Billing CRM - News and Views on Billing, CRM, Provisioning and Payments

Dialogue Receives Vodafone Innovation Award for Web Payforit

The “Griff Innovation Award”, presented at the Vodafone Aggregator Forum in London last week, has been won by mobile specialists Dialogue Communications. The award, which is named in recognition of Dialogue’s late managing director Paul Griffiths, recognised the company’s achievement in introducing the very first Payforit solution for the World Wide Web.

Dialogue has provided the Online Payforit service to a number of companies including AEI Mobile, allowing consumers to buy event tickets online, and to charities in conjunction with BT agilemedia to facilitate the payment of online donations. Both these solutions were demonstrated at the Vodafone Aggregator Forum, showing how Online Payforit can you be used for specific applications.

Actix Unveils World�s First 1 Terabyte Per Day NSM System

Actix One NSM system now handling more data than Tier 1 billing solutions

London, 11 September 2008 - Actix, the leader in Network Status Management (NSM) solutions, has revealed that live deployments of the Actix One NSM system are processing 1 Terabyte of network data per day.

The Actix One platform, which enables mobile operators to slash time spent on everyday engineering tasks and boost productivity by prioritising actions more efficiently, is the first system in the world proven to support mobile radio access network status data commercially at this scale.

The radio access network produces extraordinary volumes of data every day, far more than is handled by solutions in mobile operators’ billing or customer care functions. Actix One, currently deployed with 20 mobile operators globally, uses enterprise-grade Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), relational databases and software sharing solutions to process these massive volumes of network data.

The highly scalable Actix One platform, which is commercially deployed today on as many as 600 processor cores to support a single mobile network, is capable of managing hundreds of gigabytes of network data per hour, supporting the workflow of hundreds of users and tens of thousands of base stations.

Wallstreet Launches Electronic Settlement Network To Drive Down Cost Per Trade f

New York, London, 15 October 2008 – Wall Street Systems (Wallstreet), the global provider of treasury, trading and settlement solutions and services, today launched the Electronic Settlement Network (ESN), a pay as you go post trade processing utility for the capital markets.

The cost of trade processing continues to widen between the top tier-1 banks and the rest of the players. This is reaffirmed by recent surveys by the thought leader in this area, Z/Yen Limited (part of McLagan[1]). ESN was created to provide collective processing capacity for its members with associated economies of scale, introducing a transaction based model for processing FX, Cash and OTC derivatives. The utility provides capacity, functionality and operations on demand and sets the benchmark for the lowest trade processing costs in the industry.

Launched in conjunction with leading industry partners Currenex, Bloomberg, ICAP and Logicscope, ESN provides an outsourced, on-demand processing hub for financial institutions, eliminating the need for large investments in IT infrastructure, upfront software license fees and ongoing operating costs.

StayinFront Releases Latest Version Of Flagship CRM Solution

StayinFront CRM 11 Combines CRM and Analytics into One Powerful Tool

LONDON (15 September 2008) – StayinFront, Inc., a global provider of enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) applications, decision support tools, data services, sample inventory management solutions and eBusiness systems, today announced the unveiling of the newest version of its flagship product, StayinFront CRM 11.

StayinFront CRM 11 builds on the robust capabilities of CRM 10, which has garnered praise and loyal support from customers in the manufacturing, pharmaceutical, healthcare, consumer goods and financial services industries.

StayinFront CRM 11 combines CRM and analytics into one powerful tool that makes critical business intelligence data readily accessible without the high cost of configuration usually associated with business intelligence projects.

“Organizations ac*****ulate large and complex customer profiles, but they often struggle to leverage these valuable assets. StayinFront CRM 11 is designed to help companies cope with their growing customer databases while providing robust analytics to support decision-making,” said StayinFront Executive Vice President of Research and Development, Michael Hart.

Business confidence in the IT sector drops further, says ICAEW

As the economic slowdown continues, business confidence amongst finance professionals in the IT sector declines to a record low of -18.2, down from -17.5 last quarter, according to the latest Business Confidence Monitor (BCM) from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), published today Monday 18 August. The BCM Confidence Index declined from -19.7 in the previous quarter to -25.7.

Commenting on the results, Robin Fieth, the ICAEW’s Executive Director of Operations and Finance, said:

“The survey paints a stark picture of the challenging business environment that has emerged in the UK over the past year, with the economy facing its most difficult period since the early 1990s. This is now compounded by high and uncertain oil and commodity prices creating inflationary pressures and fall out from the UK housing market downturn which has continued to gather pace. At the same time we are seeing a new realism among businesses about the need to weather the current economic conditions with projected staff and capital investment both significantly down on this time last year.”

Accountants Most Trusted Source for Business Advice

Job satisfaction of ‘new breed of accountants’ at all time high

Accountants continue to be the most trusted source for business advice, relegating even banks and management consultants to the lower ranks, according to the latest Pulse survey from Sage (UK) Limited. Echoing the findings from last year’s survey in which independent business leaders classed accountants as the most valuable counsel, this year more than a third of practitioners (35%) agree that they are the first port of call for advice for their clients’ businesses.

