Competitive pressures are turning the focus to the customer experience. Many operational and business factors play a role in defining this experience. Getting timely data from all these disparate elements would be ideal; however, the reality is that today's operational environments are very chaotic.

This talk describes a practical approach to service management that deals with this reality. It characterizes the inherent value hidden in the various sources of inventory, network, service, and business data. There is value even if this data is incomplete, not in a convenient format, or out-of-date. Correlating all sorts of enterprise data, not just network or service events, fuels the effectiveness of root-cause analyses. This discussion will cover that by having interactive performance dashboards to visualize this data, and service providers can zero in on the relevant service quality metrics and feed meaningful information to all areas of the business.

Matt Herdlein Executive Director, Service Management Portfolio, Global Solutions Telcordia

Mr. Herdlein is currently responsible for product management of Telcordia's Service Management Product Portfolio. He has 17 years of experience with telecommunication operational support systems. Mr. Herdlein holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New York and a master's degree in technology management from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Uri Gurevitz Head of EPC/PLM Product and Solution Marketing Amdocs

Mr. Gurevitz is part of the Enterprise Product Catalog business unit at Amdocs. With more than nine years of experience in the telecommunications industry, he has worked on multiple projects in the customer care, strategy, operations, and sales force readiness areas in some of North America's largest service providers. Mr. Gurevitz has extensive consulting experience working at Accenture in New York and as part of Amdocs Consulting division, providing solutions to service providers' customer care and product lifecycle management challenges.

Steve Lewis Technical Product Development Telkom South Africa

Mr. Lewis is the executive responsible for the technical development of new products and services, and is also responsible for the Telkom Laboratory. Prior to this he was responsible for the integration of new technologies into the company. Mr. Lewis has spent 30 years with Telkom South Africa in various engineering and management roles. Steve played a major role in introducing broadband to South Africa. He holds an M.Sc. in engineering and a B.Sc. in engineering from the University of Natal in South Africa.