Aria + SalesFORCE

Transforming BSS

Leveraging best-of-breed cloud vendors to transform your concept-to-cash-to-care business processes.

Best-of-breed Cloud BSS

Many Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are finding that their BSS is outdated, inefficient, or not well-suited to their current business needs. In many cases, fundamental transformation is necessary. Best-of-breed Cloud BSS offers a compelling opportunity to modernize your business.

benefits

Why transformation is needed

Selling to a market of one

Digitalization transforms how businesses engage with their customers, enabling them to personalize their products, services, and customer experiences using data and advanced technologies. By leveraging this automation and analysis, CSPs can tailor their offerings to meet individual preferences and fend off increased competition.

In addition, CSPs can use digital sales strategies and flexible pricing models to reach under-served market segments, such as SMBs, and establish a co-creative relationship with their customers.

Modernize the experience

In today’s economy, repeat business relies on customer empowerment and cost control.

Customers expect real-time communication, seamless experiences from ordering to payment, proactive issue resolution, information based on context, asynchronous support, and consistent information across channels.

Expansion and diversification

Telcos are adapting to the changing market by expanding their offerings to include media and technology-based products and services beyond communication services to generate new revenue sources.

To target specific industries, CSPs are also building new lines of business and partnering with non-telcos to bring expertise and experience to the table.

Autonomous and agile business structures

CSPs are restructuring to target specific vertical markets and support new business initiatives. However, these units often operate with restrictive budgets and capital than traditional telco departments, making it necessary to adopt new, efficient IT and operational models to improve viability and time to market.

The use of cloud services improves operational efficiency and enables them to connect BSS costs to revenue generated.

Steer every decision, digitally

To achieve a truly customer-centric experience, it is essential to integrate data from siloed systems in a timely manner to support effective decision-making, steer business processes, and enable the implementation of advanced AI solutions.

To achieve this objective, CSPs must comprehensively review how their systems trade, process, and bring together holistic data.

Delivering transformational change

Why best-of-breed Cloud BSS

The best-of-breed approach offers a cost-effective solution between building a system from scratch and customizing existing legacy suites. Utilizing business process automation, cloud components can be connected to meet specific business needs with precision. In addition, best-of-breed is:

TM Forum Compliance

Open Digital Architecture Map

The TM Forum promotes best-of-breed through its TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA) manifesto. Adherence to the ODA and Open API standards enhances transformation, improves agility, and reduces the total cost of ownership. The open, configurable and extensible design of ODA presents transformational growth opportunities.

Aria and Salesforce both align to ODA and Open API principles. Combined, we provide key components of party management, core commerce, intelligence and engagement management to build a robust best-of-breed BSS foundation.

Aria and Salesforce ODA Map

Joint Proposition

Aria and Salesforce
Cloud BSS

Aria and Salesforce have partnered to offer a Cloud BSS solution that covers the entire concept-to-cash-to-care process. It leverages the strengths of cloud-based data and API components from Salesforce Communications Cloud and Aria Billing Cloud to deliver an open, modular, and automated customer, product, and partner management experience.

Accelerated time to value

Pre-built applications, product models & integrations allow CSPs to leverage TM Forum compliant components to quickly launch converged service offers, capture orders, and manage the contract lifecycle with flawless order fulfillment, billing and customer care.

Commercial SaaS delivery model

A paradigm shift in technology access offers predictable costs with the goal to connect costs to revenue, swiftly deliver, and empower users. Also offers continuous innovation through automated upgrades with zero downtime and backward capable feature enhancements.

Digital-first experiences that lower cost to serve

Engage and empower customers through any channel and device of choice, deliver personalized offers and loyalty-inspiring experiences. Offers guided processes, rich self-care and seamless cross channel journeys. Transact digitally at scale.

Adaptive and personalized sales order processes

Streamlines the prospect-to-order curation process and improves accuracy through the consistent application of pricing and eligibility rules via any embedded or extended channel – assisted or non-assisted.

Supports any monetization model at scale

Craft commercial plans using the widest range of monetization models, from simple subscriptions to complex consumption and bundled packages that are adaptive by service and account to support highly flexible sales and customer self-build packages.

Rapid product and pricing lifecycle management

A catalogue-centric architecture enables rapid and class-leading configuration and launch of adaptive services. Provides a single control point for product definition, flexible pricing and catalog management, without SKU proliferation.

Experience-centric billing and payment processes

Billing, taxations and payment processes fully integrate into the customer lifecycle process to support in-the-moment engagement. End of linear billing processes with real-time proforma bill access, payment collection and service management.

Care that empowers agents, partners and customers

Provides single access to complex accounts from order to bill to care. Comprehensive workflow processes and service management options enable agents to rectify service issues, and customers and partners to self-serve.

Swiftly expand beyond connectivity

Design, build and launch service offerings beyond traditional connectivity and communication lines with our multi-industry capabilities. Aria and Salesforce are class leaders with multi-industry best-of-breed experience, services and solutions.

Supports agile CSP structures and routes to market

Scales to support regional business units to global Tier 1 CSPs using sophisticated multi-tenant platform features. Designed to support cross group, M&A and multi-national operations including MVNE/A business models.

