Quaero News

CSG Systems International Prices Senior Subordinated Convertible Notes

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.(2/25/2010)-- CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGS) today announced the pricing of its offering of $130 million aggregate principal amount of 3.0% Senior Subordinated Convertible Notes due 2017 (the "notes") in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers in accordance with Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act").

The notes will be CSG's general unsecured obligations and will be subordinated to all its future senior indebtedness. The offering is expected to close on March 1, 2010, subject to customary closing conditions. CSG has granted the initial purchasers a 30-day over-allotment option to purchase up to an additional $20 million aggregate principal amount of notes.

Interest on the notes will be paid semi-annually in arrears at a rate of 3.0% per year on March 1 and September 1 of each year, beginning on September 1, 2010. The notes will mature on March 1, 2017 unless previously converted or repurchased.

Under certain circumstances, the notes will be convertible into cash up to the principal amount and, at CSG's option, shares of CSG's common stock up to a certain limit, cash or a combination thereof with respect to any conversion value above the principal amount. The notes will be convertible at an initial conversion rate of 40.8998 shares of CSG's common stock per $1,000 principal amount of notes, which is equivalent to an initial conversion price of approximately $24.45 per share of CSG's common stock and represents a 25% conversion premium over the closing price of CSG's common stock of $19.56 per share on February 24, 2010.

After deducting the initial purchasers' discounts and commissions and CSG's estimated expenses, CSG expects to use the net proceeds from the offering of the notes to fund the repurchase of 1.5 million shares of its common stock from one of the initial purchasers and for general corporate purposes, which may include the repurchase of a portion of its $170.3 million of outstanding 2.5% Senior Subordinated Convertible Contingent Debt Securities (which mature in 2024, but may be repurchased by CSG at the holders' option in June 2011) and the payment of any related tax liabilities. The stock repurchase would be part of CSG's existing stock repurchase program and would be paid for concurrently with the issuance of the notes.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor will there be any sale of these securities, in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any state or jurisdiction. The notes and the shares of CSG's common stock underlying such securities have not been registered under the Securities Act, or any applicable state securities laws, and will be offered only to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A promulgated under the Securities Act. Unless so registered, the notes may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and any applicable state securities laws.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements as defined under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended that are based on assumptions about a number of important factors and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what appears in this news release. These factors include, but are not limited to: 1) the concentration of approximately two-thirds of CSG's revenues with four clients; as a result, the loss of business from any one of those clients could potentially have a material adverse impact to CSG's financial results; 2) CSG's dependency on a variety of secured computing environments and communications networks, as well as risks inherent to transitioning data centers, thus subjecting CSG to the risks of extended interruptions, outages, unauthorized access and corruption of data; 3) CSG's ability to continuously protect against unauthorized access to confidential and personally identifiable information; 4) the timing, duration, and degree of an economic turnaround are uncertain; thus there can be no assurances regarding the performance of our business, and the potential impact to our clients and key vendors, resulting from the current economic conditions; 5) continued market acceptance of CSG's Advanced Convergent Platform (ACP) and related solutions; 6) CSG's ability to continuously develop and enhance solutions in a timely, cost- effective, technically advanced, high-quality, and competitive manner; 7) CSG's ability to implement new solutions, and migrate or convert clients to our solutions in a timely and effective manner; 8) CSG's dependency on the North American communications industry; as a result, key market factors such as further industry consolidation, new market entrants that may not be clients of CSG, macroeconomic conditions affecting the credit and equity markets generally, and/or the financial status of CSG clients may affect CSG's ability to maintain and expand market share; 9) increasing competition in our market from companies of greater size and with broader presence in the communications sector, thus exerting greater influence over client buying decisions; 10) CSG's ability to successfully integrate and manage acquired businesses, technology or assets to achieve the expected strategic, operating and financial goals established for such acquisitions; and 11) CSG's continued ability to protect its intellectual property rights. This list is not exhaustive and readers are encouraged to review the additional risks and important factors described in CSG's reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q and other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

For more information, please contact

Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
Vice President of Investor Relations

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CSG Systems International Announces Proposed Offering of Senior Subordinated Convertible Notes

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.(2/25/2010)-- CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGS) today announced it intends to offer, subject to market and other conditions, approximately $130 million aggregate principal amount of Senior Subordinated Convertible Notes due 2017 ( the "notes") in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers in accordance with Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the " Securities Act"). The notes will be CSG's general unsecured obligations and will be subordinated to all its future senior indebtedness.

The interest rate, conversion rate and other terms of the notes will be determined at the time of pricing of the offering. Under certain circumstances, the notes will be convertible into cash up to the principal amount and, at CSG's option, shares of CSG's common stock up to a certain limit, cash or a combination thereof with respect to any conversion value above the principal amount. CSG also expects to grant the initial purchasers a 30-day over-allotment option to purchase up to an additional $20 million aggregate principal amount of notes.

After deducting the initial purchasers' discounts and commissions and CSG's estimated expenses, CSG expects to use the net proceeds from the offering of the notes to fund the repurchase up to 1.5 million shares of its common stock from one of the initial purchasers and for general corporate purposes, which may include the repurchase of a portion of its $170.3 million of outstanding 2.5% Senior Subordinated Convertible Contingent Debt Securities (which mature in 2024, but may be repurchased by CSG at holders' option in June 2011) and the payment of any related tax liabilities. The stock repurchase would be part of CSG's existing stock repurchase program and would be paid for concurrently with the issuance of the notes.

Forward-Looking Statements

For more information, please contact

Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
Vice President of Investor Relations

Get the pdf

Independent Report: Mapping the Customer Journey

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Report Excerpt

Left to their own devices, companies often neglect customers. But they don't need to. We recommend that organizations use customer journey maps to examine interactions from their customers' points of view. Mapping the customer journey requires five steps: 1) Collect internal insights; 2) develop initial hypotheses; 3) research customer processes, needs, and perceptions; 4) analyze customer research; and 5) map the customer journey. To get the most value from these journey maps, companies need to widely share findings, take action on insights, and sustain the learnings over time.

In Forrester's Mapping the Customer Journey, author Bruce Temkin provides recommendations for mapping your customers' journey to see from the outside in and best practices for getting value from customer journey maps. In addition, there are sample maps (including one from Quaero) and a list of supplemental material.

DM Radio: Customer Analytics and the Promise of New CRM

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Featured on DM Radio; sponsored by MDM Summit

Knowing what your customers want has always been a key to success. These days, that knowledge can be woven right into operational systems, and in near-real-time, greatly improving customer relations, and thus cashflow. Still, significant decisions must be made throughout an organization to ensure that appropriate customer data is gathered, then leveraged.

Tune into this episode of DM Radio to hear several CRM experts describe the current state-of-the-art, and lament areas where many companies are still sorely lacking in the critical process of improving customer relations. We'll hear from Lisa Pierce of Strategic Networks, Mark Angel of KANA and Rob Rose of Big Blue Moose, and John Strabley of Quaero, a CSG Solution.

Click on link below to listen to audio.

This interview was broadcasted on DM Radio January 21, 2010.

Enterprise Systems: The Necessity of Data Profiling: A How-to Guide to Getting Started and Driving Value

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Written by Matt Austin; featured on ESJ.com

Data profiling is a critical input task to any database initiative that incorporates source data from external systems. Whether it is a completely new database build or simply an enhancement to an existing system, data profiling is a key analysis step in the overall design. Allocating sufficient time and resources to conduct a thorough data profiling assessment will help architects design a better solution and reduce project risk by quickly identifying and addressing potential data issues.

Best Practices

How should you approach a new data profiling engagement and what can you expect in terms of value-added results?

Data profiling is best scheduled prior to system design, typically occurring during the discovery or analysis phase. The first step -- and also a critical dependency -- is to clearly identify the appropriate person to provide the source data and also serve as the “go to” resource for follow-up questions. Once you receive source data extracts, you’re ready to prepare the data for profiling. As a tip, loading data extracts into a database structure will allow you to freely write SQL to query the data while also having the flexibility to use a profiling tool if needed.

When creating or updating a data profile, start with basic column-level analysis such as:

· Distinct count and percent: Analyzing the number of distinct values within each column will help identify possible unique keys within the source data (which I’ll refer to as natural keys). Identification of natural keys is a fundamental requirement for database and ETL architecture, especially when processing inserts and updates. In some cases, this information is obvious based on the source column name or through discussion with source data owners. However, when you do not have this luxury, distinct percent analysis is a simple yet critical tool to identify natural keys.

· Zero, blank, and NULL percent: Analyzing each column for missing or unknown data helps you identify potential data issues. This information will help database and ETL architects set up appropriate default values or allow NULLs on the target database columns where an unknown or untouched (i.e.,., NULL) data element is an acceptable business case. This analysis may also spawn exception or maintenance reports for data stewards to address as part of day-to-day system maintenance.

· Minimum, maximum, and average string length: Analyzing string lengths of the source data is a valuable step in selecting the most appropriate data types and sizes in the target database. This is especially true in large and highly accessed tables where performance is a top consideration. Reducing the column widths to be just large enough to meet current and future requirements will improve query performance by minimizing table scan time. If the respective field is part of an index, keeping the data types in check will also minimize index size, overhead, and scan times.

