Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hello, you are watching TelecomTV. I'm Guy Daniels. How do telco's rapidly design product bundles, work out the optimal pricing and improve the customer experience? Well, the answer lies in CPQ or configure, price, quote. And joining me now to explain more is Greg Tilton, who is VP Quote & Order at CSG. Hello Greg. Really good to see you. Now, this is a fascinating area. So can we first of all start by identifying the key architectural considerations when integrating a SaaS based telco specific CPQ into an existing OSS/BSS stack? And how can APIs and microservices help to manage all of this complexity and sort out any integration challenges?

Greg Tilton, CSG (00:58):
Thanks Guy. And look, great question. So CPQ systems really have the potential to enable the enterprise business units of telcos and allow them to expand and diversify the products that they can offer in the complex solutions that they provide to their enterprise customers. And in doing this, it needs to interwork with all of the other systems. And there's a range of different APIs that the industry has been working on over the course of many years that actually provide ready to go interfaces into many of those systems for things like service qualification and feasibility and to push orders through to order management systems or into network service orchestrators or service order managers, et cetera, or alternatively dip into inventory systems. So there's a bunch of different API enablement for the CPQ itself. There's also the way the CPQ can enable the self-service and the tailored experiences that a telco might want to provide to their customers. And so the CPQ system exposes a set of APIs that can be used to build various user experiences to meet the needs of different users.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (02:33):
So if we can go into more detail, which data models and system designs help A CPQ support the rapid product launches and real-time offer adaptation that telcos require in their high volume environments?

Greg Tilton, CSG (02:50):
The models are an interesting area. When you get into telecommunications services, particularly in the fixed space, there's a lot of network topology to consider and that's relevant in the configuration and it's important to the CPQ because those network elements are often cost elements in the CPQ and have a bearing on the cost, the price that you want to charge the customer and the margin that you make. So all of that correct modeling becomes important in terms of network topology. And then as you expand and look at a broader enterprise solution, that might be a complex multi-site solution that might have some security services sold packaged in and dependent on the network elements, it might also have different SaaS components in that complex enterprise offer. There's a lot of capability required in the way you model those model and configure those solutions. And the telcos need to be able to very quickly and easily configure the offers that they're putting to their customers and then price them, quote them. And then once that quote is accepted, it needs to seamlessly transition through order management and be fulfilled for that customer.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:18):
And for those CSPs who haven't yet embraced this way of working, are there any examples they can learn from early adopters?

Greg Tilton, CSG (04:26):
Look, there's been some really interesting complex enterprise cases that we've worked on and we've been able to show cases where we're able to deal with enterprise complexity that goes into the multinational as well as the big networks with lots of value add. So with Telenor in Denmark and Orange business systems, we've had to tackle a lot of this complexity and also back in the Australian market Vocus are a big supplier to enterprise. One of the examples that I find really interesting is this idea of an enterprise telco being able to provide a solution to an enterprise customer where that enterprise customer is operating in many countries and the enterprise telco is able to deal with the nuances of those different countries. And that can mean different prices, different currencies, different languages, different product feature availability. You might have certain SLAs not available in some countries or certain speeds not available in some countries and there might be regulatory requirements in countries that affect some of the processes that they need to be tailored per country. So to be able to do all of those things and to be able to then present just one common set of products right across the lot so that you can say to your enterprise customer, well here are these enterprise products that you can order from us and we'll deal with all of that complexity underneath it. And the system is able to do that through right from the time of quoting.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:25):
That's a powerful proposition there. Greg, if we can look at AI, I'm curious as to how AI might fit in here. How do AI and machine learning that are embedded in CPQ drive this real time pricing optimization and product personalization and predictive bundling for detection, all these things that CSPs are requiring?

Greg Tilton, CSG (06:46):
Yeah, so look, to have great support from an AI, you need the right data to feed it. And with our CPQ, we've got this excellent structure. We talked about the way you can configure and support the different relationships between configurable components. All of that flows through to the historic data as well, which is what a generative a OI can look at and then feed you useful information. So the classic example is pricing recommendation. So you've put a whole lot of quotes out over time to either the same customer or similar customers and the generative AI can look at how they went, whether they're accepted reasons they weren't accepted, if they weren't, how they were priced, what components in it, how those components were priced, and then make recommendations around the pricing sensitivity. And this is not really driving any core function, it's really just assisting the user that is interacting with the customer in that assisted channel scenario.

(08:02):
There are many other examples through those assisted channels where somebody from the telco is supporting one of their customers where generative AI can provide a lot of useful information when you have all of that rich data underneath. And we've been working on ways to reinvent our user experiences. So the generative AI has been, it's largely sat outside out of our product, but you've kind of got to reimagine the user experience to leverage all of this rich data enrichment. And that requires a bit of a rethink in how you support those users and how you enrich those experiences as opposed to something on the side that makes recommendations. There's also quite a lot of opportunity for agentic AI. And so we have visual, visually built processes to drive the quoting and then the order management and we've got visual decomposition and so forth. We've had some pretty interesting AI use cases we've been experimenting with to really automate the design of those processes, not so much getting involved in making the decisions and guiding the order through as it happens, but designing the process and designing the decomposition and accelerating that definition work. So there's been some pretty interesting outcomes as we experiment with AI in that space. And then now we've got a process partner that's been working with us in the ag agentic space making what next decisions through the process. So I guess watch this space. We'll see a lot of enrichment of the CP Qs and the commercial order management systems with AI and there's a fair bit of value add that can be made, but it's really underpinned by having the right structure that the AI can draw from.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (10:30):
Well, this all leads to the fact that telcos are looking at new revenue generation opportunities. So how can CPQ solutions enable omnichannel offer management and also secure API exposure to third party ecosystems?