Unified, open & extendable data model for efficient decision making and governance

TM Forum aligned and extendable telco data model. Continuous feed of business data into a datalake for real-time business insight and advanced AI tools to enrich and steer the customer journey and business decisions.

Forget infrastructure. Designed and delivered on cloud.

From inception, we leverage the benefits of cloud technology to maximize scalability and accessibility. In-built redundancy, availability, and security management with 99.99% historic uptime, eliminating the need for infrastructure management.

modular capabilities

Functional scope

  • Centralized Enterprise Product and Commercial Catalogue (EPC)
  • Automated Service Configuration Management (CPQ)
  • 360° Customer Management (CRM)
  • Communications Industry Data Model
  • Contract Lifecycle Management
  • Digital Commerce Gateway
  • Commercial Order Management (COM)
  • Order Fulfillment and Orchestration
  • Complex Subscription and Granular Usage Rating
  • Real-Time Revenue Management and Bill Generation
  • Taxation and Payment Processing
  • Dunning and Credit Management
  • Ecosystem & Partner Enablement & Settlement
  • Business and Customer Analytics & Intelligence
  • Aria – Salesforce Mulesoft Adapters
  • Mulesoft Marketplace Adapters

Seamless and autonomous journeys

Build fully integrated digital journeys

Pre-built applications, integrations and product models enable the creation of integrated concept-to-cash-to-care journeys.

Changes to product and pricing controls are centralized and integrated with customer order management and billing automation, with options for marketing and lead management.

Customer care is enriched with omni-channel routing, self-service account management and real-time bill analysis.

A workflow and API-oriented architecture enables data to steer assisted and autonomous decision making for all stakeholders.

Business cases

The Aria and Salesforce Cloud BSS offers modular, flexible capabilities for many business initiatives. It is cost-effective, accelerates time to market, and enables service providers to easily adapt and scale up or down to changing market needs. It's proven for:

Digital tranformation of middle office

Streamline concept-to-order-to-cash processes including product catalog, quoting, contracting and billing automation

Call center transformation to digital first support

Enable rich omni-channel self-care with controls over account, services, bill insight, cases and knowledge for optimal customer experience

5G and software-defined network (SDN) monetization

Launch new business models when deploying 5G/SDN networks and related technologies, such as IoT and edge computing

Diversification with media, technology and utility services

Diversify revenue streams, create opportunities for growth and enhance competitive position for improved customer satisfaction and loyalty

Launch new fiber and altnet services and businesses

Commercialize compelling value propositions, partnering with ecosystem players and deliver exceptional customer experience

MVNE/A and MVNO enablement

Generate additional revenue, better utilize network infrastructure and grow network footprint through pooled infrastructure

Launch new IoT and TechCo divisions and services

Leverage your network infrastructure, customer base, and data analytics to develop new and innovative services that meet the evolving needs and expectations of customers

Launch digital sub-brands and business units

Target a specific market, offer a differentiated product or service, test a new market or business model, avoid brand dilution, or create a fresh market image

Reinvigorate SMB and enterprise sales

Reach small and large businesses through streamlined and digitalized business processes for service configuration, quoting and ordering with automated billing and care

Enable wholesale B2B2X

Open up business opportunities by offering network infrastructure and services to third-parties, such as cloud service vendors, content providers, and suppliers reliant on high-performance connectivity

Why industry SaaS?

SaaS is evolving. To penetrate vertical markets such as telecommunications and media & publishing, one-time horizontal suite providers like Salesforce are developing custom solutions and applications to meet the unique needs and requirements of these industries.  

Read our blog post to understand why software suite and point providers must strike a balance between delivering all the benefits of SaaS and the industry-focused tools and applications that businesses need. 

Joint Success

Customer case studies

Flexible Multi-Country NEW BSS Platform

Liberty Latin America

The integration of Aria Billing Cloud and Salesforce Communications Cloud, using TM Forum Open APIs, delivers a cloud-based BSS architecture that offers service flexibility and diversity for both consumer and enterprise products in 20 consumer markets and 30 B2B markets, replacing legacy systems.



Digital CSP and hyper-personalization

M1 Singapore

M1’s digital transformation was achieved by replacing its complex legacy estate with Aria Billing Cloud and Salesforce Communications Cloud, resulting in a modern, cloud-based BSS system. The consumer MVP was launched in just nine months, with hyper-personalized services, 85% reduction in human touch on orders, and 90% self-serve transactions. This transformation made M1 a more digitally-focused service provider, improving customer experiences and operational efficiency.

Network-as-a-service

EXA

Aria Billing Cloud and Salesforce Communications Cloud were swiftly deployed as a cloud-based BSS to support a new infrastructure division and replace the in-house BSS. The solution supports all North American and European entities, handling large customer accounts and invoices for enterprise and CSP data center and connectivity products. It was deployed to production in six months, achieving a key transformation goal.

Partners

System integrators

Aria and Salesforce have strategic relationships with these partners to jointly bring solutions to the CSP market.

See all partners

News and Resources

Access the latest news and insights

Browse our latest blog posts, case studies, datasheets, whitepapers and on-demand webinars, and read our recent news.

Resource Hub

News and Resources

Access the latest news and insights

Browse our latest blog posts, case studies, datasheets, whitepapers and on-demand webinars, and read our recent news.

Resource Hub

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