· Numerical and date range analysis: Gathering information on minimum and maximum numerical and date values is helpful for database architects to identify appropriate data types to balance storage and performance requirements. If your profile shows a numerical field does not require decimal precision, consider using an integer data type because of its relatively small size. Another issue which can easily be identified is converting Oracle dates to SQL Server. Until SQL Server 2008, the earliest possible datetime date was 1/1/1753 which often caused issues in conversions with Oracle systems.

With the basic data profile under your belt, you can conduct more advanced analysis such as:

· Key integrity: After your natural keys have been identified, check the overall integrity by applying the zero, blank, and NULL percent analysis to the data set. In addition, checking the related data sets for any orphan keys is extremely important to reduce downstream issues. For example, all customer keys from related transactions (e.g., orders) should exist in the customer base data set; otherwise you risk understating aggregations grouped by customer-level attributes.

· Cardinality: Identification of the cardinality (e.g. one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, etc.) between the related data sets is important for database modeling and business intelligence (BI) tool set-up. BI tools especially need this information to issue the proper inner- or outer-join clause to the database. Cardinality considerations are especially apparent for fact and dimension relationships.

· Pattern, frequency distributions, and domain analysis: Examination of patterns is useful to check if data fields are formatted correctly. As example, you might validate e-mail address syntax to ensure it conforms to user@domain. This type of analysis can be applied to most columns but is especially practical for fields that are used for outbound communication channels (e.g., phone numbers and address elements). Frequency distributions are typically simple validations such as “customers by state” or “total of sales by product” and help to authenticate the source data before designing the database. Domain analysis is validation of the distribution of values for a given data element. Basic examples of this include validating customer attributes such as gender or birth date, or address attributes such as valid states or provinces within a specified region. Although these steps may not play as critical a role in designing the system, they are very useful for uncovering new and old business rules.

Picking the right techniques depends on the project objectives. If you’re building a new database from scratch, take the time to execute and review outcomes of each of the above bullet points. If you’re simply integrating a new data set into an existing database, select the most applicable tasks that apply to your source data.

All of these steps may be conducted by writing raw SQL. The basic profiling steps can usually be accomplished using a tool designed specifically for data profiling. Many third-party data profiling tools have been introduced into the marketplace over the last several years to help streamline the process. These tools typically allow the user to point to a data source and select the appropriate profile technique(s) to apply. The outputs of these tools vary, but usually a data source summary is produced with the field level profile statistics.

Summary

The first step in adopting a comprehensive data profiling program is to realize the importance and value it ultimately provides. Data profiling should be of interest to all roles within the technical project team. For instance, database architects, engineers, administrators, and support teams need to have a deep understanding of the database system’s core data to make sound technical decisions; business analysts and project managers may also use the conclusions drawn from the data profiling to help steer project direction and set realistic expectations with project stakeholders.

Furthermore, understanding the available data, the missing data, and the required data can help map out future technical strategies and data capture methods. Using this information to improve data capture techniques will improve the source data integrity and may lead to further improvements in overall customer engagement and intelligence.

The data profiling process may seem arduous and less than glamorous at times, but it is an important step which adds value to any database project.

Article featured on ESJ.com

CSG Systems to Participate in Thomas Weisel Partners Technology and Telecom Conference 2010

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (2/2/2010)--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today announced that the company’s President and CEO, Peter Kalan; Chief Financial Officer, Randy Wiese; and Vice President of Investor Relations, Liz Bauer will participate in the Thomas Weisel Partners Technology and Telecom Conference 2010. The conference will be held February 8 – 10, 2010 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

CSG Systems will participate in a fireside chat with Thomas Weisel Partners analyst, Tom Roderick on February 9^th.

A live webcast of the event as well as a replay of the conference following the event will be available at http://www.veracast.com/webcasts/twp/tech2010/01212266.cfm.

About CSG Systems

Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

For more information, please contact
Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
Vice President of Investor Relations

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1to1 Media: Customer Engagement: Marketing's New Frontier

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

Written by Patrick Dineen; featured on 1to1media

Customers now have unprecedented perspective and expectations about the companies they do business with. The customer buys, continues to buy, tells others, and pays more because of their complete experience with a product or service provider. For marketing's investment to pay off, it can no longer hand off a new customer and hope for the best.

The boundaries for marketing are expanding. Marketers are venturing further into directing or influencing the complete customer engagement, typically with customer data–driven intelligence. Some are being pulled there by forward thinking executives, while others are arguing for expanded marketing budget, recognizing a stronger financial benefit. Simply put, customer engagement is critical for marketers today.

Customer engagement leverages technology, strategy, interactivity, customer information, and analytics to improve every customer interaction consistently and in real-time. Customer engagement means real command and control over the myriad customer interactions channels both on and offline. Customer engagement requires marketers to captivate customers, draw them in, and truly engage them--because customers expect it and have told marketers how they want to be engaged.

For marketers to thrive in this emerging customer engagement frontier, the majority of big company marketing organizations have to change. Below are three overarching principals for how marketing can help to improve customer engagement:

1) The Best Real-time Analytics Wins. Companies making the best offer at the right time with real-time analytics and the use of real-time data will succeed. As the world becomes increasingly interactive across channels, opportunities for real-time decision optimization will be countless, each a moment of truth to maximize customer value. Simultaneously, we will see a reduction in the reliance on campaign-oriented outbound direct marketing. Thus, the analytics that drove outbound test-and-learn cell segments must be updated and transformed for real-time interactions and moments of truth. For example, companies can use real-time analytics to drive offers made to customers at risk of attrition. By doing so it's possible to optimize decisions at the moments of truth, e.g., when customers are on the phone, based on their specific situation and what offers have been working well.

2) Synchronize and Use All of Your Data Across All Touch Points. It's simple: Your customers want to be recognized every time they show up, and certainly every time they are contacted in any channel. As a marketer, when you learn something about a customer, treat this information like gold, keep it and use it wisely. This includes all interaction and behavior data, Web data, POS information, social media insights, customer service information, and certainly all of the company's billing information—the best source of verifiable behavior available. Marketers should never drive critical customer decisions at moments of truth with half the story, and the story should be consistent. That is what today's customer expects. The technology is readily available to capture, integrate, store, and analyze every interaction with your customers. Successful companies will differentiate themselves by using the right information to create engagement. Seamless real-time integration between a customer database and e-commerce platform enables a company to present a single, consistent, personalized, and profit-maximizing face to their customers across channels.

3) Proactive Beats Reactive Every Time. Retention and attrition programs receive too many marketing resources. When a customer decides to leave, most marketing efforts are too little, too late. In a way, this is marketing's version of CPR. Any type of reactive marketing to improve flagging engagement is a losing strategy. A best practice is a proactive customer lifecycle communications and offer plan that is analytically optimized to acquire the right customers (even if there are fewer at first) and engage with them through various phases. Using the information in a customer database it's possible to reduce attrition from the moment of acquisition and throughout the customer's lifecycle.

As marketers look toward 2010, they should seize their expanded responsibility for customer engagement. To do this, marketers can influence all customer touchpoints using real-time analytics, a single view of the customer, and proactive communications—and maximize every moment of truth in the new marketing frontier.

Article featured on 1to1media

CustomerThink Names 16 Global Thought Leaders to 2010 Editorial Board

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

Burlingame, CA (PRWEB) January 28, 2010 -- CustomerThink, the world's largest online community focused on Customer-Centric Business Management, has named 16 thought leaders to its 2010 Editorial Board.

According to CustomerThink founder/CEO Bob Thompson, the goal of a customer-centric business is to "deliver value that drives genuinely loyal customer attitudes and behaviors in a target market, resulting in competitive differentiation and long-term profitable growth for the enterprise." Editorial Board members, as experts in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Customer Experience Management (CEM) and Social Business, provide guidance to CustomerThink's editorial strategy and site/community development.

The 2010 CustomerThink Editorial Board includes the following members:

* Akin Arikan, Unica Corp. (United States) ++
* William Band, Forrester Research (United States)
* Alison Bond, The Halo Works (United Kingdom)
* Francis Buttle, Francis Buttle & Associates (Australia)
* Vanessa DiMauro, Leader Networks (United States) ++
* Naras Eechambadi, Quaero, a CSG Solution (United States)
* Donna Fluss, DMG Consulting (United States)
* Esteban Kolsky, ThinkJar (United States) ++
* Sampson Lee, G-CEM (China)
* Wim Rampen, Contact Center Intelligence (The Netherlands) ++
* Andrew Rudin, Outside Technologies (United States)
* Axel Schultze, Social Media Academy (United States) ++
* Colin Shaw, Beyond Philosophy (United Kingdom)
* Shaun Smith, smith+co (United Kingdom) ++
* John Todor, The Whetstone Edge (United States)
* Ray Wang, Altimeter Group (United States) ++

++ New to Editorial Board in 2010

"Although the global economy is recovering, strong leadership will be required to navigate turbulent market conditions in the months ahead," says Bob Thompson who chairs the Editorial Board. "I appreciate the support of these global thought leaders to help executives on the journey to create successful customer-centric businesses."

