‘Convergence is making telecom billings a very complex affair’

l Why has it

taken so long for Convergys to focus on Asia-Pacific, including India?



Call us conservative or cautious, before we enter a market we like to have

the necessary infrastructure like support staff and partner networks in place.

This has been a key reason for our success in all the projects we have

undertaken. We are yet to lose any of our existing customers to competition. So

even though we have been late in this region, we have clinched about 21 deals in

2002.

Steve Szeto

l What trends

do you see in the telecom space and what are the probable impact on billings?



In the early days, the three arms of the telecom segment viz. mobile,

cable/broadband, and fixed access (IP/wire line) had well defined areas to

service. However with convergence, players in these segment are moving into each

others domain. With this the focus has shifted to the content being delivered to

the end customer. So the access provider will have to deal with multiple content

partners to give the best value to the end customer. So convergence has made the

billing process very complex as the system will have to take into account the

various permutations used by the end customers.

l What are

your plans for India?



While we are late in India, we feel there are some operators who are keen on

change and we are looking at a few of them. Also we see a huge opportunity among

the government owned operators. I think that most operators are looking at

creating value-based services and Convergys with its huge experience in billings

and contact can offer the best solution to cater to their needs. We are in the

process of creating the support infrastructure and will be getting in 6-8 people

as part of our IT services division. Since we already have a contact center

running, we can leverage the same to offer a complete solution to the telecom

players.

Yograj Varma in New Delhi