Nokia stepped up its efforts to enable operators’ digital transformation programmes, revealing updates to monetisation software it stated was built with “5G and IoT very much in mind”.

In an interview with Mobile World Live (MWL), Steffen Paulus (pictured, below), head of BSS Marketing at Nokia, said the updated software plays “directly into business transformation”, and will help service providers “better engage with customers and also help find new revenue sources outside a traditional base”.

Announced today (24 October), the updated software portfolio also “marks the first debut of integrated technologies since Nokia’s acquisition of Comptel”, completed earlier this year.

Customer engagement
In a statement, Nokia said the software portfolio will include its Smart Plan Suite (SPS), a cloud native, 5G-ready, offering “based on market proven software architecture”.

Specifically, it will provide operators and other customers with integrated real-time charging solutions, policy control and customer engagement capabilities.

The Finland-headquartered vendor said the software can be easily upgraded to implement the most advanced capabilities and is designed to help service providers “deliver highly personalised and contextualised offers at the ideal moment, enabling them to enrich and monetise subscribers’ digital experiences”.

Nokia added the service will also be powered with machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and can further simplify customer engagement by supporting intelligent assistants including Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

Digital transformation the goal
Paulus said the solution was built with digital transformation firmly in mind and the product largely focused on “enabling better engagement through a variety of channels.

“Some of them are well known, and some of them could be of interest to service providers,” he said: “By leveraging some AI insights, we can make the outreach a bit more specific and better suited for the end customer.”

Nokia added it can simplify the task of linking service providers with partner systems to “support mobile ads, IoT ecosystems, sponsored data content and OTT providers”.

Integration of Google API also allows the delivery of in-application offerings.

Paulus revealed Nokia’s operator customers are exhibiting “a wide range of behaviours” regarding the wider digital transformation effort.

“Some of them are happy and content in what they do, and don’t fully attempt to become digital services providers. But, this is the minority.”