Working closely with some of the world’s largest telecommunications operators, Qvantel is accelerating the path to digitalisation.
DIGITAL PIONEERS
When Qvantel opened its doors in 1995 in Jyväskylä, Finland, internet connectivity was yet to come to mobile devices and some of the biggest growth for mobile industry was still ahead. The new Company’s journey started by providing billing software to Finnish telecommunications operators and then quickly expanded to Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where it began its pioneering billing and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions for Scandinavian operators.
In the following years, Qvantel continued to grow and expand into new markets by addressing the biggest pain points of Communication Service Providers (CSPs). To put it simply, Qvantel handles the most critical assets of the CSP’s business including customers, revenue streams and products and the ways CSPs interact with their customers.
“We have built both a solid reputation and loyal customer base thanks to our success with digital transformations for CSPs,” explains Ove Anebygd, Qvantel’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our work over the years has enabled operators to maximize business efficiency and reduce operational costs, resulting in up to 80 percent reduction in BSS System OPEX.
“Today we are one of the fastest growing Finnish companies with teams spread across Finland, Estonia, India, Italy, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and the US.”
Over time, Qvantel has expanded its portfolio to address the needs of its customers. These products and solutions helped position the Company for future opportunities with technologies that ensure the business is compatible with a variety of partner solutions.
“Our extensive knowledge and experience in the industry has established Qvantel up as a desirable partner, and has opened doors leading to industry leaders such as Ericsson to licence Qvantel’s world class software designed for CSPs digital customer facing touchpoints,” adds Anebygd. “Our consistent growth in revenues as well as high quality of work is what I believe helped us be recognised on the London Stock Exchange’s 1,000 Companies to Inspire 2017.”
Digital Acceleration
At present, telecom companies are faced with an increasingly tough market, with digitalisation reshaping the industry landscape.
The aforementioned companies know they must replace inefficient and expensive legacy systems with digital solutions for the opportunity to rebuild their market positions, reimaging business systems and creating innovative offerings for customers. But with industry rates of over 70 percent of digital transformations expected to fail, CSPs are cautious and looking for partners with a history of success and plans to mitigate the risk
“At Qvantel we are able to offer multiple pathways to digitalisation, fitting the various needs and timelines of our customers,” adds Anebygd. “We are trusted because we have successfully done this for many customers already.”
“For example, Qvantel’s Digital Accelerator provides low risk digital transformation with fast results. We create an environment where CSPs can enable Front-end digitalisation without the need for a large-scale transformation of the legacy charging, billing, provisioning and mediation layers. This makes it possible for the CSPs to fully benefit from digitalisation, whilst the legacy can be modernized with a lower risk at the customer’s own schedule and pace.”
Its Digital Channels deliver a unified omni-channel experience with optimised customer journeys and lower touch point costs. The main value drivers include significantly improved customer experiences, enhanced ability to upsell and drive high margin growth and to reduce or eliminate cost from manual operations.
“Our Digital BSS Core (Intelligent Offer Management) which is targeted to operators seeking consolidation and modernization of their BSS back-end for the digital era,” adds Anebygd. “We believe this is the most open and intelligent BSS core for smarter offer management, catalogue driven business and optimized monetization of digital services.”
“And we offer Full-Stack BSS as a Service. This is usually done in phases, but from day one we provide CSPs with the most modern Digital Front End, with proven integration to an intelligent BSS back-end. The Qvantel service model also provides a suite of business process services for agile and efficient operations.”
Predictive Analytics
As with many companies in this industry, it is the in-house talent that drives the innovative and futuristic thinking which drives the vision and deliverables.
“We are extremely passionate about the opportunities that digitalisation is providing,” explains Anebygd. “We have seen the great value for many customers, including Masmovil, where we created a step-change in growth applying Qvantel technology in the core of their operations.”
The costs of contact to CSR (Call Centers) have become an excessive burden to operators and in order to solve this problem, Qvantel designed a strategy and roadmap for a clear path and vision for Zero CSR.
“The challenge we face is how to reduce manual processes with digital while at the same time ensuring that the end users feel the service is improved,“ affirms Anebygd. “Today we are using cutting-edge technology which includes predictive analytics and rule engines, enabling automated manual processes that deliver exceptional customer experience and significantly reduce costs. We are now delivering the next generation of automated support and care to our customers.”
Hard work has been a real defining factor for Qvantel and its reputation, with customers noticing and appreciating the commitment to innovation. Recently Qvantel was presented with the VEON award for Best Vendor alongside its partner, Ericsson – a category focusing on collaboration and innovation – recognising both Companies for their drive to push industry progression as a whole.
“We are proud to be recognised with our partner, Ericsson with Veon’s Best Vendor award,” states Anebygd. “ We are pleased to live up to our reputation to deliver exceptional quality at one of the fastest rates in the industry for true digital transformation acceleration and look forward to our continued collaboration and innovation for Veon.”
Investments and value-added service
With the extensive work carried out on innovation over the past few years in particular, the Company has significantly increased its R&D investments to continue providing customers with new opportunities.
“Some of the specific areas that we are now seeing breakthroughs in are our machine learning algorithms, data analytics engines and omni-channel set-ups,” comments Anebygd. “It is here that we see measurable value being created during the next few years. We hope that through these innovations we will continue to evolve and provide improved logic all the time, achieving lower-cost operations for the same functionality.”
Developing experts
After many years of experience in the market both locally and globally, Qvantel has a very entrepreneurial set-up. Its decision making is often achieved in a very short space of time, which has led to the need for empowerment of employees and the programmes that they are running.
“Our employees are working in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment, meaning our employees are challenged to learn and develop quickly to be experts in the field,” adds Anebygd. “In such a dynamic environment, all contributions matter and innovation will quickly become a reality.”
Each employee is carefully trained in order to stay at the forefront of trends, tools and best practices within the industry. Qvantel has an exceptional team with an abundance of skills which it has been able to retain over the years, providing some of the best proof that it is an exciting proposition to be working with.
Alongside providing an excellent experience for its staff, the Company consistently provides excellent customer service and this is well recognised as a part of Qvantel’s DNA.
“We are able to offer more exciting and value-oriented services than you would usually see in the market,” concludes Anebygd. “Our clients are truly excited by the capabilities that we are able to provide them with and we also like to think that we can make the entire experience more fun and enjoyable than your average company in the market.”
