DirectorsTalk caught-up with Louis Hall, CEO of Cerillion plc (LON:CER), an innovator in digital monetisation and customer management solutions, to ask about three recent contract wins with Belgium operator, Scarlet; wholesale telecoms business, OpenNet; and Malta’s leading telecommunications service provider, GO. Set out below are mini case studies for each contract and quotes from Cerillion and its clients.
Case Study 1: Scarlet Picks Cerillion for 3-Year Managed Services Deal
Cerillion announced on 18 November 2020, a new three year managed services contract with Scarlet, a triple-play communications services provider (CSP) in Belgium, part of the Proximus Group. The Managed Service will augment Scarlet’s in-house team and processes to provide a comprehensive set of operational services, running and maintaining the Enterprise BSS/OSS suite.
Scarlet is a ‘no-frills’ brand with a mission to deliver essential telecom services at the lowest prices. Working with the Managed Service, Scarlet is increasing its operational efficiency by gaining access to a dedicated team of billing experts that will run its end-to-end billing operations and assurance processes, as well as helping to launch new products and offers quickly using best practices.
“As a challenger brand in a highly competitive market, operational efficiency and agility is our lifeblood,” said Olivier Gossiaux, IT Director at Scarlet. “By adopting the Cerillion Managed Service, we are supercharging our operations with a team of product experts which will help us to continue growing our customer base and scaling our business efficiently.”
“We are delighted to be extending our relationship with Scarlet, helping them to disrupt the market with a very competitive range of triple-play services backed up by a strong emphasis on customer experience,” commented Louis Hall, CEO of Cerillion. “Managed services provide that extra layer of assurance and confidence for CSPs to know they are getting the most out of their BSS/OSS platforms, improving time to market, whilst maintaining low and predictable operational costs.”
Case Study 2: Launching a new Wholesale Platform for fibre business collaboration
“The investment required to rollout fibre networks makes it ideally suited to a wholesale model where multiple retailers share the same access network, but can still package their own unique service offerings,” says Louis Hall, CEO. “OpenNet are at the forefront of the fibre revolution with a strong proposition for their retail partners, and we are delighted for them to join our growing base of communications and utilities customers.”
OpenNet is a wholesale telecoms business providing access to multiple fibre networks in Denmark through a dedicated wholesale platform.Following an extensive evaluation process and consultative engagement, OpenNet chose the company to build the wholesale platform based on its Enterprise BSS/OSS suite, including an open integration layer for Infrastructure Owners and Service Providers to access their services, and a comprehensive set of hosting and managed services.
Henrik Møller Nielsen, CEO, OpenNet, noted, “We chose Cerillion because of their cooperativeness and flexibility, their record of accomplishment and because they offered a professional solution that met our needs and demands.”
Challenges
As a start-up wholesale business, OpenNet needed to build out the necessary infrastructure and BSS/OSS to launch its services and start on-boarding new Infrastructure Owners and Service Providers.
Key BSS/OSS requirements for OpenNet included:
- Proven support for fibre infrastructure and services
- Multi-tenancy to enable all Infrastructure Owners and Service Providers to be managed on the same wholesale system with fully segregated data
- Comprehensive product catalogue for building new wholesale products and packages
- Open integration layer and APIs to create an efficient on-boarding process for new Infrastructure Owners and Service Providers
Results
OpenNet went live on Cerillion with its first Service Provider launching in early 2019 and have successfully on-boarded several Service Providers to the wholesale platform so far, with more in progress. Using a template driven model has enabled a smooth on-boarding process.
On the southbound side, OpenNet is also now successfully connected to four Infrastructure Owners, making OpenNet the platform of choice for wholesale fibre and providing the Danish public with access to the greatest fibre network coverage as well as an increasing choice of Service Providers.
Key to OpenNet’s success has been using a standardised wholesale platform to manage all the Service Providers and Infrastructure Owners.
René Skjøde Andersen, Head of Programme at OpenNet explains: “Our first goal was to prove that we had a robust wholesale platform and could successfully on-board our first Service Provider and Infrastructure Owner partners. Having successfully achieved that first milestone in early 2019, we have also now proved that we have a compelling offer to attract other Service Providers and Infrastructure Owners and are continuing to expand our reach.
We saw an opportunity to transform the fibre market in Denmark. By working with Cerillion, we have created a centralised platform that benefits both Infrastructure Owners and Service Providers, and ultimately delivers greater choice and better service levels to end customers.”
Case Study 3: GO chooses Cerillion for digital BSS programme
“From our first project together for fixed line services, now twenty years ago, we have continued to work in close partnership with GO as they have evolved into a fully convergent, multi-service telco with regular upgrades and enhancements to the Cerillion platform,” added Louis Hall. “I am delighted they are now joining our other customers on Cerillion 8, which will power the next wave of digital growth for their consumer and corporate services.”
On 12th January 2021, the company announced a major new project with GO, Malta’s leading communications provider, which will see them upgrade their core business support system (BSS) platform to Cerillion 8.2 and implement additional Cerillion modules including the Convergent Charging System and Enterprise Product Catalogue.
As part of its wider digital transformation strategy, GO is future-proofing its BSS for the next generation of data services and digital ecosystems. By moving to Cerillion 8.2, GO will benefit from the open standards-based architecture, including TM Forum Open APIs and 3GPP compliant charging, as well as the intrinsic advantages of a pre-integrated product suite with seamless end-to-end business processes. Due to the functional depth and breadth of the Cerillion suite, GO will also be able to decommission a number of peripheral systems, creating further operational efficiencies.
The adoption of Cerillion’s Enterprise Product Catalogue as part of the upgrade will deliver a step change in time-to-market, enabling GO to rapidly build, test and deploy new products and multi-play packages based on reusable components and templates. The implementation of the Convergent Charging System provides GO with the foundation to monetise a new wave of data-centric services and digital commerce.
“The last year has shown just how quickly businesses must be able to adapt to new market conditions, and it is therefore vital that we have an open digital BSS that supports rapid changes to our products, services and processes,” commented Kelvin Camenzuli, Chief Digital Officer at GO. “This major upgrade project with Cerillion is a key part of our digital transformation strategy, providing us with a standards-based platform and a catalogue-driven approach which not only accelerates our time-to-market, but also helps us to provide more customer-centric services.”
Notes – About Scarlet, OpenNet and GO
Scarlet is a telecom services provider active in Belgium, providing both Fixed (telephony, Internet & digital television) & Mobile telephony services to the residential market. Thanks to flexible organisation and a ‘no frills’ product portfolio, Scarlet’s mission is to deliver essential telecom services at the lowest prices.
OpenNet is a wholesale telecoms business providing access to multiple fibre networks in Denmark through a dedicated wholesale platform.
GO is Malta’s first quadruple play operator, a truly converged and integrated communications and entertainment company with a wide range of services. As Malta’s leading provider of telecommunications services, GO offers fixed phone, mobile telephony, broadband internet services, digital tv, in addition to business-related services like data networking solutions, business IP services, managed and co-location facilities. GO powers over 500,000 customer connections and services – thus making it the largest communications provider in Malta. GO has been in the business of communications for the past 45 years and its major shareholder is Tunisie Telecom (TT).
