Accanto Systems and the Customer-Driven Strategy

By: Becky Bracken

Accanto Systems wants operators to re-imagine the way they relate to their customers. Let's face it: Not all customers are equally important to your business. Customer Quality of Experience (QoE) for mobile service providers is more than a simple data point to be collected and passed off to network managers. With solutions like Accanto Systems' real-time iCEM platform, QoE and customer service, assurance can become a smart strategy to employ network assets to optimize the experience of those customers who generate the most revenue across all facets of the business.

How much revenue are you willing to lose this week? Do you have a strategy? How many customers can you afford to lose? Do you know how many VIPs have a bad QoE? As counter-intuitive as these questions may seem on their face, that's precisely what Accanto Systems' iCEM platform can tell you. That's significant because any long-term revenue strategy has to account for the reality that not all customers require the most fantastic level of service imaginable. Smart network asset management can't be about providing every single customer gold-standard service. It's about identifying those VIP, high-yield customers and ensuring they receive the best quality of service--no matter what.

Accanto iCEM is a unique platform which enables Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring and analytics for each individual subscriber in multi-vendor environments. The platform collects customer data from a variety of sources in real time, from probes to the OSS layer, and generates an overall QoE score based on an individual customer experience.

This is particularly helpful as service providers seek to differentiate service levels between lower-yield customers and those high ARPU, VIP enterprise customers who should be kept happy at all cost. The reality is this: not all customers should be treated equally, either at the network level or even the customer-facing front. Leveraging this rich data can help CSPs re-imagine their entire relationship with customer service assurance and put the customer in the middle of each and every decision, across the entire business.

Accanto Systems has recently undergone a reinvention based largely on the preferences of service providers. Accanto, which once provided data probes in addition to CEM platforms, sold its probe business to NetScout in 2012 and pivoted its focus toward providing CEM intelligence through its innovative iCEM platform. The reinvention was complete by May of 2013 when Accanto Systems finalized the consolidation of operations in Helsinki, Finland and named Jarkko Multanen, Accanto co-founder and former CTO, as its new Chief Executive Officer.

“Analytics in the past have not been able to manage data volume to report in real time,” Accanto Systems' CEO Jarkko Multanen said. “Our focus is to provide a cost efficient performance platform that can calculate QoE in real time.”