Greg Tilton, CSG (10:47):
Yeah, so secure API exposure is all about having your security at the API layer rather than the interface. And that's been inherent in our architecture from the beginning, the omnichannel experiences. Having an API driven architecture means that you can support as many different channels as you like and do them all simultaneously. That's been inherent in our software from the outset, and that's really a design decision in the way the CP Qs constructed in terms of revenue opportunity. The biggest revenue opportunity that CPQ opens up is the ability to quite easily add additional value added services for the enterprise Telco. So we're often business cased on a cost out basis and when putting us in is business cased on a cost out basis? It might be through the manual handling that's required through the quoting and the order management and a lot of reduction of work effort.

(11:59):
It might also be in the quicker turnarounds of quotes and being able to get quotes to your customers before they've changed their mind. Many of the telcos can be very slow when there's large enterprise boats to get out the door. And it can be also revenue leakage, not having a structured system to control the way the quote's done and then to control the way the quote is modified when there are changes. And these large enterprise, one thing you can count on is they will change what they order from you and they'll do it right up until the last minute before it's delivered. And there's a lot of incredible examples of revenue loss through those changes. So there's cost out, but then the revenue add opportunity really comes in as you start to lay lots of non connectivity services, many of which can really leverage the underlying connectivity that the telco has over the top of those connectivity solutions that are being sold to the enterprise. So the telco can really diversify what they have in the market and start to grow their enterprise revenues.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (13:09):
And what about future proofing, Greg? Are there any models or standards such as the TM forums, open APIs or service mesh, zero downtime upgrades? Are there any of these they're essential to keep CPQ platforms scalable, adaptable, and future ready?

Greg Tilton, CSG (13:28):
Oh, look, doing as much integration as possible with the TM Forum and in some cases the Meth Forum APIs makes perfect sense. And we're building to those. We've been building to those TM forum APIs from the outset. We've been heavily involved in the TM forum open API program. We're a bit of a foundational member way back and we've won the Open a Excellence Awards in some years from the TM forum. We're using TM Forum APIs to integrate with inventory systems. We use TMF 6 4 5, we use TMF 6 7 3 and integrate with contract management systems, integrate with service order management systems. We find that it provides a really good common understanding for the way you tie the different systems together within a telco. And you often find that there's not necessarily a lot of clarity around the way a system exposes its functionality. And when you say, well, you need to support the T-M-F-A-P-I so that I can integrate with you, they'll read the spec and that will start give us a common understanding.

(15:02):
And if a telco can implement that way, then it will accelerate and ease the integration job. But it'll also, as you say, future proof the investment. So things become a little bit more pluggable as you use those APIs. And in particular, if you follow the boundaries that are defined in the TM Forum, open digital architecture. I mean we do, we've used the TM forum, sid, the shared information data model as the underlying information model in our product. So we've taken the SID and extended and then contributed back to the TM forum where we've needed to extend so that we're heavily standards based and then able to more easily interoperate with others that are heavily standards based. So we've had some excellent outcomes working with service order management and inventory companies.

(16:12):
We've been able to use the TMF open APIs to integrate with quite a number of the big physical network inventory companies, and that makes them pluggable. We've been able to integrate with some of the software defined network providers in the Sienna Blue Planet and Nokia Flow one, but we've got a couple of really good projects going with Sienna Blue Planet in particular at the moment. And with their support of the TMF open APIs northbound and ours southbound, we kind of just plug into each other and realize that value and the telcos need to spend less reinventing the wheel building integrations over and over again if we all built to a standard. So it just makes common sense in so many ways.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (17:08):
Well, final question for you, Greg, and if we look further ahead, which emerging technologies or trends do you see as having the biggest impact on CPQ in telecoms?

Greg Tilton, CSG (17:18):
Certainly AI is going to give us some interesting productivity gains, but it's an interesting question because at this stage, CP QS are very underutilized in enterprise telco. So we, we've got the majority of telco enterprises struggling with their CPQ systems that weren't really designed for enterprise or enterprise telcos. And as they take these generic cqs and then try and solution with them to then service their needs and they don't necessarily gut it and they wind up still doing a lot of things manually and around the edges, I think the trend to specialize the CPQ is the primary one. We're very, very focused on the needs in B2B and the complexities of b2b. And by really honing in on that segment, we're able to provide a solution that really cuts it for that use case. And I think that we're going to see more and more specialization coming in and making a difference and making these tools really usable.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (18:41):
Great. Well, we must leave it there, Greg. Very good talking with you. And thanks so much for explaining the importance and evolution of CPQ within telecoms.

Greg Tilton, CSG (18:52):
Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.