperson: Joan Huffine, TM Forum

In today’s Communication Service Provider (CSP) market, services are treated like commodities, competition is driving down prices, and differentiation is more difficult to achieve. Increasingly, the market is looking for innovation and quality to deliver customer-driven, on-demand services through:

• centralized product and service catalog
• effective management of many bundles, products and services across multiple network layers and technologies
• improved customer experience 
• enhanced speed to market for new products
• reduced operational cost
• facilitation of a 360° view of the customer and the product

When communications services were few on the ground and evolved slowly it was okay to have a manual approach to product management. But in today’s brutally competitive market, with new products rolling out frequently plus bundles and options changing daily, product management has to move into the 21st century.

Setting the scene for the business and technology backdrop on effective product management, Keith Willetts, once himself a product manager at UK based BT, will review the key market drivers and the need to move faster, reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. As content and advertising based services come to market, product managers often no longer ‘own’ the service resources underpinning the product. This requires a new approach to allow product management across multiple value chains. 

Also, by attending this webinar you will understand, through a real-world case study, how a Tier-1 service provider used effective product management to:

• introduce innovative new products faster to generate new revenue and improve competitive response
• reduce complexity of business processes
• reduce product and channel development, launch and management resources
• track product profitability accurately
• enable billing standardization and reduce billing errors
• increase subscriber loyalty through improved customer service
• exploit network technology investment by introducing more improved products and services