Use our demand aggregation software
At COS Systems we have worked with fiber and Open Access for over 15 years. Our experience, the team’s dedication to our customer’s success, and the quality of our products have made COS the global leader in automated open access software. Get to know our products COS Service Zones and COS Business Engine and how our end-to-end system engages a customer from pre-sales through sign-up to paying customers and operating your network.
It’s essential to start building in the right area with a high take-rate to generate a revenue flow that can fund the building project in all your area. This might sound tricky but with the right software, it is not. Our demand aggregation software COS Service Zones helps you to determine public interest and to convert possible customers into signed subscribers.
COS Service Zones
1.Survey your service area
With COS Service Zones, you start your project by surveying the demand for FTTH in your service area. Along with the survey, our software automatically collects IP-based information about which providers are currently being used and can carry out speed tests, to determine what speeds your future customers have today. This gives you actionable insights into competitor names, what services your community uses, which services residents desire, and how likely they are to sign up for them.
Our intuitive map interface lets you easily divide your area into competing zones to help build out your network faster. By encouraging their neighbors to complete a survey or sign up, the different zones or neighborhoods compete so their zone is built first. Promoting friendly community competition means sooner access to fast internet for residents.
2. Take-rate targets, signups, and referral programs
Build where take-rate targets are met! The initial customer survey reveals which zone(s) show the highest demand for fiber and where your most motivated customers are located. This information helps you decide where to start your build-out and these zones are then moving on to the sign-up phase.
We know from experience that demand can vary greatly even in the same community, city, or region which makes this information priceless.
At this point, you decide the individual take-rate for each Service Zone. This target usually inspires neighbors to talk about the fiber build-out, which is great marketing for your fiber venture and reduces not only efforts but also costs.
To further strengthen this grassroots approach, one functionality of the software is to include residents as Champions in referral campaigns.
With contracts uploaded into the system and take-rates on target, you can feel confident in sending the construction crews out to connect your subscribers.
3. Automate Communication & Manage Expectations
While targeting hundreds and thousands of households one of the most complex tasks in FTTH buildouts is to keep your team and subscribers involved and well informed. With COS Service Zones you can divide your planned footprint into smaller zones and neighborhoods that you build out one by one. By using the distinct phases of Survey, Signup, Construction, and Connected for each zone, it’s easy for everyone to get informed about how far in the process a specific neighborhood is.
Every service zone has its website and when a customer searches for their address they will get information about in which of the above phase the build-out in their neighborhood is, and neighborhood-specific information can be provided on the neighborhood website.
The platform also has an email engine that automatically sends confirmation emails to subscribers when they interact with the customer portal. By using advanced filtering options you can also filter out any group of customers and send templated emails to them. All communication is documented on the customer log in the CRM part of the system.
Features
To get started with the out-of-the-box demand aggregation platform COS Service Zones is easy. Define the area you wish to target and what services you want to try out the interest for and then you are pretty much ready to go. The first step for the customer is to locate themselves, which is done by an address search. With the integration to the Google Maps database, which is often the most accurate one, most people will immediately find their address.
Read MoreIf the address is not found in the Google database, there is fallback functionality in place. Either the customer can approve the platform to use their GPS coordinates if they’re at their home, or they can simply drop a pin on their house on a map and thereafter provide their address data manually. In the admin interface, you will see those provided manually and can confirm the accuracy manually or adjust the position of the pin if necessary. With accurate address data, you can provide the customer with the correct information and offerings.
Features
COS Service Zones doesn’t use any type of secondary data source to execute take-rate or revenue projections. Instead, the system accumulates data that creates a factual picture of where people desire services and are willing to pay for them.
This is based on data given to you by your future customers and the data is available to you in real-time. It doesn’t need to be collected, aggregated and analyzed. Everything is instantly in the system’s admin interface and in the reports that are easily accessible at any time.
Read MoreReports can also be scheduled to be delivered daily directly to your inbox. With COS Service Zones you see in real-time how every facet of your build out campaign is being received by possible subscribers and which particular actions show the best results. On this basis, you can make well-informed and timely decisions on a daily basis.
COS Service Zones has many functionalities and calculations constantly running in the back-end of the system. For every new customer completing a survey or signup, the shortest distance along the streets is calculated and this data is combined with a few basic cost parameters (such as deployment cost per foot/meter) to produce a rough deployment cost estimate.
The fact that you know what the generated revenue from contracted customers is in combination with a rough cost estimate means you can make more informed decisions on where to start the detailed planning and deployment of the network based on key financial figures such as the Payback period and ROI. If you begin your deployment where you have the highest revenue and cash flow, these zones will ultimately fund your subsequent roll-out.
The step-by-step approach allows you to start your building with only a small investment; you can then expand to where you know you will have sufficient revenue and cash flow from previously built areas. This approach decreases or completely eliminates the need for external funding
Features
The COS product suite is the heart of your FTTH build-out and operations, and therefore a big number of users from multiple entities with varying roles will be working in it. The platform has multiple admin interfaces with multiple user profiles with access to tailored data and functionality. Administration, reporting, and billing are highly automated
On the Admin interface your staff will be able to monitor the status of your demand aggregation campaign in real-time. If there is work that needs to be done, it will be clearly visible on the central dashboard. The platform also provides different types of reports that can be exported in different formats. In the COS Insight module, your data is presented graphically with graphs, which is extremely powerful in the initial survey phases to explain the current broadband availability, competitor, and customer insights.
Read MoreIn the signup phase of the demand aggregation process the customer will be accepting your terms and conditions to get installed on the network. In this step, it is also possible to charge a deposit and collect the customer’s credit card information. This is managed through the COS Service Zones platform but is built on the Stripe platform’s API’s. If your billing model is “billing the end customer”, the credit card information will be available when the time comes to automate the subscription billing in COS Business Engine.
COS Systems is used in Europe where the very strict GDPR Privacy Laws are enforced. COS’s products are built to fulfill these requirements and are therefore ready if stricter privacy laws are enforced in other markets.
Features
If you used COS Service Zones to start your FTTH project, you have gathered invaluable market, competitor, and customer data such as the customer’s willingness to pay or your future subscriber’s needs.
To maximize take rates and ROI you can now use these insights to create individual pre–sign-up offers for different zones in your planned service area.
One of the keys to profitable FTTH operations is simplicity – COS Service Zones makes it easy to promote different brands, services, and prices in different markets or neighborhoods.
Read MoreThe Service Layer functionality can for example be used to set different installation costs for geographic areas, and specific addresses, or to create several different installation cost tiers. When the customer searches for their address on the customer portal, the correct price will be shown to them.
Another dimension of differentiation is the progress of your project in relation to every service zone/neighborhood. Once the distribution fiber is in place in a neighborhood you want to connect as many customers as possible simultaneously and as quickly as possible for cost efficiency and time to revenue.By boosting your pre-sign-up take-rates before starting customer installations you will improve your business case. One tactic to achieve this goal is to offer “early bird discounts” or free installations for pre-sign-up customers. With COS Service Zones this is easily done with different service offers for different zones.
We provide FTTH operators and network owners with software for automating and digitizing every aspect of their FTTH venture. From survey and demand aggregation, to sign up, deployment and billing – to help bridge the digital divide.