For more information, please visit www.customerthink.com/editorial_board.

About CustomerThink

CustomerThink (www.customerthink.com) is a global thought leadership community focused on customer-centric business management. Founded in 2000 as CRMGuru.com by Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink Corp., the site was renamed to CustomerThink in April 2007. CustomerThink's mission is to help business leaders develop and implement customer-centric business strategies, including Customer Relationship Management, Customer Experience Management, and Social Business. CustomerThink publishes high-quality articles, blogs and discussion; conducts research on key issues and trends; and facilitates shared learning with the support of a global panel of experts.

Media Contact:
Bob Thompson
(650) 343-8529

CSG Systems Receives 2009 Cable.TMCnet.com Product of the Year Award

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.(1/27/2010)--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today announced that CSG Workforce Express has received a 2009 Cable.TMCnet.com Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC).

CSG’s Workforce Express is the most widely used workforce management solution in the cable industry, helping more than 33,000 technicians to be more efficient when servicing customers in their homes and businesses. This solution addresses one of the most costly and complex aspects of the service provider’s business – getting the right technician, to the right location, at the right time to deliver an increasingly complex set of information, communication and entertainment services.

CSG’s Workforce Express also leverages GPS technology to map technician vehicle location and provide a summary of job/work order information. This solution provides dispatchers with crucial field operations management tools and allows service technicians to provide optimal service to customers.

“Cable.TMCnet.com is pleased to grant a 2009 Product of the Year Award to CSG’s Workforce Express with GPS. CSG has proven they are committed to quality and excellence while addressing real needs in the marketplace,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “We’re proud to honor their accomplishments in the advancement of the cable technology industry.”

“In line with CSG’s commitment to offering its clients the ability to maximize every customer interaction, CSG Workforce Express provides new ways to manage and optimize a mobile fleet of technicians,” said Dwayne Ruffin, senior vice president of product management, CSG Systems. “We are pleased to see this solution recognized for the strategic value that it can bring to our clients.”

The 1^st Annual Cable.TMCnet.com Product of the Year Award winners will be featured on the Cable.TMCnet.com Web site and published in its e-newsletter.

For more information about the 2009 Cable.TMCnet.com Product of the Year Awards or any of the TMC media properties, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

About TMC

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) is a global integrated media company helping our clients build communities in print, in person and online. TMC publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications, and NGN magazines. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. TMCnet is read by two million unique visitors each month on average worldwide, according to Webtrends. TMCnet has ranked within the top 3,500 in Quantcast's Top U.S. sites, placing TMCnet in the nation’s top .03% most visited Web sites. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO (ITEXPO); Cable Conference and M2M Evolution (in conjunction with Crossfire Media); Digium|Asterisk World (in conjunction with Digium); and Smart Grid Summit (in conjunction with Intelligent Communication Partners). For more information about TMC, visit http://tmcnet.com/.

TMC also serves technology professionals with industry-specific Web sites: IT.TMCnet.com, 4G-wirelessevolution.TMCnet.com, M2M Evolution.com, Smart-Grid.TMCnet.com, Smart Products Ecosystem, Robotics.TMCnet.com, Cable.TMCnet.com, Satellite.TMCnet.com, Green.TMCnet.com, Healthcare.TMCnet.com, and Education.TMCnet.com.

For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

About CSG Systems

Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all U.S. households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

For more information, please contact

CSG Systems
Elise Brassell, 303-804-4962
Media Relations
elise_brassell@csgsystems.com
or
TMC
Jan Pierret, 203-852-6800, ext. 228
Marketing Manager
jpierret@tmcnet.com

Download the pdf

CSG Systems Reports Solid Revenue Growth for Fourth Quarter and 2009

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, COLO. (January 26, 2010) CSG Systems International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today reported results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2009.

Key Highlights:

Results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2009, were as follows:
- Fourth quarter results:
  - Total revenues were $127.8 million, an increase of three percent over the same period in 2008.
  - Non-GAAP operating income was $22.5 million, or 17.6% of total revenues, and GAAP operating income was $16.3 million, or 12.7% of total revenues.
  - Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share (EPS) was $0.40, and GAAP EPS from continuing operations was $0.24.
- Full year results:
  - Total revenues were $500.7 million, an increase of six percent compared to 2008.
  - Non-GAAP operating income was $90.2 million, or 18.0% of total revenues, and GAAP operating income was $74.7 million, or 14.9% of total revenues.
  - Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was $1.64, and GAAP EPS from continuing operations was $1.22.
- Cash flows from operations for the quarter were $55.6 million, and $153.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2009.
During the fourth quarter, CSG had the following business successes:
- CSG converted approximately 2.4 million customer accounts onto its systems, including triple play and business customers.
- CSG extended its contractual relationshipp with DISH Network, CSG's second largest client.
- Time Warner Cable signed a contract for CSG's WiMAX solution and Comcast signed a contract for CSG's commercial services and WiMax solutions.

"Our 2009 results demonstrate the strength of our solutions, client relationships and business model," said Peter Kalan, president and chief executive officer for CSG Systems. "This year, we generated over $150 million in cash flows, invested 14% of our revenues in research and development, extended our relationship with DISH Network—resulting in no major client's contract coming up for renewal until the end of 2012, and have increased our market share in the cable space.

"Today we are helping our cable and DBS clients roll out new revenue-generating services like commercial, WiMAX and TV Everywhere, and we continue to diversify our revenue mix through our increased focus and cross-selling of our customer interaction management solutions into the utilities, healthcare and content markets.

"Our results demonstrate that even in a very difficult business environment, our value proposition resonates with service providers looking to maximize and monetize every customer interaction. While we believe that next year may continue to be a difficult sales environment, we are confident that we have the right solutions, people and business to continue our success."

For the full press release, please click on the .pdf file below.

For more information, please contact
Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
Vice President of Investor Relations

Get the pdf

CSG Systems to Hold Fourth Quarter 2009 Earnings Conference Call

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (1/4/2010)
CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, invites you to participate in a conference call on Tuesday, January 26, 2010, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to discuss the company's fourth quarter 2009 earnings results.

The one-hour conference call will feature Peter Kalan, CSG President and Chief Executive Officer, and Randy Wiese, CSG Chief Financial Officer. To reach the conference, dial (877) 941-2332 and ask the operator for the CSG Systems conference call and Liz Bauer, chairperson.

A replay of the conference call will be available until midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, and can be accessed by dialing (800) 406-7325 and access code of 4192737. In addition, this call will be simulcast and archived on the Internet at www.csgsystems.com (Real Player required).

About CSG Systems
Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients'' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

For more information, please contact
Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
Vice President, Investor Relations

Get the pdf

DM News: Marketing Smarts for 2010: Five Ways to Expand Your Marketing Strategy

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

Written by Naras Eechambadi; featured on DMNews.com

As recession pains ease, marketers have seen an uptick in budgets. Now that companies are coming out of the bunker, they are looking for revenue growth, not cost cutting, to improve the bottom line. The logical place to turn to in this circumstance is marketing. We have had discussions with a number of companies that are trying to figure out how best to spend their budgets, and it's no surprise that many are looking to capitalize on the growth of digital and social media. The challenge is spending the money in a way that maximizes impact. Companies need marketing that delivers results, measurably and effectively, regardless of channel.

What does that mean for trends in marketing in 2010? We offer six suggestions to help marketers start the year off right.

Develop more methodical approaches to experimenting with emerging channels. With the multitude of channel and communication choices, both traditional and emerging, marketers must understand which ones are relevant, how to make them relevant and how much to bet on them. It's not enough to want to be on Twitter; it's important for to understand how and why your customers are using Twitter, if at all, and develop the appropriate strategy for communicating. This requires structured testing and experimentation. Try different things, see what works and what does not, tweak the approaches, and see if a winner emerges. If not, move on. This means allocating some money to experimentation and being disciplined in pursuing or discarding ideas when appropriate.
Incorporate your social strategy into your overall marketing strategy. Emerging social networks and media are just communications channels and shouldn't be managed in a vacuum. Yes, you need to understand the nuances and differences associated with new media (e.g., the importance of listening), but you need to determine what role it plays in your communications strategy. Data still plays a vital role. Your customer information provides insight into preferences and behaviors. Use this information to make informed decisions about which channels you invest in. In other words, let your customers decide where they engage with you.
Think Cross-Channel. Marketers continue to struggle with coordinating messages across channels and delivering a consistent customer experience. Now social media provides a platform where customers have a voice. Companies have to figure out ways of being heard in these platforms in a way that is distinct, while reinforcing and strengthening the brand. This requires monitoring data and communications across multiple platforms. It is challenging in most organizations, many of whom continue to have different organizational groups focused on different channels. Look to most organizations to consolidate their customer intelligence function, blending traditional market research and direct marketing analytics to provide a consolidated view for different channel managers.
Become smarter and more nimble in testing and measurement; you have no choice. Most organizations still have trouble reading the results from discrete campaigns. They particularly have trouble comparing results from different channels, which often have different objectives. Your objectives on Twitter or Facebook may be very different from what you hope to accomplish with outbound emails or with customers once you have driven them to your Web site. How do you allocate funds across channels and campaigns if you do not know how to compare them? There is also the issue of timing and relevance of analysis. Are your measurements and analysis timely enough that you can actually adjust what you are doing based on that feedback? As campaigns become more continuous and multi-channel, as well as reactive in the case of inbound channels, it is critical that responses to different messages and offers be measured, analyzed and adjusted in a matter of hours or days rather than weeks or months. This requires systems that are much more agile in their ability to bring in response data from diverse sources, process and analyze these results in a continuous loop and act on that intelligence. The good news is that this is becoming increasingly possible.
Leverage external partners and weave them together more effectively. Given the pace of change, no marketer can hope to be an expert in all of the channels or even, except in the largest of organizations, be able to hire and build capabilities internally. This leads to the difficult question of who to partner with. Do you stick with the vendors you trust who may be dabbling in new areas but have delivered for you? Or do you go with hotshot companies that have a deep expertise and knowledge in an emerging medium? This is a tough trade off with no easy answers. Many traditional players are fast adding to their capabilities so that they can remain relevant in this fast changing environment. You need to judge whether your incumbent has the smarts to make that shift or is going to be slowing you down. On the other hand, handling new vendors adds a level of complexity and coordination to an already complex world. Agency models are emerging that can provide very effective one stop shops to help you engage your customers across channels and can handle information, analysis, create intelligence driven strategies and deliver measurement while letting you focus on strategy and the big picture.

