Yaniv Shimony is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Origami and the innovative spirit driving the growth of the company. He is an expert in designing and implementing modern enterprise information systems for prominent businesses and organizations worldwide. This week, Tara Neal, Executive Editor of The Fast Mode spoke to Yaniv on how telecom CRM solutions have been evolving in the past decade and how Origami's suite of CRM solutions are helping operators build scalable and flexible systems to manage the plethora of digital interfaces supporting the fast expanding portfolio of innovative services offered by operators.
TARA NEAL: Can you share a little about how you began your journey with Origami? Why the name Origami?
YANIV SHIMONY: The quick version of the story behind Origami starts with the understanding that change is constant. My personal journey with the company as its founder began with the strong desire to create a modern platform for organizations to easily design and dynamically manage CRM and other enterprise information systems.
The slightly longer version of our story continues with the fact that competitive pressures and growing customer expectations as well as advances in technology are driving innovation and the need to change. This is especially true for telcos and managed service providers. Business requirements and market opportunities are constantly changing and need to be efficiently incorporated into CRM processes.
Take the example of how service providers and their customers communicate. For many years, a call center was the main framework for interacting with customers. With time, fax and email communications and later web-based self-care portals were incorporated. Many service providers are now offering communication channels with customers through online chatbots, instant messaging applications and social media networks.
The question is not how to incorporate WhatsApp or Instagram into a CRM workflow. New interfaces and workflows can always be developed.
The important question is how to add new communication channels without a long and expensive development cycle. The same can be said for any new product type, service package, billing model and more.
Origami began its journey with the objective to help organizations avoid the existing practices for deploying and adapting enterprise systems, which are typically tedious processes involving months and even years of design, coding, integration and testing.
To this end, we offer a codeless, design-only development framework and platform for rolling out and managing enterprise systems and applications. Our framework allows service providers to deploy the specific functions and workflows they need to support their operational processes and be in the position to make changes quickly and at any time.
What's the story behind our company name? Our approach and the platform we have developed are similar to the art of paper folding. Much like the Origami art form that starts with a plain sheet of paper and the outcome is simple, although highly elaborate creation that can be done by almost anyone, we allow organizations to build the functionality and workflows they need without extensive programming skills and large teams.
TARA NEAL: How has CRM evolved in the recent years? How would a typical CRM system today differ from a CRM system 20 years ago?
YANIV SHIMONY: CRM capabilities were initially deployed in rigid systems that were very difficult to modify and integrate. The result was that most organizations were forced to adapt their business processes to accommodate the restrictions of the systems they used for CRM purposes.
Yaniv Shimony,
CEO, Co-Founder,
Origami
As the technology advanced and Cloud environments emerged, software packages dedicated to CRM became widely available, many of which are still popular today. These software packages offered new value with access to Cloud-based functionality through any web browser and lower buy-in costs with SaaS pricing.
While these off-the-shelf CRM packages have made access to core functionalities much easier, customizations are generally limited to a few configuration options to the base features. The outcome is that organizations still need to adjust their business processes to the limitations of the CRM functionality.
This situation has created a significant market opportunity for our company, especially in the telco space. This might be a bold statement, although we are confident that our approach and platform can turn CRM processes into competitive advantages and even a growth engine.
TARA NEAL: What is the implication of the growing breadth and depth of subscriber data currently processed by telecom operators on their CRM operations?
YANIV SHIMONY: The boundaries of CRM are no longer limited to managing customer details and interaction histories. CRM processes now flow over numerous other operational areas, such as billing, product catalog, service delivery and so on.
In parallel, more and more services are being offered in increasingly elaborate service packages and subscription options. At the same time, the channels of communication available to interact with customers are constantly expanding.
The outcome is that massive amounts of data are being generated, while there are an increasing number of data input channels to the CRM processes.
These massive amounts of customer and operational data need to be quickly synthesized, categorized and bundled into meaningful information displayed in real-time dashboards, graphs and reports and graphs. CSRs, marketing and sales staff, supervisors and managers each must have access to varying levels of real-time analytics displayed in dashboards and detailed reports.
