Saw an interesting blog describing the pleasant surprise Benoit Quirynen in Belgium got when receiving a tariff optimisation review on his bill.

http://blog.euscopia.net/2011/01/telecom-automated-tariff-optimization.html

We're all guilty. If there was a law against dull, obscure and downright perverse websites then our prisons would be full of software marketing executives. Perhaps the world would be a better place.

Someone mentions a groovy new technology, or a link appears when searching the web. The task is to quickly understand what they do, put it in context and pick up any points of interest. The home page appears, and the torture begins. A masters in Latin is often needed to pick through the contorted prose. Everyone, it seems, is the leading player in their field. But what field? Will we ever figure it out, before the tears flow and the mist descends?

Some days the world conspires against me. One piece of bad news is compounded by other unwelcome developments. My football team always loses on those days. My toast always falls jam side down. My car will be stuck in a snowdrift and while I'm fetching a shovel will be given a parking ticket by a traffic warden who looks like a gargoyle escaped from the north pole.

One solution to days like that is physical comfort therapy - eat, drink and be merry. Another is to do something which gives a positive feeling that the world is getting better. Retailers and service providers are keen to offer their wares as comfort for all the world. We can imagine a latter day statue of retail libery standing proud above a giant shopping mall with the inscription "Give me your depressed, your time-poor, your huddled masses yearning to shop free, the wretched refuse of your teeming store, send these, the listless, tv-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door".

Ask anyone whether they understand mobile communication tariffs and you're likely to receive a mumble in return. It's not that people are completely clueless, just that most know that their notion of 'more minutes for more money' is not quite the full story.

To be fair, this is not a problem unique to mobile telecoms. As the glam kid of the class, mobile is singled out because people think about it more than fixed line or broadband. It's viewed more as a personal service than as a utility. Perhaps not quite cute and cuddly, but at least imbued with some flexibility and personality, unlike its grey sibling landline services.

Hello, I'm Peter McClelland, CEO of StreamFlex Solutions. Back in 2002 when I co-founded the company, I had no idea what tariff optimisation was, let alone that I would become closely involved with it. The idea behind the company was a general-purpose bulk processing software platform, which would transform the speed and flexibility for providing large-scale applications. So often I had seen business problems which could have been solved if only better software tools had been available. Systems were typically inflexible and closely encircled by a latter day Varangian guard of the IT citadel, whose main task seemed to be to prevent any real improvements ever being made. You probably know the score - death by a thousand review meetings.

So how did StreamFlex end up being tariff optimisation experts? And why does the world need yet another blog?