As a direct result of their status, job satisfaction amongst accountants has reached an all time high with 86% not having any plans to change careers over the next five years. Corresponding to this trend, and possibly driven by the current economic climate and a general strive towards a greater work/life balance, fewer accountants (31%) would set up their own business right now given the chance, compared to 47% who were ready to do so twelve months ago.

Inside Enters Contactless Payments Market In Brazil

American Banknote Brazil Achieves Type Approval for MicroPass-Powered Bank Cards

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France, October 13th, 2008 – Strengthening its presence in the Brazilian contactless payments market, INSIDE Contactless, the world leader in advanced contactless microprocessor platforms, today announced it has teamed with American Banknote (ABnote) Brazil to produce a MasterCard type-approved contactless payment card for this growing market. INSIDE is supplying ABnote Brazil with its award-winning MicroPass® 4003, a contactless payment processor designed from the ground up for MasterCard® PayPass™ applications, and has worked closely with them to obtain type approval, implement in-house pre-personalization capabilities and ensure their products achieve optimal performance.

American Banknote Brazil is the largest secure printing and transaction service provider in Brazil, producing hundreds of millions of cards each year, and is the unrivalled local leader in bank cards as well as virtually every other product and service category the company offers. American Banknote Brazil’s customers includes Banco Bradesco, Banco Itaú, Unibanco and Banco do Brasil – as well as Caixa Economica Federal, one of the largest government-owned financial institutions in Latin America

“Brazil is South America’s largest economy, and is now undergoing its biggest economic expansion in 30 years, creating a tremendous opportunity for INSIDE to participate in that country’s burgeoning payments market, which recently surpassed the 100 million issued credit card milestone,” said Bertrand Moussel, EVP sales for Latin America at INSIDE Contactless. “Our partnership with American Banknote Brazil opens the door to the contactless payments market in Brazil for us in a very big way, and is the latest example of our successful global expansion strategy.”

ROAMSYS hires Johannes Kaiser as Director Sales & Account Management

New head of sales to expand ROAMSYS’ fast growing customer base

TRIER, Germany – September 8, 2008 – ROAMSYS, the roaming experts today announced that they have hired Johannes Kaiser as Director Sales & Account Management. Johannes is based in the head office in Germany and will be responsible for driving ROAMSYS’ worldwide sales. The companies major product ROAMSYS easyRAEX is an affordable, integrated roaming agreement management solution.

“Johannes is a perfect fit to our innovative approach in the roaming management market. His great experience in international sales and client management will add huge value to our team. Johannes will be a major force in helping our costumers and prospects with leading solutions to streamline operations and achieve better visibility and control over their roaming relationships” said Michael Grasmueck, CEO at ROAMSYS.

RCI Financial Services signs three year managed services contract with Attenda

Attenda Limited, the Always On Managed Services company, today announced that RCI Financial Services Limited has signed a three year hosting contract with Attenda for the operational management and support of their critical Point of Sale (POS) system.

RCI Financial Services signs three year managed services contract with Attenda

London – October 9, 2008 – Attenda Limited, the Always On Managed Services company, today announced that RCI Financial Services Limited has signed a three year hosting contract with Attenda for the operational management and support of their critical Point of Sale (POS) system.

RCI Financial Services Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Renault S.A. The POS system is accessed by 500 dealers via the web and supports the financial services offered by Renault and Nissan in the UK. RCI Financial Services prides itself in offering the quality of service that its customers expect from a specialist motor manufacturer finance company.

The Attenda Managed Services contract reflects the high customer service levels that are the foundation of RCI Financial Services’ reputation in the marketplace, ensuring that the Internet facing POS applications are available, secure and meeting the business needs 24*7.

Chartered Accountants lose over £2 million per day in fees looking for do*

• 93% of accountants waste time searching for paperwork each working day
• A mere 1 in 4 accountants have a digital do*****ent management system
• Only 43% of do*****ents in accountancy Practices are electronic compared with 52% in all other companies

Blisworth, 29 July, 2008 - Searching for do*****ents is costing UK Chartered Accountants a staggering £2 million per day in lost fees, according to independent research released today. The survey, which was commissioned by Invu and conducted by YouGov, revealed that chartered accountants are wasting valuable time trying to locate do*****ents that have been mis-filed, moved to another location or simply lost, costing businesses dearly. Yet despite this, just one in four accountancy practices have replaced their paper filing with digital do*****ent management, making it no surprise that only 3% of operate a paperless office.

With more than 270,000 chartered accountants in the UK, and the survey finding that 83% of them waste up to one hour (worth £88 on average*) of their time per day looking for do*****ents, it is little wonder that this wasted time is costing them £2 million per day. The survey also revealed that accountants waste more time than looking for do*****ents than other vertical markets, with nearly 26% of their time being wasted, compared to 21% in industries such as construction, legal and insurance.