In its new survey “How Communications Service Providers Can Transform Telecom Billing Operations to Support a New Convergent, Digital Business” Accenture (News - Alert) outlines the problems faced by communications service providers (CSPs) in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America (EALA) if they try to introduce new digital communication services for meeting customer demands.

The survey was supposed to discover strategies and priorities related to the current telecom billing systems that are deployed in today’s communication and media ecosystem. Most of the CSPs that participated in the survey responded that the current billing systems simply cannot handle the expanding array of new services and devices that are being introduced by them to cater to customer demands, increase competency and generate additional revenues and many CSPs in the EALA region realize the need for convergent billing.

Accenture asserted that the survey also found that some major CSPs have upgraded their billing capabilities, consolidated their billing applications, and sought the services of external partners to altogether convert their billing capabilities so that their systems can now scale with new business strategies and offering with minimal risk and disruption to their business. Accenture advises that other CSPs should follow suit.

Officials with the company claimed it is critical for CSPs to rethink their billing systems and design new infrastructure and processes that are attuned to the demands of today's communication environment. This can improve their responsiveness to customer expectations, and also help enable them to support the kind of real-time, convergent billing that today's bundled, digital services require.

A convergent billing platform should help CSPs bring down the time to market for in-demand new products and services, transform them to be more customer-centric and differentiate them from competition.

In related news, Accenture recently released the Accenture Technology Vision 2012 and its study found out that wireless, fixed line, ISP churn growing.