tantly, almost all billing systems are in the process of being replaced. No, the billing system is not an option. Call Center and Campaign Management Software Can the existing call center or campaign management systems do the job? After all, much of the functionality that we are looking for to support customer relationships are there: segmentation, management of customer groups, activities tracking, etc. Unfortunately, here too we run into serious problems. Call center and campaign management systems are built to perform specific, narrowly defined business functions and are made to be used by certain groups of business users. When we try to expand customer management to include all the customer touchpoint operations, we quickly outstrip the functionality that these systems are able to provide. Even more importantly, our central customer repository must be organizationally and operationally neutral. It has to support all eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook business units equally and impartially. The marketing group is not likely to accept any numbers measuring their activities that are produced by the customer service group's software. Why Not a CRM Package? Finally, some would like to believe that there are software packages that can do the job. Although software packages can certainly help, they will have to be built on top of a customized customer data warehouse if they are going to succeed. The great majority of the functionality that is required in this situation is in the area of data preparation, storage, and access and has very little to do with processing and other typical online transaction processing functions. Because of this, using software packages to get around the challenges of data warehouse building only makes that job more confusing and expensive. DEFINING How THE CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WILL WORK Now that we have a much better understanding of what it is that we need this system to do, we are ready to take a look at exactly how it will work and how it will interface wit