Medical Marketing & Media: Does Reform End Brand Messaging?

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

From the December 2009 Issue of MMM

Will healthcare reform—should it pass—serve as a tipping point in the shift from traditional brand messaging to customer-centric engagement?

Steve Woodruff,
President, Impactiviti

The ways we communicate are changing rapidly, and this evolution means healthcare companies must adjust. The convergence of healthcare reform, along with the rapid adoption of social networking approaches, will force more companies to de-emphasize one-way messaging and embrace customer engagement strategies. The reason is simple-we don't need or want to be "talked to." The empowered citizen/patient can find information in many places, and we are far more interested in dialogue than in brand messages. The emphasis on digital tools in government healthcare reform proposals will only accelerate this trend. Of course, this gives pharma companies the opportunity to "humanize" their relationships with a variety of audiences, and that can only be for the greater good.

Dave Schemelia,
SVP/media director, HealthStar Public Relations

Look at the proliferation of new media versus what was available five years ago. We can already see a shift created by the arrival and wide acceptance of blogs and online-based publications. Even the Federal Trade Commission has recognized this shift requiring better disclosure guidelines for bloggers. Where healthcare reform should play its biggest role for the customer is in determining what drugs health plans are willing to pay for and formulary guidelines. We need to do a better job of marketing and rebuild lost trust and brand loyalty. Those still on the fence need to embrace the changes now before the dynamics shifts even more. Success will come to those who have figured out which media and medium the public has put their trust.

Gina LeMay,
Client Management, Quaero, a CSG Solution

While reform will play a role in terms of marketers' overall strategies, it doesn't change the need for marketers to focus laser-like on the consumer and continue moving toward a more customer-centric model. Sharp brand marketers know that they need to drive relevant messages to the end user. Consumers are influenced by interactive messaging and I see these smart marketers moving more toward text offers or social media ads to repeatedly build brand preference and drive brand loyalty. Marketers must continue to look across the six dimensions of marketing performance-actionable strategies, organizational alignment, appropriate measures, effective processes, information assets, enabling technologies-to define areas of improvement and uncover opportunities for growing customer value.

Faruk Capan,
CEO, Intouch Solutions

Traditional methods are being impacted by new legal restrictions, access issues to the physicians and overuse of DTC. Should healthcare reform pass, the customer-centric approach will certainly continue to gain momentum. The reform will introduce new key stakeholders. It's not just the doctor and patients anymore; payers and advocacy groups are all vested parties in the new era. The digital age has allowed patients to be informed and empowered through information and social connections. Going a step further, transparency and genuine involvement in conversations with the customers will only help bolster confidence in the industry. This will be a good prescription of its own for marketers.

CSG Systems' Executive Naras Eechambadi to Participate in NCDM Keynote Addressing Database Marketing and Customer Intelligence

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

CHARLOTTE, NC--(Marketwire - December 2, 2009) - Quaero, a CSG Systems (NASDAQ: CSGS) Solution and leading marketing services provider, today announced that Senior Vice President Naras Eechambadi will participate in a keynote panel discussion moderated by Forrester Research, Inc. Principal Analyst Dave Frankland at the upcoming 2009 NCDM Conference. In addition to the keynote, Quaero and its customer Exploritas (formerly Elderhostel) will deliver a presentation entitled "Using Marketing Science to Win in a Down Economy" highlighting the travel company's multichannel marketing transformation. The keynote will take place December 7th at 12:00 pm while the Exploritas presentation is on December 9th 1:45 pm.

Naras Eechambadi, senior vice president, CSG Systems, will join other leading marketing experts for the exclusive keynote, "CEO Industry Insider Panel: Evolving from Database Marketing to Customer Intelligence." Moderated by Dave Frankland, the panel will discuss how database marketing is evolving and how new technologies and innovations are playing a key role in the move toward customer intelligence. Eechambadi, a recent Stevie award winner, will present his views and provide advice to marketers on how best to leverage database marketing in order to improve their organizations. Eechambadi will discuss ways that companies can harness customer intelligence even in poor economic times.

In addition to Eechambadi's keynote panel discussion, CSG's Quaero and Exploritas will co-present a multichannel marketing success story. Exploritas' Director for CRM, Mei Fulton will discuss how a smaller marketing organization can make a big impact using the right marketing tools and technology to improve business -- even in the toughest of times. Fulton along with Quaero executive Patrick Dineen will present how Exploritas, the world's largest not-for profit educational travel organization for adults, increased its use of online channels while reducing costs to generate better customer insight and optimize its reach. They will also share ways multichannel marketing is used to gain meaningful, timely information about customers, prospects, and program effectiveness.

Faced with the realities of a down economy, Exploritas sought to improve its multichannel marketing efforts and needed to better segment and target customers for improved effectiveness and efficiency. With the goal of managing campaigns more effectively, Exploritas built a new marketing database, leveraging analytics to enhance customer conversion efforts. In the NCDM presentation, Fulton and Dineen will share details of the Exploritas multichannel marketing transformation as well as best practices and methodologies for designing an effective multichannel marketing strategy.

"The database marketing industry is progressing toward customer intelligence as a way to improve overall customer value," said Naras Eechambadi, senior vice president, Quaero. "CSG has a significant presence at NCDM this year representing our growing expertise in database marketing and customer intelligence. Executive thought leadership along with customer success stories like Exploritas showcase our strength in this industry."

The 2009 NCDM conference will take place December 7-9th in Las Vegas.

About Quaero

Quaero, a CSG solution, uses customer intelligence to help clients shift from traditional campaign-driven marketing to real-time, multichannel customer interaction. Quaero experts blend strategy and analytics with performance management and technology to establish dialogues that improve the customer experience while increasing overall customer value. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, the Quaero solutions group provides marketing services to category-leading clients within the Financial Services, Pharmaceutical/Healthcare, Travel and Leisure, Media, Consumer and High Tech industries. For more information, call 1-877-570-2199 or visit www.quaero.csgsystems.com

About CSG Systems

Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com

About NCDM

Co-sponsored by DIRECT magazine and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM) Conference is dedicated exclusively to the database marketing industry. NCDM is held once a year and brings marketing and technology decision-makers together to find practical approaches to today's direct marketing challenges using customer data and technology.

About DIRECT

DIRECT Online is the leading information source for senior executives responsible for measuring direct marketing return on investment, multichannel integration and deploying new direct marketing technologies. Our superior level of business intelligence includes insight and analyses into the challenges and issues direct marketers face across every aspect of direct marketing -- from database marketing, direct mail, CRM, telemarketing and e-mail to catalogs, lists and data, e-commerce and direct B2B selling.

The information we offer our community members with our Web site, e-newsletters and blogs uniquely reflects the changing dynamics of the direct marketing landscape. DIRECT Online is a member of The Chief Marketer Network, which also includes Chief Marketer, Multichannel Merchant and PROMO Online.

About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

The Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) is the leading global trade association of businesses and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques. DMA advocates standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the end-to-end direct marketing process. Founded in 1917, DMA today represents more than 3,100 companies from dozens of vertical industries in the US and 48 other nations, including nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations.

In 2009, marketers -- commercial and nonprofit -- will spend $149.3 billion on direct marketing, which accounts for 54.3% of all ad expenditures in the United States. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures will generate approximately $1.783 trillion in incremental sales. In 2009, direct marketing accounted for 8.3% of total US gross domestic product. Also in 2009, there were 1.4 million direct marketing employees in the US. Their collective sales efforts directly support 8.4 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 9.9 million US jobs.

The Power of Direct: Relevance. Responsibility. Results.

