The Current State of the CEM Market

ItsOn

ItsOn is also leading in the area of contextual CEM.  The company's solution helps mobile operators segment, mirco-segment, design and deliver innovative offerings at the time of need or want - making them more relevant to subscribers.  The solution also supports cloud-based account management and service offers which creates operational efficiencies for operators that can help drive down sales and support costs.

Huawei

A few years ago, when SmartCare received Frost & Sullivan’s CEM Solution Strategy Leadership Award, analyst Narla Ramaiah was quoted as saying, “While many vendors still depend on OSS products, such as network probes that restrict their focus to network-centric data, Huawei considers a vastly expanded set of touch points encompassing services, users, IT, and business systems.” In the years since, many more vendors have gotten on board with this holistic view, but there’s no denying that Huawei has been a part of that for some time. Also, as Atul Arora from Analysys-Mason points out, Huawei is the largest contributor to TM Forum’s CEM framework, which gives the company a good deal of leverage.

gen-E

gen-E has helped numerous operators, including 8 of the top 10, improve their customer experience by providing better insights into and control of their networks, systems and data.  gen-E's OpsCenter, system integration, and data visualization solutions enable operators to capitalize on their investments, leverage disjointed systems and infrastructure to improve their customer service, better visualize data, expand revenue opportunities and increase efficiency while reducing costs.

Amdocs

Amdocs has a comprehensive suite of customer care solutions focused on delivering a consistent, cohesive customer experience and being proactive about enhancing customer experience. Back in 2014, we gave Amdocs our Pipeline Innovation Award in the CEM category for their Multi-Channel Self Service solution, which allows customers to begin a transaction in one customer channel—on a mobile app, for instance—leave the transaction midway through, and then pick up (and hopefully complete) the transaction via another channel—like a web portal or retail store. Considering the rates of cart abandonment, making it easier to turn that almost-sale into a completed purchase is huge, not to mention the customer satisfaction benefits of creating a seamless multi-channel (or omni-channel) experience.  

Apptium

Apptium is also championing the omni-channel experience, helping leading MSOs and CSPs around the world innovate and manage the complex multi-channel selling environment.  Last year, Apptium's Intelligent Data Management product was recognized in Pipeline's Innovation Awards by winning the Innovation in Big Data and Analytics category, and this year the company is entering its EPortal product in the Innovation in Customer Experience category. EPortal, in concert with the company's other products, are being positioned to optimize The Customer Journey by combining, leveraging and streamlining commerce, business processes, disparate data sources, mobile platforms, and cloud technologies.

Netcracker

Netcracker’s CEM solutions are different from some of the others in the pack, to our eye, for two key reasons. One is that they emphasize organizational simplicity and silo-busting as the key to a superior customer experience (a general theme shared by many of the better CEM approaches, but Netcracker emphasizes it more than most). The other is that they tout their consulting and planning services as a part of their overall approach to improving the customer experience. Again, while this may be a significant part of what some of their competitors do as well, I think it bears noting that Netcracker doesn’t pretend a piece of software will keep your customers happy. Sometimes you need the sort of expertise that only real-life experts can provide.