Web Selfcare - More independence, more autonomy

Telindus powered by Tango now offers its business customers a way to manage their own mobile subscriptions: Web Selfcare

Telecomms services are of strategic importance nowadays, and businesses want a quicker way of deploying them. In practical terms, just unlocking a SIM card is no longer enough; firms want to make the most of a new payment plan, to alter the way users consume services, to manage use across an entire stock of phones or a department, and to alert or inform everyone in the company by SMS – with just a few clicks.

“The status of communication services has changed: firms are building them right into their development strategy,” is how Eric Abella, Head of Mobile Service Delivery at Telindus, analyses the change. “This evolution means we have to be more proactive: and that’s what were doing now with our innovative solution, Web Selfcare."

The idea is to enable business customers who want to make their own decisions, and to act on those decisions for themselves, to take control of some of the things that affect their business. And to let them do it using Web Selfcare, a highly sophisticated management tool that literally enables them to pilot their own communications independently.

Activate, deactivate: you’re in control!

Web Selfcare is designed for all business customers; it’s a secure service, free of charge, which lets customers manage their accounts in real time.

“Customer service is more and more important”, explains Eric Abella. “Until recently it was good enough to call a service agent and ask for a change. But in today’s constantly-evolving environment, its quick reactions that make the difference. An employee’s lost smartphone needs to be locked straight away, even if it means unlocking it half a hour later because it’s turned up again!”

Or take newly-hired employees, for example. Nowadays they’ll tend to be issued with a smartphone or tablet as soon as they arrive. Web Selfcare lets this happen instantly, including activation of numbers. Eric Abella explains: “You have a set of numbers; you can assign a profile to one, and three minutes later that number’s live: you’ve done it yourself in a click or two, without outside help. It means you’re completely independent!"

Managing means anticipating

The next thing that comes to mind, of course, is accessing invoices. Web Selfcare lets you bring them up in various formats, pay them, import files on demand that contain all the communications made by a given number, or by a whole group. “And they’re in Excel format, so you can use the data directly or reprocess them with no trouble”, Abella adds.

Managing means taking charge: to change live SIM cards’ usernames or user profiles, for example, to set up cost centres, or to do whatever SIM card administration the business needs. Web Selfcare lets you create and activate your own cards, change them, unlock them. And of course to lock them, too: to bar premium-rate texts, for instance, or texts or data on particular users’ SIM cards when roaming.

Web Selfcare also lets businesses manage their interface with Telindus departments: they can make requests straight from the platform, or import a full inventory of the phones used by their workforce.

Web Selfcare makes customers fully independent: they’re no longer merely the users of a set of services but their managers – to some extent even their controllers. They can, for instance, enforce their rules or go online to check their SLAs with greater security and less expense.

SOLUTION4REPORTING

   A tool for management... and prevention

Our telecomms say a great deal about our habits and the way we work, especially the way we work together. Solutions4Reporting is designed both for SMEs and for big companies, and lets them analyse the comms use of their entire stock of phones in real time, as well as all their Tango subscriptions.

It does this by offering not just an overview of phone use but a summary of habits: national and international calls and texts, roaming and data. “You get full details of your spending and how it breaks down,” says Eric Abella. “You see how they change; you customize your indicators – as easy as anything, without installing any software, just over the web.”

The notion of administration needs to be a very broad one: it can involve a consolidated view of the firm’s landline, mobile and internet use on a rolling six-month basis, for example. This can make it possible to monitor key indicators such as all lines and devices billed together or by offer, and spending breakdowns for mobile, landline and internet telecomms by individual employee or by cost centre.

Take action to avoid unnecessary expense

Services bought but not used (because they’ve never been assigned to an employee) can be costly. Here, too, Solutions4Reporting lets you take action to avoid pointless expense. It’s also useful to check that flat-rate packages are still worth while: maybe some of them, the older and more costly ones, need replacing.

Solutions4Reporting lets you go back over six months’ data on mobile and landline network use, to see how that use has been evolving, to notice activity peaks, to classify use using multiple criteria (minutes, cost, gigabytes, etc.). All these can feature in reports: Telindus provides the tools for creating them.

Solutions4Reporting extracts every detail from your invoice and structures them in ways you can use to generate all sorts of metrics such as levels of use, service levels and costs. This also makes chargebacks and refunds easier.

40% of businesses’ total IT spend

Solutions4Reporting isn’t only a management tool; it can also be used for prevention, sending alerts to warn users when they’re near their limits, virtually in real time. “You and your staff can easily forget how many units are still available in the monthly package”, explains Eric Abella. “Everybody’s focused on the firm’s business objectives; no-one has time to check how long every call has taken. That’s how extras creep into your bills and all of a sudden costs go through the roof. It’s up to you to shift the cursor along and warn your users when they’re about to reach their limits.”

Solutions4Reporting has been developed by the international operator Vodafone in collaboration with Telindus and Tango: it’s a solution unique to Luxembourg.

Tracking and control are essential: according to Gartner, telecomms spending is moving towards 40% of businesses’ total IT spending. It needs sound management; now Telindus is bringing the tools such management needs.