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CSG Systems Extends Contract with DISH Network Through 2012

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (11/30/2009) CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today announced that it has entered into a new multi-year agreement for DISH's nearly 14 million customers that includes a 3-year commitment for customer care and billing services through December 31, 2012, and a 5-year commitment for print and mail services through December 31, 2014. The agreement also includes an option to extend these services through December 31, 2015, and migrate to CSG's next generation ACP platform, which currently supports CSG's other 32 million plus customer accounts processed today.

"We are pleased to have earned the right to continue to provide business critical services to DISH into the future," said Peter Kalan, president and chief executive officer of CSG Systems. "We understand and support DISH's needs to provide a superior customer experience. We will continue to invest in our people, our products and our relationship so that we can help DISH achieve its longer-term business objectives."

Additional details regarding the terms of this agreement are included in CSG's Form 8-K dated November 30, 2009. A copy of the agreement (with confidential information redacted) will be filed as an exhibit to CSG's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009.

Conference Call
CSG will host a conference call on November 30, 2009 at 4 p.m. ET to discuss the DISH agreement in more detail. The call will be carried live and archived on the Internet at www.csgsystems.com. In addition, to reach the conference by phone, dial (877) 941-6010 and ask the operator for the CSG Systems conference call, Liz Bauer chairperson.

About CSG Systems
Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements as defined under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended that are based on assumptions about a number of important factors and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what appears in this news release. These factors include, but are not limited to: 1) the concentration of approximately two-thirds of CSG's revenues with four clients; as a result, the loss of business from any one of those clients could potentially have a material adverse impact to CSG's financial results; 2) CSG's dependency on a variety of computing environments and communications networks, as well as risks inherent to transitioning data centers, thus subjecting CSG to the risks of extended interruptions, outages, unauthorized access and corruption of data; 3) the timing, duration, and degree of an economic turnaround are uncertain; thus there can be no assurances regarding the performance of our business, and the potential impact to our clients and key vendors, resulting from the current economic conditions; 4) continued market acceptance of CSG''s Advanced Convergent Platform (ACP) and related products and services; 5) CSG's ability to continuously develop and enhance products in a timely, cost-effective, technically advanced and competitive manner; 6) CSG's ability to implement new solutions, and migrate or convert clients to our solutions in a timely and effective manner; 7) CSG's dependency on the North American communications industry; as a result, key market factors such as further industry consolidation, new market entrants that may not be clients of CSG, macroeconomic conditions affecting the credit and equity markets generally, and/or the financial status of CSG clients may affect CSG's ability to maintain and expand market share; 8) increasing competition in our market from companies of greater size and with broader presence in the communications sector, thus exerting greater influence over client buying decisions; 9) CSG's ability to successfully integrate and manage acquired businesses, technology or assets to achieve the expected strategic, operating and financial goals established for such acquisitions; and 10) CSG's continued ability to protect its intellectual property rights. This list is not exhaustive and readers are encouraged to review the additional risks and important factors described in CSG's reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q and other filings made with the SEC.

For more information, please contact
Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
Vice President Investor Relations

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CSG Systems Announces New Chairman of the Board

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.

CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today announced that telecommunications industry veteran and current independent board member Don Reed was elected Chairman of the Board effective January 1, 2010. Bernie Reznicek, current independent Chairman of the Board, remains a board member and continues to chair its Audit Committee. The election of Reed was made in conjunction with the board’s governance practices to rotate key board positions periodically.

“Bernie has provided great leadership to CSG Systems for over 12 years on our Board, including 4 years as Chairman, and we are pleased that he will continue to serve on our Board,” said Peter Kalan, president and chief executive officer of CSG Systems. “In addition, we are pleased to have Don Reed as our new Chairman of our Board. Don has been a member of our Board since 2005 and brings a wealth of strategic and operational expertise to us as we continue to focus on increasing shareholder value.”

“The telecommunications industry is at an interesting juncture with new technologies and services providing consumers with much more compelling and interactive experiences,” Reed said. “I am pleased to be working with a company who has a strong commitment to investing in its people, its products and its solutions to enable our clients to successfully maximize their business objectives and their customers’ experiences. We have a strong management team and an outstanding board of directors who are committed to ensuring that this company continues to create value for its clients, its employees and its shareholders.”

Reed is currently retired and has more than 30 years' experience in the telecommunications industry including his most recent assignment as Chief Executive Officer for Cable & Wireless Global, an international provider of internet protocol (IP) and data services to business customers. Prior to that, Reed held several different several different executive and operational positions at Cable & Wireless, Cabletron Systems, NYNEX and New England Telephone. In addition to CSG Systems, Reed serves on the boards of Idearc Media (formerly Verizon Yellow Pages) and Aggregate Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Holcim Group, based in Switzerland.

About CSG Systems

For more information, please contact
Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
CSG Systems, Investor Relations

CSG Systems hosts Customer Experience Management (CEM) Webinar featuring Leading Independent Research Firm

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

WHAT: CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, along with its customer intelligence arm, Quaero and special guest Bruce Temkin, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research will host an exclusive Web event for the Cable/DBS industry titled "Drive Customer Loyalty and ROI through Customer Experience Management." During this one hour Webinar, the expert panel will discuss how an investment in Customer Experience Management (CEM) can lead companies to increased customer loyalty and long-term value. The panel will delve into the current state of customer experience in the Cable/DBS market, discuss the blueprint for customer experience success, identify key ways to leverage customer intelligence to improve the way companies treat customers, and share relevant real word examples of companies succeeding in CEM.

WHY: CEM is an emerging discipline helping companies build the foundation for an enhanced customer experience, which correlates to improved customer satisfaction and overall loyalty. CEM is a critical component to fostering the customer loyalty companies seek. Organizations that are embracing CEM strategies have found improved marketing effectiveness and ROI.

WHO:
Bruce Temkin, vice president and principal analyst, Forrester Research
Peter Kalan, president and CEO, CSG Systems, Inc.
Naras Eechambadi, PhD, senior vice president and general manager, Quaero, a CSG solution

WHEN: November 10, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET

Registration: Visit http://quaerolp.csgsystems.com/ForresterWebinar.html or contact Jamie Rowe at jamie_rowe@csgsystems.com or 704.414.2197.

All attendees will receive a free electronic copy of Bruce Temkin's report, "Customer Experience Boosts Revenue."

About CSG Systems

Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients'' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

About Quaero

Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, the Quaero solutions group provides marketing services to category-leading clients within the Financial Services, Pharmaceutical/Healthcare, Travel and Leisure, Media, Consumer and High Tech industries. For more information, call 1-877-570-2199 or visit www.quaero.csgsystems.com

MEDIA CONTACT:

Sheila Bohan, Emerge Public Relations

Office: 617-729-3185

sbohan@emergepr.com

CSG Systems Reports Solid Third Quarter 2009 Results

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (10/27/2009) ENGLEWOOD, COLO. (October 27, 2009) CSG Systems International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today reported results for the quarter ended September 30, 2009.

Key Highlights:

Results for the quarter ended September 30, 2009, were as follows: Total revenues were $124.5 million, an increase of six percent over the same period in 2008.
Non-GAAP operating income was $22.5 million, or 18.0% of total revenues, and GAAP operating income was $17.3 million, or 13.9% of total revenues.
Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA was $33.5 million for the quarter and $100.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2009.
Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share (EPS) was $0.43, which reflects an unexpected $0.03 benefit as a result of a better than expected income tax rate. GAAP EPS from continuing operations was $0.29.
Cash flows from operations for the quarter were $37.9 million, and $97.4 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2009.
During the third quarter, CSG successfully converted approximately 500,000 customer accounts onto its systems, including triple play and business customers, bringing the total number of customer accounts processed as of September 30, 2009, to 46.1 million.

"CSG continues to execute both operationally and financially, while investing in its solutions, its people and its clients," said Peter Kalan, chief executive officer and president of CSG Systems. "This quarter we successfully converted 500,000 new customers onto our ACP platform and converted another 700,000 since quarter-end. We are on track to convert the remaining backlog of customer accounts onto our solution by the first half of 2010.

"In addition, we continue to increase the penetration of our products and services in our client base, with product integrations across both CSG and competitor platforms, as well as were successful in cross-selling our products and services into new vertical markets," Kalan added. "Finally, we remain at the forefront in helping content providers create a more meaningful and interactive customer experience with our Content Direct platform by helping providers manage and optimize their customers experience with the online experience, resulting in increased loyalty and revenues.

"While it continues to be a difficult business environment, we are optimistic about the remainder of the year and 2010 based on our results for the first nine months of this year," said Kalan.

For the full press release, please click on the .pdf file below.

For more information, please contact
Liz Bauer, liz_bauer@csgsystems.com
Vice President Investor Relations

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CSG Systems Continues to Add Capability and Strategic Value to Multi-Channel Communications Platform

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (10/22/2009)

CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today announced new enhancements to its Precision eCare(TM) suite of solutions that enable clients to offer more ways to interact with customers in a highly personalized and interactive fashion.

These enhancements to CSG's Precision eCare suite of solutions (formerly known as CSG Care Express), are the latest steps CSG has taken to help clients deliver the right message, at the right time, using the preferred channel, to improve revenue and the overall service experience. Now more than ever before, CSG offers its clients strategies and solutions for delivering targeted messages to customers using a combination of complementary communications channels, including electronic and printed statements, e-communications, direct marketing and interactive messaging methods such as SMS/text, voice and email.

