Tariff optimization may be fine for simple tariffs, but can it cope with the complex bundles and offers that we now see in most developed markets?

Yes, tariff offers and business rules of any complexity are handled as a standard feature. StreamFlex tariff transparency solutions are based on our universal billing and mediation engines. These support all known billing logic across all major providers. The possible tariff offers for each customer are then assembled from all tariffs, add-ons and promotions available within the configured business rules. Filters are then applied to find the optimal subset of tariff offers.

Will best tariff guarantee end up reducing ARPU not increasing it?

Customer surveys and financial models have repeatedly shown several important trends when best tariff advice is implemented:

1. Customers become more loyal, and so churn rates reduce. This directly leads to lower replacement costs and offsets any revenue dilution from lower tariff price points.
2. Customers become more willing to adopt new services.
3. Customers become more receptive to up-sell messages.
4. Usage tends to increase, even when customers were recommended to stay on their current tariff.

How can customers be confident that best tariff advice is accurate?

StreamFlex tariff transparency solutions are based on a full universal billing engine, which supports all billing features seen in telecom markets. The tariff optimisation process ensures that recommendations are accurate, as if they had been billed by the provider's own billing system.

Where usage data is captured from summary sources (such as can be selected within the consumer Hunter online tool) then detailed usage data is inferred using profiles to fill in missing information, then the enriched usage is fed into the optimisation process. Results are not fully accurate but they are usually close (depending on how closely the customer's actual usage matches the profile selected for their segment).

Does best tariff advice work?

Many customer surveys have shown that proactive best tariff advice improves the customer experience, builds trust and loyalty, and enhances ARPU and margins over the customer lifecycle. These effects work even if customers are recommended that their existing tariff offer is best for their usage.

Please contact us for more details.

Keeping tariffs up to date is a huge task - how do tariff transparency solutions handle that?

Tariffs are inherently complex. It is hard enough to manage them in front-line billing and customer care systems let alone in third-party solutions such as tariff optimisation.

StreamFlex has eliminated this problem by providing a data feed of all tariffs from all major providers in each market. Tariffs are refreshed periodically and automatically. By maintaining the tariffs as a central resource, deployed StreamFlex solutions are always up to date and correct. This demonstrates the power of centralized tariff management - build once, use many times, automated update.

The central tariff definitions are maintained by a specialist StreamFlex team. Information is gathered from all available sources: direct from providers, public resources and third party agents. Tariff definitions are regularly reconciled against bill samples to ensure that they are fully correct.

The net effect is that StreamFlex solutions come already equipped with tariff data and can be used immediately with no need for tariff configuration. Actually, no tariff configuration is needed at any time. In other words, they are zero-maintenance solutions.

A further benefit of having a market-wide database is that competitor analysis can be optionally used for tariff comparisons and modelling.

Can I get a tariff transparency solution even though my IT group says that they cannot support any more projects this year?

Most StreamFlex solutions can be provided as a cloud service. Once we set you up as a customer, just log in and use it with your normal internet browser. There is no need to involve IT at all.

However, to access all features some data feeds are required. These are relatively straightforward and are usually available as existing feeds to other systems. For example: customer account IDs and properties; usage records.

Tariff transparency can therefore be introduced as a phased process, starting with online access to a core set of features, and enhancing that stepwise over time.

Of course, we also support deploying our software into clients' data centres, to allow local control over the operating environment and local storage of tariff optimisation results.