Lifecycle Software: Unpacking the data potential

Lifecycle Software is a global online charging system (OCS) and billing and business support system (BSS) solution provider for network operators, mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and IoT providers.

For CEO Liz Parry, things at Lifecycle Software are only getting bigger and better. Having worked with the company for more than 10 years, she took over as CEO last year to lead a new phase of growth.

“It’s been a journey, but a good one. The company is revitalised and we’ve got new MVNOs coming on the platform soon outside of the UK.”

Who Lifecycle Software are

The company enables mobile telecoms and subscription-based businesses to, as Parry explained, “thrive in the connected world of 5G” – from digital transformation and monetisation, to monetising new services and integration with existing infrastructure.

“Keeping our software future-ready by design is our focus. We are open about our product roadmap, keeping our clients informed, inspired and involved,” Parry explained. “We’ve been a strategic partner with Three in the UK for about 10 years and launched the Nexus platform with Three Wholesale. The platform is now being rolled out to other MVNOs in the industry wanting to launch MVNOs.”

Lifecycle Software adopted lifecycle management very early on and took on this ‘one-stop-shop’ persona for MVNOs to provide everything they needed.

“We pride ourselves on being agnostic to the network that we’ve plugged into, so we can plug into literally anybody – currently Three being our biggest customer, though we do have other networks,” explained the company’s professional services director, Ross Devereux.

The user interface was tailored so they could view a broad range of activity, including the activation side, billing and fraud control.

“We handle the full lifecycle,” Ross added. “We launched Smarty Mobile back in 2017, now one of the larger MVNOs now in the UK. We’re still with them eight years later, having seen them through a few reincarnations. We also launched Superdrug Mobile and we’ve worked with the likes of Plusnet as well.”

Keeping a competitive edge

The UK market has experienced plenty of disruption in recent years as businesses seek to adopt more agile technologies to drive greater growth. The Vodafone/Three merger in particular has caused the market to have three big networks instead of four, leading to plenty of questions over how services will be used by customers moving forward.

“It’s a funny time – data is the thing that everybody worries about now,” Parry explained. “With the likes of eSIM services for example, it’s more about extracting value from customer data, rather than actually just providing a mobile service.”

Often driving by regulation, there is a wider shift in the industry with reduced interest from the MNOs in the MVNO market.

“Mobile network operators themselves are less interested in being close to that side of the business – they want to be a bit more removed from the day-to-day,” Parry said. “Our platform allows just that. Previously we’ve worked with the wholesalers, we can work directly with the MVNOs and we can work directly with the aggregators. That’s one of the easiest aspects of the Nexus platform.”

A first-of-its-kind platform, Nexus is designed by Lifecycle Software to provide the necessary network integrations with a suite of built-in applications and automated workflows. This enables neo telcos and MVNOs can go to market faster and cost effectively to offer better customer experience.

“The platform itself is multi-tenanted so we can share that setup across several MVNOs,” Devereux explained. “Because we’re multi-tenanted and cloud-based, we can expand that capacity to support any number of MVNOs on the platform.

“From a technology perspective, it’s straightforward and very agile, but businesses may not have the in-depth knowledge to make strategic decisions. There’s a lot of education that has to go on from our side to help them make the right decisions.”

To achieve this, Lifecycle Software has shifted to a more agile methodology to involve the customer from start to finish.

“We want to make sure they have understanding of the particular options that can drive their commercial strategies,” Devereux added. “It’s important for us to take them on that journey.”

Prioritising partnerships

Technology has removed complexity across the mobile landscape, so long as companies are adhering to regulations. For Lifecycle Software, they are eager to support their partners throughout the entire process.

“We’ve found that a more consultative approach is increasingly welcomed,” Devereux explained. “We help them shape the story, which tends to build more productive partnerships.

With Smarty for example, Lifecycle Software had a dedicated technical customer team, alongside a managed services team and professional services team that works with them on customer support the customise solutions based on individual need.

“The technology side of things is great, but we really want the people we’re working with to be successful,” Devereux added. “Their success is our success, so participating in that process generally leads to a better outcome.”

Modernising with speed and precision

Parry sees great potential in the direction of Lifecycle Software, as the global technology landscape continues to evolve.

“We’re building self-healing capabilities and have started using AI in terms of how we create and deploy our products,” she explained. “There are efficiencies to be had behind the scenes, but also real use cases for AI for maximising data use.”

The company is also modernising its processes and infrastructure, having fully moved to be cloud-native roughly 18 months ago.

“Alongside that comes a whole suite of new opportunities,” Devereux added. “We’re looking at a new monitoring solution to make sure that proactive monitoring is future-proof. As technology and speeds for communication improve, it’s important that we maintain best-in-class services for our customers.”

Parry added: “We’re also making sure our Nexus platform is white label so it can be rebranded easily, alongside making sure that things like eSIM are embedded and ready to go.”

Next year, the company is working on its new Catalyst product. A part of Nexus, it takes any data stream and enables workloads to be built off the back of it. It is designed to be intuitive so that the company can send customer campaigns from it.

“The next evolution of that is to build in an intelligent layer, which will enable natural language models,” Parry said. “It will mine data and make suggestions about what could be done, which can enable customers to monetise that data and ultimately improve their offerings.”

Collaboration and competition

Newer services like eSIM are becoming more mainstream in the market, but the UK has been slower to adopt them in an accessible way for customers. According to Parry, eSIM is another step in the market evolution, but operators have historically been quite anxious about the process.

“Regulations came in and that nervousness settled down,” she said. “Customers and the nature of contracts have changed and there are so many options out there. eSIM is another step in that evolution and I’m a real advocate for progress and moving with the times.

“I get incredibly frustrated that it’s been so slow in the UK when in other places in the world, it’s just commonplace.”

With stories circulating this year about regulations coming in, however, Parry believes that regulators worldwide will start clamping down.

“It’s not as controlled as it will be in the future,” she added. “What we’re on a bit of a mission to do is make sure that our products and services are fully embedded with eSIM services, so that at the point people do want to take that leap of faith, we’re already waiting.”

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