Precision eCare gives approximately eight million cable and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) customers the ability to view and pay bills online, upgrade services and interact with new service offers and promotions. The solution is also available to utility industry customers. Precision eCare includes four integrated, but independent modules: Precision eMail to create personalized, branded marketing emails; Precision eMarketing for targeted advertising; Precision eCommerce to enable online product and service ordering; and Precision eBPP to view and pay bills online.

New to Precision eCare is CSG Secure eStatements. This solution offers customers the ease of receiving monthly statements attached to a secure email. The attached statement is not a static document; rather, it offers new technology that enables the customer to view and pay their bill directly via interactive features embedded in a dynamic .pdf file.

Understanding that clients continue to leverage both print and electronic means for distributing statements, CSG has also extended the unique and impactful characteristics of a printed statement from color branding, targeted messaging and advertising, to an interactive electronic format within its Precision eBPP solution.

"Our research shows that a vast majority of people open and read transactional communications, and when those communications are targeted or personalized to the individual, they become even more impactful," said Karl Whitelock, senior consulting analyst, Stratecast, a division of Frost & Sullivan. "From email to printed statements and SMS text messages, the value of having multiple communications channels comes from the ability of these elements to complement each other with interlocking messages, images and personalized offers."

To enable its clients to further realize the value of connecting printed transactional statements with electronic channels, CSG now leverages integrated PURL (Personalized URL) technology as part of Precision eCare. PURL technology allows CSG's clients to personalize printed or electronic marketing and advertising inserts that direct consumers to a personalized URL or Web site address which contains tailored individual offers. This is one way that CSG unites its electronic eCare and print platforms that enable its clients to track customer interests and help manage the return on investment of a printed or electronic advertisement by monitoring page hits and click through rates.

In total, CSG's clients can improve revenue and customer service by leveraging powerful, integrated statement and marketing formats, in both printed and electronic forms, to flexibly reach customers with personalized, transactional messages delivered based on their preference.

"By offering a wide variety of communications channels and the ability to personalize messages consistently across electronic, print, and other forms of interactive messaging, CSG empowers its clients to reach their customers in the most effective way and to have a comprehensive view of their customer interactions, across multiple touch points," said Dwayne Ruffin, senior vice president of product management at CSG Systems.

About CSG Systems
Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG''s solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients'' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

For more information, please contact
Elise Brassell, elise_brassell@csgsystems.com
Senior PR Manager

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CSG Systems to Hold Third Quarter 2009 Earnings Conference Call

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (10/1/2009)
CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, invites you to participate in a conference call on Tuesday, October 27, 2009, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to discuss the company's third quarter 2009 earnings results.

The one-hour conference call will feature Peter Kalan, CSG President and Chief Executive Officer, and Randy Wiese, CSG Chief Financial Officer. To reach the conference, dial (480) 629-9772 and ask the operator for the CSG Systems conference call and Kathleen Marvin, chairperson.

A replay of the conference call will be available until midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 3, 2009, and can be accessed by dialing (303) 590-3030 and access code of 4165380. In addition, this call will be simulcast and archived on the Internet at www.csgsystems.com (Real Player required).

About CSG Systems
Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients'' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

For more information, please contact
Kathleen Marvin, Kathleen_marvin@csgsystems.com
Director, Investor Relations

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InsideCRM: 10 Questions for CSG Systems' Dwayne Ruffin

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Featured on InsideCRM.com; written by Chris Bucholtz

Dwayne Ruffin, senior vice president of product Management at CSG Systems, has a lot on his plate. Charged with overseeing the evolution of the company from a provider of fairly standard customer management tools for the telecommunications, cable and satellite industries, he not only must help his customers deal with new communication channels; he's also got to help them understand that customer expectations are on the rise and standing still is not an option. His customer companies are struggling to find new revenue while introducing new services; to maintain and improve customer service means introducing new strategies and technologies. That was what motivated the company's acquisition of Quaero in 2008.

Ruffin spoke to Inside CRM about the service challenges facing large enterprises, the difficulty of meeting customer expectations and the company's differentiation between personalization and a customer-centric approach.

Inside CRM: Your traditional customers have been in the cable, satellite and telecommunications businesses. Those industries often get pretty tough grades from consumers. Are the players in those areas starting to understand what a competitive advantage painless service could be?

Ruffin: I think they've gotten it for a long period time. The challenges rest in the inability to normalize behavior across disparate systems. When you look at cable operators and, definitely, in the telco space, through acquisition they acquire a lot of systems, and a lot of work is required to rationalize those systems. If you're not effective at it, you've got customer data that resides in many different places. Trying to bring that together and make it meaningful from a customer experience or a rep experience has been a challenge. If you look at cable, and look the J.D. Powers surveys, those who have a tendency to score high have some consistency in the systems that sit beneath that desktop presentation. They've got one billing system, they've normalized how they provision customers, there's an enterprise data warehouse, and there's one place to go as the source of information for customers. I really do think that their challenge has been bringing the infrastructure together from an IT perspective to serve the business, and those who have done well have scored high.

To read the article in its entirety, visit InsideCRM.com.

Target Marketing: 4 Tips to Manage Attrition

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Featured in Target Marketing; written by CSG Quaero's Niall Budds

Most companies understand the value of retaining a customer relationship versus the cost associated with replacing it. But many still struggle with attrition issues. Why? Because organizations cannot prevent customer attrition if they are unable to define, detect or, even better, predict it.

Here are four practical considerations that will help you develop and execute a successful retention strategy.

Be specific. Attrition is usually defined as a point in time "defection"-a customer consciously and visibly switches to another brand. Companies that adopt this crude definition don't realize that customers rarely think of themselves as having "relationships" with brands. They are more pragmatic-does this product/service meet my needs and deliver value? In banking, for example, a customer may retain an account but run down his balance to a point where he has effectively moved his business elsewhere. That phenomenon, which falls short of the traditional definition of attrition, is called "diminishment" and still results in a lost customer. So step one is to clearly and consistently define retention for your specific business.
Measure and monitor. Clearly defining attrition is useless unless you can measure and act. Fortunately, customer intelligence and measurement capabilities have come a long way. For example, customer management dashboards help organizations report on actionable retention metrics. One large Quaero client built a sophisticated customer dashboard that enabled it to quantify customer attrition on a monthly basis and understand the financial impact of those lost relationships. Now, it can slice and dice this information in a number of key ways, including customer type, geography and line of business. As a result, the marketer can diagnose why people are attriting or whether observed attrition rates are falling outside of historic "norms."
Prevent rather than "save." As you amass data on attrition, you can move beyond measuring and monitoring to proactively identify characteristics that are predictive of attrition risk. Statistical techniques allow you to identify and apply the characteristics of attrited customers to others who are currently in good standing but may be at risk in the future. This allows you to intervene early in relationships that are not yet lost but showing early signs of potential defection.
Use customer value to prioritize. The steps above allow you to identify the issue and act. But the ability to prioritize can have the greatest impact. For most companies, a small percentage of customers accounts for the lion's share of revenue. This simple but vital insight helps you to focus your retention budget on customers with the greatest potential future value. So you should incorporate customer value in your customer management dashboard; it enables you to prioritize and decide not just which relationships you want to retain, but also how much you are willing to invest to save them.

Customer retention remains a top priority for most organizations, especially in a struggling economy. By taking a systematic and customer-value oriented approach, however, you are better equipped to build and maintain long-lasting, profitable customer relationships.

Niall Budds is director of strategy and planning for Charlotte, N.C.-based marketing and technology service provider Quaero, a CSG Systems company. He can be reached at niall_budds@csgsystems.com.

CSG Systems Named to Software Magazine's 27th Annual Software 500

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EDT

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (9/30/2009)

CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management solutions, today announced its inclusion on the Software Magazine's Software 500 ranking of the world's largest software and service providers, now in its 27th year.

CSG Systems was ranked 101st, with software and services revenue of $472M.

"CSG enjoyed steady growth in 2008 as a result of increased adoption of our customer interaction management solutions, diversification into new vertical market segments, and the delivery of new products that enable our clients to reach out to their customers through a variety of touch points with personalized, relevant information," said CSG Systems' president and CEO, Peter Kalan.

"The 2009 Software 500 results show that revenue growth in the software and services industry was healthy, with total Software 500 revenue of $491.3 billion worldwide for 2008 representing 8.8% growth from the previous year," says John P. Desmond, editor of Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com.

"The Software 500 helps CIOs, senior IT managers and IT staff research and create the short list of business partners, Desmond says. It is a quick reference of vendor viability. And the online version at www.Softwaremag.com is searchable by category, making it what we call the online catalog to enterprise software."

The Software 500 is a revenue-based ranking of the world's largest software and services suppliers targeting medium to large enterprises, their IT professionals, software developers and business managers involved in software and services purchasing.

