The charging landscape for enterprises is increasingly complex. Customer service demands are evolving, with expectations of multi-level or bespoke tariff offers creating a dynamic and rapidly changing ecosystem for providers. The ability to quickly adapt to deliver flexible pricing is vital.
Providing a flexible charging system solution is more than just a question of customer loyalty, but now represents a key competitive advantage for charging service providers (CSPs), telecoms operators, utility companies, and SMEs. Neural Technologies’ cloud-native Optimus Charging Solution is designed to support enterprises in realising that opportunity.
Adapting to a new competitive landscape
The competitive landscape has evolved tremendously over the past decade. Customer disloyalty is now the norm, with a 2019 study by analysts Nielsen revealing only 8% of global consumers considering themselves committed brand loyalists.
Value for money continues to be a driver of consumer switching behaviour, with 39% of respondents citing this as a primary factor for their decisions. Superior product quality (34%) and price (32%) come in second and third respectively. These findings frame a new competitive landscape where customer service quality and flexible pricing have a growing impact on market share and revenue protection.
Neural Technologies’ powerful CaaS platform benefits from decades of charging experience, deploying industry-leading machine learning (ML) solutions to enterprises around the world. It leverages the power of the Optimus platform, with a successful history of unlocking the value of enterprise data to enhance customer service and reduce revenue leakage. Partnership with Microsoft Azure’s world-beating cloud platform ensures that this solution offers a safe, reliable, accessible, and secure payment system solution for providers.
“Our collaboration with Microsoft means that more enterprises will be able to adopt a flexible, automated, and accurate approach to charging customers. Within a dynamic and complex tariff ecosystem, a cloud-native charging solution is the gateway to increasing revenue streams and supporting the growth of its business models to match the demand of personalized services.” Eren Sivasli, Vice President of Sales at Neural Technologies.
Personalized solutions for an evolving landscape
The value of personalization is undeniable in a world where on-demand expectations continue to drive consumer behaviour. The competitive evolution of utility tariffs, roll-out of increasingly complex telecommunication offers, and platform technologies such as 5G, all contribute to a growing need for flexible multi-level tariff offerings. Enterprises need to innovate fast to meet these pricing demands.
“All industries are realising their potential to have better customer experience, as customer demand for personalized services increases. With this comes the complexity of accurately managing these services and charging for them. Neural Technologies’ automated CaaS will support the successful progression of business models as they rise to the challenge of adopting multiple tariffs for unique services.” Monte Hong, Worldwide Communications Industry Business Strategy Lead, Media and Communications at Microsoft Corp.
The evolution of unique service offerings provides a particularly acute challenge in the telecommunications industry. The emergence of 5G technologies, alongside continuing evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) functionality, is putting significant strain on operating margins. Analysis by EY shows capital expenditure for telecoms operators will increase significantly in coming years, with global mobile capex intensity growing from 13.2% in 2018 to 16.3% by 2025.
In this new telecommunications landscape, customer experience will be essential to reduce revenue leakage at a time of increased capital expenditure. 89% of telecommunication consumers cite a willingness to switch providers as a result of poor experience (Forrester).
Disruptive competition also continues to present a significant burden for telecom operators, with 61% of providers in EY’s 2019 study citing disruptive competition as the greatest industry challenge they faced.
COVID-19 has added a new dimension of volatility to this landscape. This includes the widespread economic impacts of the pandemic driving deeper customer expectations around competitive pricing. These challenges come at a time when physical access to command and control centers, as well as worker resources, are pressured by evolving infection outbreaks around the world.
Neural Technologies’ cloud-based solution provides a remotely accessed, automated solution that can deliver dynamic tariff offerings that enable providers to adapt to changing customer demands in an increasingly volatile operating environment.
Adopting an adaptive solution
Neural Technologies’ cloud-based charging-as-a-service solution offers the functionality for enterprises to rapidly adopt innovative tariff models. The ability to move quickly is critical in enabling an enterprise to disrupt, rather than be disrupted.
The Optimus CaaS charging engine supports standard subscription models alongside time-of-day, day-of-week, peak hours, geo-zoning, and a wide range of additional dynamic scenario planning.
Adopting Neural Technologies’ CaaS platform provides further operational benefits by enabling customers to transition from capital-heavy expenditure models that rely on expensive hardware or licensing, towards an ongoing operational expenditure model. This allows operators to enjoy more predictable monthly costs that unlock charging solutions on a structured cost basis.
The CaaS platform offers simple, secure configuration, with minimal IT resources. Open API support makes it easy to integrate third-party platforms and applications, with integration via a mediation layer allowing centralized benefits for data understanding through the Optimus CaaS platform.
The optional addition of a built-in credit worthiness/scoring module known as Optimus Liquid Credit provides further revenue protection assurance. This AI/ML-driven component can identify and monitor “bad” or “risky” customers as they are on-boarded, as well as during the application process.
Neural Technologies’ cloud-native CaaS solution provides a responsive, adaptive charging platform for providers across multiple industries. In a rapidly evolving landscape, that ability to adapt has never been more important.
Get in touch to find out more about Neural Technologies’ market leading charging solutions, or explore Optimus Charging-as-a-Service solution on Microsoft Azure