Media & Entertainment Industry Group

Mediaset
New billing solution provides foundation for subscriber-based digital TV services and high performance

Mediaset selected Accenture to assist it in the speedy launch of the new bundles by building and deploying a new billing and collection solution based on Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM).

Mediaset Group is the first commercial broadcaster in Italy and a major media company in Europe. The group operates a wide range of broadcast and related media, including analogue free-to-air generalist television (Canale 5, Italia 1, Retequattro), advertising (Publitalia), TV drama and film production (Taodue, Medusa), teleshopping (Media Shopping), payper-view television (Mediaset Premium and Mediaset Gallery), and new lines of business (Internet and mobile TV). Recently, Mediaset announced the acquisition of an important stake in Endemol N.V., a world leader in television entertainment programming, as part of its growth strategy. In 2008, Mediaset Group reported consolidated net revenues of 4.252 billion (US$6.26 billion).

Business challenge
The Italian media giant is evolving its strategic positioning to transition from a pure commercial broadcaster into an integrated multimedia company that offers content over multiple platforms, such as digital terrestrial TV, satellite TV, and Internet Protocol TV. Moving forward to achieve its vision, the broadcaster launched Mediaset Premium on its digital terrestrial platform in 2005 as a pay-per-view TV service that is accessed by a recharge-able pre-paid or smart card. Revenues from the profitable Premium service doubled from 107.8 million (US$158.9 million) in 2006 to 225.9 million (US$333.0 million) in 2007. At the end of 2007, Premium had more than 2 million active customers. More than 2.3 million rechargeable cards and 6.3 million re-charges were sold in 2007. Mediaset decided to act swiftly to build upon the success of its Premium services and launch two expanded brands: Premium Gallery and Premium Calcio.

Premium Gallery would offer more than 3,000 hours per year of exclusive pay TV content through four thematic channels: Joy, Mia, Steel, and Disney. The channels would broadcast mainly TV series and movies, such as House, Heroes, Bionic Woman, Pushing Daisies, and Gossip Girl. Premium Calcio would offer a set of sports pay-TV channels, including broadcasts of all of the top championship matches of the Lega Calcio Serie A TIM football teams, all the matches of the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League, Diretta Champions League, and football 24hours-a-day. The new Gallery and Calcio bundles were to be launched in less than eight months as both a pre-paid or subscription service, thus making Mediaset the only European broadcaster to operate both free-toair and pay-to-view TV channels. Because the pay-TV service at Mediaset had been offered through pre-paid cards only, the broadcaster now needed robust billing and

administrative capabilities to effectively manage the bill cycle for the expected thousands of pay-TV subscribers. Findings from Accenture High Performance Business research shows that getting the fundamentals right, such as integrating billing and collections as part of the revenue-generation cycle, is a prerequisite for high-performance businesses and helps them to outpace competitors. Beyond the basics of processing invoices, the new billing system would also be a critical factor for Mediaset in building customer loyalty and support-ing new service launches. Mediaset selected Accenture to assist it in the speedy launch of the new bundles by building and deploying a new billing and collection solution based on Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM). The broadcaster chose Accenture for several interrelated reasons. Accenture had a successful history of working with Mediaset and had leveraged its media industry and functional experience in the course of working with it in the past. Then, Accenture also brought several other assets that would help the broadcaster succeed in its service launch: its alliance and strong collaboration with Oracle Corporation, extensive experience in leveraging Oracle applications to deliver and improve on innovative billing processes, and a pool of BRM-specific development skills and assets housed at the Accenture Delivery Center in Lodz/Warsaw, Poland which had proven its ability to drive quality, cost-efficient solutions.

support. A team of Accenture professionals specialized in Oracle technology and implementation, working from the Poland-based delivery center, was in charge of technical design, system development, unit and system testing, deployment, and post-production support. Accenture worked with Mediaset to compile and describe the business requirements typical for premium services within the broadcast industry, and then analyze and verify which requirements were applicable to the Mediaset service. Following the implementation approach of the Accenture Delivery Methods for Oracle, the teams worked together to configure Oracle BRM 7.3.1 and Java EE Connector Architecture adapters to implement flexible and scalable core capabilities, including: Billing and invoicing. Collections management. Advanced accounting general ledger processing. Tax and statutory reporting. Integration with business systems, such as customer relationship management, business intelligence, payment and enterprise resource planning. Invoice and general ledger data archiving. By leveraging its delivery center, Accenture was able to pinpoint the development schedule and deploy resources and skills at the closest point to the client to deliver the solution in a cost-effective, efficient manner. To minimize go-live delay risks, Accenture proposed a two-phased deployment approach. The first release went live at the beginning of July 2008 and provided core functions, such as billing, collections, and invoicing. The second release was deployed in November 2008 and delivered less critical functions, such as contract suspension. According to Mariapia Dallerra, Corporate Applications Manager within Mediaset Groups IT Department who was responsible for project managing the billing project, The capability to bill and collect timely, efficiently and with accuracy is a critical success factor in

enabling our new subscription-based, Pay TV business model. Accentures top-class system integration skills, deep functional and industry competence and extraordinary commitment allowed us to deliver our new billing and collection capability on time and on quality. The solution, in fact, is extremely stable and scalable and meets perfectly the business requirements collected during the analysis and design phase.

High Performance Delivered

With help from Accenture, Mediaset was able to launch its new Premium subscription service on time and in a way that captured revenuefrom the very first day of business. The solution gave Mediaset the capability it needed to bill and collect account receivables with accuracy, speed, and quality for the more than 280,000 customers who had subscribed to the service initially. At the end of October 2008, just four months after the launch, Mediaset had issued 384,000 invoices for service instances (for example, down payment and monthly service) at a discard rate of less than .01 percent. Mediaset now processes an average of 2,700 payment outcomes each day. Today, some 1.5 million Italian families subscribe to the Mediaset Premium package alone, resulting in a turnover of 400 million (US$591 million). The broadcaster expects 3 million sub-scribers by 2010. Thanks in part to the flexible and scalable billing solution developed by Accenture, Mediaset has laid the foundation for future growth, more competitive and broader provision of digital TV services, and a more compelling customer experience, firmly placing it on its journey to high performance.

How Accenture helped

Accenture collaborated with Mediaset on the development of the billing and collection solution from analysis through to development, deployment, and postproduction support. Accenture initiated the project in November 2007 by organizing a two-tier, near-shore delivery model to bring the depth, completeness, and value needed for rapid creation and support of critical billing functions. A team comprising industry and billing specialists on-site in Milan conducted planning, analysis, functional design, integration testing, training, user acceptance testing, and user

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About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With more than 186,000 people serving clients in over 120 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$23.39 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2008. Its home page is www.accenture.com.