Portal Software Unveils Convergent Revenue Management Platform to Accelerate Service Offerings, Plug Revenue Leaks, and Reduce Costs

Business Wire, Feb 14, 2005

CANNES, France -- Portal 7 Delivers Real-Time Revenue Management Capabilities for Pre-, Post-, and Now-Paid Service Offerings to Communications and Media Companies

Portal Software (Nasdaq:PRSFE), the premier global provider of billing and Revenue Management solutions, today announced the availability of Portal 7, the first convergent Revenue Management platform for communications and media companies. Until now, the delivery of new voice or data services and customized billing packages has been restricted by incompatible and inefficient billing systems. Portal 7 eliminates these barriers by providing a single platform from which service providers can manage customer revenue in real time across any customer type, service, payment method, business model, or geography.

"Today's hyper-competitive market is plagued by customer churn, revenue leakage, burgeoning costs, and deteriorating margins," said Dave Labuda, president and CEO of Portal Software. "Working closely with our customers, Portal has engineered a solution that spans the Revenue Management lifecycle -- from generation to analysis -- and transforms billing from a business roadblock to a powerful business catalyst."

Portal 7 -- Driving the Revenue Management Lifecycle

The Portal 7 platform extends beyond the functionality of traditional billing systems, integrating and optimizing every stage of the Revenue Management lifecycle: revenue generation, capture, collection, and analysis. With Portal 7, service providers are able to deliver services that are optimally priced for their businesses, customers, and partners. Portal 7 ensures all transactions are captured, rated, discounted, and charged, and that bills are generated accurately and revenues collected. Further, the platform's open architecture was built to integrate with leading enterprise CRM and ERP solutions.

Portal 7's unrivaled flexibility and capabilities enable service providers to

--Accelerate time-to-market of differentiated services and service bundles;

--Configure new services, pricing, and business models with little or no coding;

--Connect in real time to value-add partners;

--Proactively identify and care for premier customers;

--Offer intuitive and personalized pricing;

--Promote differentiated service bundles and encourage service "sampling";

--Analyze and model customers, services, and revenues;

--Verify, report, analyze, and control all customer events and actions in real time; and

--Automate revenue assurance processes and audits of all transactions and procedures.

"As well as pursuing their long-term revenue strategies, service providers must also respond nimbly to the many large but short-term market opportunities that arise," said John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum. "The ability to bring services rapidly to market, without compromising on full revenue assurance support, will be increasingly crucial to a service provider's competitive strength."

Revolutionary Support for Pre-, Post-, and Now-Paid Service Offerings

Today's consumers want to use a mix of payment methods that best reflect their varied personal, business, and family needs. To enable service providers to respond to this growing market requirement, Portal supports pre-paid, post-paid, and now-pay subscribers on a single platform.

Portal 7 is optimized to support multi-payment customers in high-volume environments, delivering breakthrough performance, availability, and scalability. The platform operates across IP and circuit-switched, fixed and mobile, and voice and data networks. Its real-time and high-performance batch processing capabilities support all payment methods across multiple services and geographies, while enabling service providers to respond immediately to changing market or customer needs.

"The pre-paid market holds significant opportunity for Orange Switzerland to extend its market reach," said Jian Fan, director of Business Support & Architecture, Orange Corporate. "Portal's solution powered the successful launch of our first convergent voice and data pre-paid services and was critical to ensuring the project remained on schedule and within budget."

To enable companies to implement billing solutions quickly to meet their changing business needs, Portal combines its Revenue Management expertise with complementary business consulting services from industry leaders including Accenture, HP, Capgemini, and IBM Global Services. Additionally, Portal partners with industry-leading enterprise software companies to deliver integrated solutions for CRM, finance, and web services.

"Many of our joint global customers benefit from combining the power, scalability, and high availability of HP's technology and products with Portal's convergent charging solution," said Marco Limena, vice president, Worldwide Solutions, Network and Service Provider Business, HP. "Portal's integration of HP OpenCall software and OpenView Internet Usage Manager software with its own Revenue Management platform creates a breakthrough solution that enables our customers to quickly and reliably roll out new services -- and keep pace with ever-changing market demands."