Convergence, understood as the coming together of communications, software and content technologies, is rapidly becoming an accurate characterization of the current business environment. Companies seeking competitive advantage are beginning to look deeper, to the customer-centric capabilities that are enabled by convergence, and to the types of customer experiences that must be delivered.
Customer-centric convergence cannot happen, however, as long as customer data resides in siloed data stores. Typically, the operations support system, business support system and network functions are generally managed independently, resulting in non integrated sets of customer data.
One important key to overcoming the problem of fragmented customer data and then using customer insight to create competitive advantage is what Accenture calls converged customer management.
This approach allows companies to target their most profitable consumers more effectively, by delivering accurate, detailed and timely knowledge of customers' needs and preferences based on the history of their interactions with products and on real-time contextual data such as location and type of device used.
As sophistication in this area increases, companies will be able to define a commercial bundle application even to a single customer.
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