Steria France Partners with FTS to Launch “Steria Agile Billing” Solutions for Service Providers

FTS (LSE:FTS), a global provider of billing, customer care and policy control solutions for communication and content service providers, today announced that it has partnered with Steria France to create the “Steria Agile Billing” solution enabling a new relationship between operators and their customers that goes beyond simple billing.

The solution addresses developments in the telecommunications industry that have required operators to improve their pricing and billing processes to include more intelligence and flexibility in order to provide increasingly customized services to the consumer.

With the growing range of access technologies (3G, DSL, fiber optic, etc.), content services (music, video, games, applications, etc.) and billing models (on demand, a la carte, subscription, and even user-defined hybrid models): the era of simple billing is now a thing of the past.

To support this market shift, Steria has partnered with billing and policy control specialist FTS Ltd to create and launch the “Steria Agile Billing” solution, which will allow the service providers’ marketing team to fully convey the richness and complexity of their service offering, with minimal rollout times and no technical constraints. The joint solution puts customer preferences at the heart of service providers’ offering, affording them the flexibility for solutions to be precisely customized, therefore improving customer experience while optimizing revenues.

The solution created by Steria and FTS provides operators with a next-generation billing platform that is agile and intuitive, allowing the rapid launch of new offerings in line with the complexity of the constantly changing service provider environment. Marketing teams can now independently configure new services, new offerings or attractive special promotions in record time.

“Our solution makes the customer central to the billing system by monitoring their usage in real time,” commented Nir Asulin, VP Operations, FTS. “An extremely intuitive modelling system, the DO Tree™, allows the marketing function to build pricing rules and models which take into account each customer’s usage patterns and the richness of the choices they make. We are very pleased with this partnership with Steria, as the complementary nature of our companies allows us to broaden our future prospects together.”

“With Steria’s expertise in the telecommunications market and our familiarity with the business challenges facing this sector, we can now provide a next-generation billing offering that addresses the difficulties faced by the market which we witness first-hand,” said Thierry Gohon, Director of Telecoms Development, Steria France. “Testing a new offering, attracting a specific target audience to a new type of service, even rewarding certain behaviors, ’Steria Agile Billing’ provides the responsiveness operators need to meet their major business challenges: pricing, customization and time to market. These challenges are central to the transformation projects we are currently conducting for the major players in a constantly changing market.”

About FTS

FTS (LSE: FTS) is a leading provider of billing, customer care and policy control solutions for communications, content and service providers. By analyzing events from a business standpoint rather than just billing them, FTS allows providers to better understand their customer base and leverage business value from every event and interaction. FTS deploys its full range of end-to-end, stand-alone and add-on telecom billing solutions to customers in over 40 countries and has implemented solutions in wireless, wireline, cable, content and broadband markets including multiple cross-network installations. Serving the evolving needs of both traditional and next generation service providers, the company’s operations comprise four international R&D locations and strategically-located sales support offices worldwide. For more information please visit http://www.fts-soft.com/.

About Steria

Steria delivers services based on new technologies that enable administrations and companies to improve their efficiency and profitability. Thanks to the excellent knowledge of its clients' business, its expertise in information technology, and the outsourcing of corporate processes, Steria takes on board the challenges of its clients and helps them to develop innovative solutions to face them. Through the collaborative approach of the board, Steria works with its clients to transform their organization, enabling them to focus on what they do best. The 19,000 employees at Steria, in 16 countries, look after the systems, services and processes that make today's world go around, thereby having an impact on the lives of millions of people every day.

Steria was founded in 1969 and has offices in Europe, India, North Africa and South-east Asia. The group achieved a turnover of 1.8 billion Euros in 2008. 16.5 % of its capital is held by its employees. Steria is quoted on the Euronext Paris stock exchange and its headquarters are located in Paris. www.steria.com.