Some 44 percent of the 2009 Software 500 companies are privately held. Go to www.Softwaremag.com and click on Subscribe to be among the first to see the 2009 Software 500. It is being released first in the digital publication to be distributed in mid-September. The ranking is based on total worldwide software and services revenue for 2008. This includes revenues from software licenses, maintenance and support, training and software-related services and consulting. Suppliers are not ranked on their total corporate revenue, since many have other lines of business, such as hardware. The financial information was gathered by a survey prepared by King Content Co. and posted at www.Softwaremag.com, as well as from public documents.

About Digital Software Magazine, the Software Decision Journal, and Softwaremag.com
Digital Software Magazine, the Software Decision Journal, has been a brand name in the high-tech industry for 30 years. Softwaremag.com, its Web counterpart, is the online catalog to enterprise software and the home of the Software 500 ranking of the world?s largest software and services companies. Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com are owned and operated by King Content Co.

For more information, please contact
Elise Brassell, elise_brassell@csgsystems.com
Senior PR Manager

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Neolane and Quaero, a CSG Solution, Present Webinar on New Rules for Marketing in a Cross-Channel World

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EDT

NEWTON, Mass. - September 15, 2009 - Enterprise marketing software provider Neolane, Inc. today announced details of an upcoming webinar with Quaero, a CSG Systems (NASDAQ: CSGS) solution and leading marketing services provider, titled, "When the Four Ps of Marketing Aren't Enough: New Rules for a Cross-Channel World." On September 22, attendees will learn how to better leverage data across channels - including online, offline, outbound and inbound - in order to increase customer retention, drive new customer acquisition, and improve marketing efficiency. The first 25 registrants who also attend the webinar will receive a copy of the popular book, "High Performance Marketing," by Quaero Founder Naras Eechambadi.

Who:
- Joe Kelly, executive director, marketing automation, Quaero, a CSG Solution
- Kristin Hambelton, senior director, marketing, Neolane, Inc.

What:
Marketing has traditionally focused on the Four Ps - Pricing, Product, Promotion and Place. However, this webinar will explain why in today's demanding business environment marketers must focus on a new set of letters - the O and I of marketing - Online, Offline, Outbound and Inbound. These letters represent the channels that marketers need to incorporate into their mix while understanding the new challenges for coordination, management and measurement. Webinar attendees will learn:

How to build an infrastructure to capture online behavioral data and integrate it with other system data to drive effective cross-channel campaigns;
Tactics and strategies to leverage online data for offline analytics to increase messaging relevance;
How to measure end outcomes and performance of marketing programs across all of the channels; and,
Real-world quantifiable benefits that are made possible when moving to a true cross-channel marketing approach.

When: Tuesday, September 22 at 1 p.m. EDT

Where: To register online, please visit:
http://quaerolp.csgsystems.com/crosschannelwebinar.html

Webinar attendees may tweet about the event using the #crosschannel hashtag.

About Quaero
Quaero, a CSG solution, uses customer intelligence to help clients shift from traditional campaign-driven marketing to real-time, multichannel customer interaction. Quaero experts blend strategy and analytics with performance management and technology to establish dialogues that improve the customer experience while increasing overall customer value. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, the Quaero solutions group provides marketing services to category-leading clients within the Financial Services, Pharmaceutical/Healthcare, Travel and Leisure, Media, Consumer and High Tech industries. For more information, call 1-877-570-2199 or visit quaero.csgsystems.com.

About Neolane
Neolane provides the only enterprise marketing software specifically designed to manage, automate and optimize programs across traditional and emerging channels including direct mail, email and mobile. With Neolane's cross-channel marketing and lead management solutions, marketers can manage campaigns, resources, customer data and analytics from a single platform to dramatically improve effectiveness and ROI. Built by marketers for marketers, Neolane is used by more than 170 of the world's leading companies including Accor Hotels, Alcatel-Lucent, Orange and Sephora. Visit www.neolane.com.

# # #

Media Contacts:

Pat Chadwick
fama PR (for Neolane)
Ph: +1 617-758-4262
Email: neolane@famapr.com

Sheila Bohan
Emerge PR
Ph: +1 617-729-3185
Email: sbohan@emergepr.com

Target Marketing: Preventing Breakups

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Written by Heather Fletcher; featured in Target Marketing

Using dashboards as retention tools keeps customers from walking out the door. Why? Everyone who's ever been dumped wants the answer. Many never know the reason.

But companies that use dashboards as a retention tool are not only finding out why; they're figuring out when their beloved customers are showing signs of leaving so they can take the necessary steps to successfully woo them once again.

Keeping the ring on a customer's finger is as easy-and difficult-as being the parts and service provider he chooses to install the tires on his Nissan or Infiniti, finds Franklin, Tenn.-headquartered Nissan North America (NNA). Because so many competitors are willing to make Nissan's relationship with its customers crash and burn by providing oil changes, tires and brakes, that's where Nissan needs to grease the wheels of change so its customers won't stray.

"Those tend to be your highest-volume services," says Bob Welby, NNA's senior manager of sales and marketing manager in the parts and services division. "So one, they're very high-volume services; they're competitive out there where the dealers are fighting for that business very hard. Also, we learned through other, independent studies ... customers are generally satisfied with their service provider. ... So if we're not competitive in these key volume services, customers are going to go elsewhere where they have them ... And if they do that and if they're generally satisfied, they're going to stay for the shocks, the heavier work, the muffler work, the major service intervals. So it can be a key indicator to future service patterns for customers, and we want to focus our retail network on them."

Extrapolating, Welby says Nissan and Infiniti owners who maintain their vehicles through the dealership are much more likely to buy new vehicles from that dealership. It builds a relationship of trust, he says.

Conversely, point-in-time marketing can backfire for businesses that really should be in committed relationships, says Niall Budds, director of strategy and planning for Charlotte, N.C.-based marketing and technology service provider Quaero, a CSG company.

"In a relationship business like financial services or hospitality, that's really too late," he says. "You can't wait until the customer's walking in the door to close their account. You really need to be tracking retention in advance of that. And that's one of the challenges, and that's where we're seeing our clients investing a lot."

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This is just a snippet. To read the article in its entirety, visit Target Marketing

CSG Systems Offers New Solution to Help Businesses Reduce Bad Debt

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EDT

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (8/20/2009) CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management solutions, today announced the latest step in the roll-out of its intelligent customer interaction strategy through a new solution and partnership with Total Solution Inc. (TSI).

TSI provides behavior scoring and related analytic services to clients in the utility and cable sectors. Recently made available, CSG's Behavior Scoring and Analytics solution offers TSI's BASE (Behavioral Attribute Scoring Engine) integrated with CSG's Enhanced Accounts Receivables solution to provide CSG's clients with powerful customer intelligence capabilities designed to reduce operational expenses and unpaid debts.

By applying predictive analytics to a customer's account data, including key factors such as payment history, CSG's Behavior Scoring and Analytics solution scores accounts based on each customer's likelihood to pay outstanding bills and rank-orders the customer portfolio by risk. The client can then better prioritize its efforts in order to maximize use of collection resources. CSG's Behavior Scoring and Analytics solution also allows clients to measure the effectiveness of the behavior scoring process and improve debt collections results in conjunction with their internal policies and practices.

Clients have experienced significant business benefits by using behavior scores to improve their collection programs. A major North American cable provider that applied the solution experienced a 20 percent decrease in bad debt as a percentage of revenue.

"We look forward to offering CSG clients the same benefits our existing electric, gas and cable industry clients enjoy: improved collections effectiveness and reduced bad debt," said Stephen Bona, TSI President. "TSI, like CSG, is committed to providing an expanding array of world-class services to our clients, and we''re pleased that this partnership will allow us to offer an industry-leading behavioral scoring solution."

"CSG is dedicated to developing the best customer intelligence and analytics tools on the market," said Dwayne Ruffin, CSG Senior Vice President of Product Management. "Our Behavior Scoring and Analytics solution is our latest step in providing our clients with exceptional customer intelligence tools."

The release of CSG's Behavior Scoring and Analytics solution follows other intelligent customer interaction management initiatives from CSG, including the acquisition of marketing services provider Quaero in 2008, the acquisition of interactive messaging provider Prairie Interactive Messaging in 2007, and the development of solutions such as CSG Precision Email, a solution which helps create rich HTML email messages, tailored to individual customer profiles.

About TSI
TSI is a leading provider of behavior scoring solutions for the utility industries. Its clients score nearly 45,000,000 accounts monthly using BASE and TSI scorecards. In addition to behavior scoring, TSI also offers final and charged-off recovery scoring, reserve forecasting methodologies, as well as collection call center and collection agency management systems and internal matching and transfer management solutions.

About CSG Systems
Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, CSG Systems International, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a customer interaction management company that provides software- and services-based solutions that help clients engage and transact with their customers. With a 25-year heritage in providing customer management and billing solutions to North American cable and direct broadcast satellite companies, CSG has broadened its customer interaction management capabilities to proudly serve this client base as well as new, highly competitive industries including financial services, healthcare, utilities and more. Today, CSG's solutions reach more than half of all US households each month and manage over $36 billion in transactions annually on its clients'''' behalf. For more information, visit our website at www.csgsystems.com.

