Rakuten’s unique mobile ecosystem reduces customer onboarding from two hours to five minutes

Who: Rakuten Mobile and Netcracker

What: Launched mobile services on its own network and put them at the heart of its e-commerce ecosystem, providing customers with innovative UN-LIMIT plans and a unique digital lifestyle experience

How: Netcracker used a “blueprint methodology” based on TM Forum’s Digital Maturity Model and Customer Experience Management Solution Suite, along with the major elements of the Open Digital Framework, to dramatically accelerate progress

Results: Reduced onboarding customers from 2 hours to 5 minutes, 94% of customer acquisitions digitally onboarded, six new plans launched in one year, 84% of the required 1,400 functional capabilities came ‘out of the box’ Rakuten Mobile made the business decision to change from being a mobile virtual network operator to building and running its own mobile network and redefined the notion of what a mobile network operator is in Japan’s fiercely competitive mobile market, which has a long history of innovation.

Its intention is to put mobile services at the heart of the company’s vast ecosystem: Its parent company, also Rakuten, operates in more than 70 sectors which are all connected via a common membership and loyalty scheme, from loans, credit cards, travel and insurance to a wide range of consumer goods, unmatched by any other e-commerce company.

Greenfield design

Rakuten Mobile set out to build the world’s first cloud-native mobile infrastructure, from end to end, that is totally software controlled. The rationale is it will cost about 35% less to run and offer unprecedented levels of flexibility. The lack of critical business, network and operations infrastructure meant investing in a new design to provide customers with an integrated, consistent experience across its digital services portfolio.

To this end, Netcracker deployed its end-to-end Digital BSS, based on a single, convergent cloud architecture that leverages TM Forum’s Open APIs. Being able to define and automate personalized customer journeys plays a fundamental role in how Rakuten’s members interact with the services.

The solution incorporates Rakuten’s Super Points loyalty program. As the charging engine is service-agnostic, it translates the consumption of any service into membership points and manages the transfer of that value within the ecosystem. The points can trigger status and eligibility entitlements for a variety of benefits such as bonuses on mobility services or devices, an upgraded credit card, or free shipping or travel insurance.

Netcracker also helped Rakuten revolutionize its in-store concept. Tareq Amin, CTO at Rakuten Mobile, explained, “People who go to the shop should not have to wait to onboard or address a need. So, we provide our digital experience through tablets in the shop that allow customers to onboard in self-start or full self-service mode. We don’t want customers staring at the back of a PC screen waiting for something to happen: we want to empower them to take care of their own needs and to have access to friendly and skilled staff members along the way.”

He added, “Another practical matter we can address is to make the tedious regulatory bit of the onboarding process more interesting. Normally a staff member has to read out long and detailed terms and conditions as part of this process, and it’s very negative. We’re moving this requirement into a quick, dynamic video that gives a summary and captures all the regulatory requirement in a much faster, more personalized and more entertaining way.”

The need for speed

In addition to the scope of the undertaking, the deployment was to a tight deadline, and the launch of Rakuten’s UN-LIMIT plan faced significant obstables due to COVID-19 restrictions. With no access to Rakuten’s offices, Netcracker’s team adapted quickly to provide entirely virtual support for the launch and set up three Zoom “war rooms” for communication among stakeholders.

To meet the deadlines, Netcracker took what it describes as a “blueprint” approach, which relied on out-of-the-box customer journey templates, business processes, functional capabilities, and pre-configured “Sandbox” software to visualize the solution and define key performance indicators for the project. The quality and scope of Netcracker’s blueprints were foundational to the success of the project.

The company used TM Forum’s Digital Maturity Model throughout the engagement to help assess Rakuten’s processes and organizational capabilities.

Rakuten and Netcracker identified 1,400 functional capabilities (FCs) necessary for enabling 15 new business processes. Some 84% of the scoped FCs were covered by out-of-the-box capabilities of Netcracker Digital BSS, which dramatically shortened development and test phases. Netcracker was able to halve testing start time from eight months to four on average. The analysis phase was up to 45% faster too. The sandbox software also enabled delivery of the solution in parallel with the customer experience and business process modeling.

Accelerating time to market

Rakuten successfully launched its UN-LIMIT plan in April 2020. Now it takes less than 4 weeks– depending on service – from business definition to launch for new services. The fast time to market time enabled Rakuten to launch six new service plans within one year, which is an unheard-of rate for traditional service providers.

About 4.1 million subscribers are on the system supported by Netcracker, including a significant number of former MVNO customers that were moved to the new mobile network. With a churn rate of less than 2%, most Rakuten customers have stayed with the MNO and embraced the UN-LIMIT plans.

The Netcracker Digital BSS platform enabled Rakuten to add a million subscribers within the first three months of the UN-LIMIT launch, at a peak rate of 70,000 customers per day. While 80% of customer acquisions in Japan are from “brick and mortar” shops, 94% of Rakuten’s customer onboarding is digital, via Netcracker’s web and mobile digital front-end channels.

Quality and scope of blueprints

The Open Digital Architecture comprises a blueprint for enterprise architecture, common language and key design principles for modular, cloud-based, open digital platforms that can be orchestrated using artificial intelligence. Netcracker was able to capture Rakuten’s unique requirements by adopting the common understanding, and vocabulary and common terminologies in the Forum’s Open Digital Framework Terminology.

The Business Process Framework (eTOM), Application Framework (TAM) and Information Framework (SID) – were used to ensure smooth interoperability, which is essential for efficient, automated processes end to end. They were used in conjunction with the Forum’s Open APIs, and their associated guidelines and principles, to gain business and operational agility across multiple domains. The Open APIs were used to manage the product catalog, customers, service ordering, quotes, accounts, partnership type, federated identity and payment methods.

The validation of the business processes and functional capabilities was organized in these work streams: digital channels; customer and product management; order management; revenue management; and user experience and user interfaces.

Netcracker relied on the Forum’s Customer Experience Management Solution Suite and the ongoing work on customer centricity – to which Netcracker is an established contributor – to define paths for customer journeys and experience. Various key performance indicators (KPIs) for business, defined by the Forum, such as Lifecycle Metrics, were brought into play.