This requires the CRM to be equipped with real-time processing features, AI and strong presentation tools.
TARA NEAL: Telecom operators have grown from connectivity providers to providers of content (video and audio streaming services) and various other value-added-services such as mobile wallets, cloud storage and cloud gaming. At the same time, they provide various loyalty and reward schemes in partnership with third party merchants. How does present day CRM support subscribers with a growing number of bundled services spanning multiple devices and users?
YANIV SHIMONY: The straight answer is that CRM applications and systems must be open and flexible to allow a variety of different services to be bundled into a single package.
Yes, I know that this response is oversimplified and highly cliché to say. However, it is truly the correct answer to this question.
Hard coded systems dedicated to a specific operation type or vertical market are difficult to adjust to new operational requirements. The alternative of running parallel systems adds unnecessarily to operational complexities and creates unwanted data silos.
Yes, CRM platforms need to be super flexible. Value Added Services (VAS) are creating new pricing models, complex integrations, different provisioning tasks and multilayer order management and service automation.
A telco should be able to design and implement ideas for new services, pricing schemes, business models, third party integrations in a matter of days and even hours.
The feedback we receive from our enterprise customers is that our platform gives them the agility to independently adjust and update their CRM processes in order to constantly pursue new business and market opportunities.
TARA NEAL: The number of customer-facing digital interfaces are growing across enterprises. For telecom operators, their customers today interact with them on operator Apps, self-help portals, websites, online chatbots, digital kiosks, walk-in service centers, call centers and even on social media. How does CRM connect the growing number of digital interfaces to provide seamless omni-channel experience for customers and subscribers?
YANIV SHIMONY: It is important to understand that the issue is not about how many interfaces need to be written or how to connect to a new communication channel with customers. There will always be a new method or framework for interacting with customers that will need to be integrated into CRM processes.
Omnichannel is challenging the CRM and call center operations from two angles. First, additional interaction channels and massive amounts of data generated must be quickly analyzed. And second, CRM needs to allow internal bots and AI to assist in qualifying and categorizing the information at the speed of light.
However, the real issue is how to be in the position to make changes to the CRM processes quickly. Waiting months for adjustments to be coded, tested and integrated is no longer acceptable. A telco needs to be in the position to make changes to its CRM processes in a matter of days.
TARA NEAL: With 5G and IoT, we can expect an explosion in the number ‘customers’ in the form of connected end-points such as livestock, drones, smart meters, wind turbines, connected cars and smart homes on the Operator’s network. How does CRM support the management of these growing numbers of customer end-points in terms of providing timely insights into usage, charges, performance and issue resolution?
YANIV SHIMONY: Yes, IoT has already created an explosion of customers and operational information that needs to be managed in CRM processes and the volumes will only continue to expand on 5G networks. IoT-based services require higher levels of monitoring and alerts with much quicker response times. Consequently, there should be complete automation supported by embedded workflows that are easy to configure and connected to the network and CRM.
The volumes are so large that AI is needed to manage the data created by the millions and millions of connected devices and objects. These AI-driven features will need to be incorporated into the CRM processes.
TARA NEAL: Can you share more on Origami’s CRM solution, including its unique value proposition in today’s market and how it helps Operators close the gaps in their present CRM operations?
YANIV SHIMONY: We position our Origami platform as an intelligent framework for creating modern CRM processes.
Our platform requires no coding or programming skills to use. It allows enterprises to focus on designing the workflows, dashboards and reports that support the needs of their businesses from a simple and easy-to-understand drag-and-drop interface.
A telco can design and implement CRM processes to its specific needs. Adjustments can be made on-the-go and at any time. This allows a telco - or any enterprise or organization - to focus on strategy and not waste time managing long and frustrating development cycles.
We recently had a call with the CTO of a large new system integration partner. He correctly described Origami as providing active, live development that allows a telco to run its business according to its operational requirements and not the restrictions of the software it purchased.
Origami is an agile and scalable platform for organizations of all sizes to build enterprise-level custom information management systems, in less than a week and at almost 10 percent of the market cost. To learn more, visit www.origami.ms