For more information, please contact
Elise Brassell, elise_brassell@csgsystems.com
Senior PR Manager

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Five Essential Strategies for Measuring Marketing Effectiveness

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Written by Ram Krishnamurthy and Brad Ewald; featured in MarketingProfsToday

With the proliferation of digital channels, marketing is undergoing a tremendous evolution. As a result, marketers at progressive organizations are redirecting their efforts and concentrating on a more holistic understanding of marketing performance.

To drive response and determine the appropriate marketing mix in this new paradigm, marketers must adopt a fresh approach to understand how to influence prospects and customers. By doing so, marketers can maximize marketing spend and generate stronger return on investment.

Five core strategies are needed to measure marketing effectiveness. Let's look at them, as well as at some key implementation tactics and ways to overcome the most-common challenges marketers face during execution.

1. Plan ahead and design a response-attribution infrastructure to support all channels

Many organizations treat marketing measurement as an afterthought of campaign planning. However, measurement and reporting are critical items on the campaign-planning agenda. Up-front planning ensures the appropriate tracking and testing conditions.

Different channels require different tracking mechanisms, but there are some common questions that should be addressed:

What types of campaigns (acquisition, conversion cross-sell, etc.) will be tracked?
How do cross-channel communications and campaigns roll up into a single program?
What information is available to match a response, and should response metadata be enhanced?
How will metadata be managed for direct-marketing and indirect-marketing campaigns?

When a marketing program uses multiple channels, the campaign hierarchy must account for each channel along with the appropriate rollups so that measurement aligns with business goals. Each level within the hierarchy should be well defined and understood by stakeholders prior to campaign implementation. Defining those structures after the launch of the campaign, even if possible to do, greatly increases the effort and frequently equates to inconclusive outcomes.

2. Create control groups for a more-accurate measurement of campaign lift

With the growth of digital media, it is even more important to adequately define control-group criteria across all channels during the planning process. Doing so ensures mutually exclusive and comprehensively exhaustive segments that will result in accurate accounting of the incremental results.

A lack of a centralized planning process frequently hinders a marketer's ability to design and execute cross-channel campaigns without polluting control groups, preventing accurate attribution, and biasing measurement analyses. Defined control groups help to accurately measure true campaign-lift metrics. Organizations that have marketing-planning and campaign-management tools are able to create and manage control groups much more effectively.

3. Define relevant measurement metrics

Organizations must define relevant metrics and measurement criteria, taking care to systematically craft a metrics framework aligned with corporate strategy and provide meaningful data to key stakeholders. The metrics must correlate the marketing activities (cause) with the marketing performance, financial results, and customer impact (effect).

A successful metrics framework is used to understand the correlation of marketing campaigns to defined corporate goals and objectives; moreover, it is not limited to just basic response measurement but extends to true financial results and customer-value metrics.

4. Define specific attribution rules by campaign

Attribution rules are a function of a campaign's goals, the response channels, and the outbound communications. Among the strategies for developing attribution rules are the following:

Designing and capturing rules for all channels in a campaign or program
Understanding that tracking customer response may require some trial and error
Focusing on more-generalized rules, devoting less attention to rules designed to manage a small percentage of responses
Testing and validating rules for each campaign because different campaigns may behave differently
Applying a waterfall approach for matching responses so that more-accurate rules can be assigned a higher priority

For digital media, defining appropriate attribution tactics that cover the complete spectrum of responses is vital. Different attribution tactics can be applied, because multiple campaigns could be responsible cumulatively for the response:

First impression: The first campaign gets the credit for the response.
Last impression: The last campaign gets the credit for the response.
Equal distribution: All contributing campaigns get equal credit.
Weighted distribution: The credit is divided among different campaigns on the basis of a weighted distribution.

5. Automate and use visual reporting and analytic tools

Organizations can use many tools to automate portions of the tracking and reporting process. Those tools can be configured to regularly track selected metrics on a periodic basis and produce reports or graphs, which can be consumed by small or large audiences.

Typically, response processes capture disparate data elements, apply attribution rules, and measure results to determine significant findings. Those steps present a challenge to most organizations because of the sheer volume of information represented across all campaigns, channels, and segments. Accordingly, automation is the only means to achieve the necessary scale.

Implementing the above-noted essential strategies will allow marketers to gain significant insight into the performance and effectiveness of the different channels and interaction effect among those channels. It will also help guide decisions in marketing spend and investment across the channels.

DM News: Data intelligence delivers bottom line impact

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Written by Julie Baker, Executive Director of Strategy & Planning, Quaero; Featured in DM News.

What's in a name? Customer data management. Customer intelligence management. Data intelligence management. The notion of using customer data to drive investment decisions has propagated many organizational names and acronyms over the last few years. Customer intelligence officers were crowned, integrated task forces were formed, and dedicated publications multiplied. Why? Because data equals money.

Customer data, specifically, transactional or behavioral data, is predictive in ways that transcend gender, ZIP code and income. There is a reason credit card companies have always been the most successful direct marketers; buying behavior and life stage patterns are easy to model, aggregate and wrap marketing process around.

Today, marketers are focused on more than just marketing. They are accountable for extracting value, both direct and indirect, at every customer touch point and through every channel. And although "customer-centricity" is positioned to be in the best interest of the customer, the application of customer information and execution of associated programs is most often self-serving. This is one reason why today's educated consumer is not buying the idea they should opt-in to online behavioral tracking so they can be served more relevant ads.

But all is not lost. Companies that understand how to collect and use this information in a meaningful way can prevail. Tom Boyles, SVP and global customer managed relationships for the Walt Disney Company, recently said in his keynote at NCDM, "It's all about the data." But, he emphasized, "The data has to be accurate, real-time, and multichannel." Easy, huh?

Well, not really. But marketers can take a few basic steps to improve their use of customer data. First use data value analysis, an analytical approach that benchmarks the value of the data sources and provides a business case for prioritizing their acquisition and incorporation into your CRM environment. This analysis helps you filter down mountains of data to only the most actionable bits of customer information.

Employ customer value models, a segmentation model that looks not only at historical value, but relative potential value to help you focus your marketing resources. This will estimate any additional revenue to be captured from an individual customer based on a comparison between the value of that customer to your company and their peer group.

Also use a go-to-market workflow analysis, an in-depth analysis of your current processes and the supporting technologies for presenting offers and handling customer service inquiries. From such an analysis you can determine what changes will have the most impact on the customer experience and your bottom line.

Most importantly, do not allow the customer to get lost in the vernacular of technology platforms, business processes or value extraction. Remember, you're supposed to be managing the customer, not just their data.

This article appeared in DM News on July 22, 2009.

CSG Systems Reports Second Quarter 2009 Results

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Revenues of $124.8 million; Non-GAAP EPS of $0.40; GAAP EPS of $0.31; Increases Full Year 2009 Guidance

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (7/28/09) CSG Systems International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSGS), a leading provider of customer interaction management and billing solutions, today reported results for the quarter ended June 30, 2009.

Key Highlights:

Results for the quarter ended June 30, 2009 were as follows:

Total revenues were $124.8 million, an increase of seven percent when compared to $116.9 million for the same period in 2008.
Non-GAAP operating income was $22.3 million, or 17.8% of total revenues, and GAAP operating income was $19.6 million, or 15.7% of total revenues.
Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA was $34.3 million for the quarter, and $67.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2009.
Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share ("EPS") was $0.40, and GAAP EPS was $0.31.
Cash flows from operations for the quarter were $43.6 million, and $59.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2009.
Cash and short-term investments totaled $132.9 million as of June 30, 2009, up from $120.3 million from last quarter-end.

CSG repurchased $15.0 million of its previously outstanding convertible debt securities.

"CSG continued to deliver upon our 2009 goals and long-term strategy during the second quarter, as reflected in our increased financial guidance for the year," said Peter Kalan, chief executive officer and president of CSG Systems. "CSG's solid capital structure and cash flow generation have held firm during these challenging economic times. We continue to establish the foundation for future success and continued growth by converting new subscribers, increasing penetration levels of our solutions, and diversifying our revenues into attractive new verticals."

To view the full report, please download pdf.

For more information, please contact
Kathleen Marvin, Kathleen_marvin@csgsystems.com
Director, Investor Relations

CRM Buyer: Efficiency Through Outsourced Marketing: Q&A With Quaero Founder Naras Eechambadi

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Written by Erika Morphy; featured on CRMBuyer.com

Few companies have been able to escape all the negative repercussions of the recession, but for some there has been opportunity along with challenges. Quaero was fortunate to be acquired by CSG Systems just when things started going south for many other firms. In addition to that good timing, Quaero has benefited from a general spike in outsourcing that coincided with the weakening economy.

It may seem that CSG Systems, a provider of customer interaction and billing management software, acquired marketing company Quaero in the nick of time. The deal was announced at the end of the year -- just as it was becoming painfully clear that the recession was likely to be much deeper than initially feared.

The timing was fortunate for Quaero, acknowledged founder Naras Eechambadi. "Being part of a large company certainly has its privileges," he told CRM Buyer. Still, with its mix of outsourced marketing services and Web analytics expertise, Quaero already was carving out a niche of its own.

CRM Buyer spoke with Eechambadi about how the current economic environment is affecting Quaero's direction post acquisition.

To read the article in its entirety, visit CRMBuyer.com