CSG International

CSG was founded in 1982 by Neal Hansen under the name Cable Services Group (CSG) as a division of the payment processing company First Data Corporation.[3] At the time, First Data was operated by American Express, which acquired a controlling interest in the company in 1980.[4] CSG became a part of the American Express Information Services Company, which was formed in 1989.[5] The CSG group's first large-scale billing statement processing center, which prints and mails bills to consumers, was established in Omaha in 1990.[6]

Hansen left the Cable Services Group one year after it was founded to become CEO of Applied Communications, where he met George Haddix.[3][7] Hansen and Haddix formed CSG Holdings with Morgan Stanley and Trident Investment Group in 1994, which acquired Cable Services Group that year for $137 million.[3][8] In November 1994, Cable Services Group was renamed to CSG Systems International.[7]

CSG was the second largest billing services provider for the US cable television industry by 1994,[9][10] serving 27 percent of cable TV subscribers.[8] However, according to The International Directory of Company Histories, its profit margins were small and the company was "still in need of a turnaround."[7] Broadcasting & Cable said CSG had lost direction and become complacent. Haddix and Hansen implemented changes at the company,[3] which prompted 350 out of 500 employees to leave the firm within a few months.[7]

The new CSG grew quickly.[6][11] The convergence of phone, internet, on-demand movies, and other services created more complex billing arrangements between telecommunications companies and consumers, which led to more extensive use of billing services providers like CSG.[11] Professional services and international clients, which were previously not a significant portion of revenues, grew to 22 percent of revenues by the mid-1990s.[6][7]

In order to pay off debt and raise funding for acquisitions, CSG held an initial public offering in February 1996, which valued the firm at five-fold its original acquisition price.[7][12] CSG grew from $80 million in annual revenue when it was acquired, to $132.3 million when it went public in 1996 and $171.7 million by 1997.[6]

In the 1990s, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) and Time Warner scrapped efforts to create internal billing software and hired CSG International.[11] The 15-year agreement CSG signed with TCI on August 11, 1997[13] made CSG the largest vendor in the industry[6] and was the primary contributor to its growth in the '90s.[13] By 2001, the deal was responsible for 45 percent of CSG's revenue.[14] As part of the deal, CSG also acquired TCI's internally developed software, SummiTrack, for $106 million.[11][13] CSG's services to TCI included billing, customer management, and payment processing for TCI customers.[15] In October 1997, CSG International signed its first deal with a utilities company, mc2.[11]

At the end of 1997, CSG co-founder George Haddix retired, and former EVP Jack Pogge was appointed president and chief operating officer in his place.[16] In 1999, CSG began constructing a new bill processing center in Florida in a deal with local government, which expanded roads and provided other incentives.[17] In 2002, CSG acquired the billing software interests of Lucent Technologies for $260 million.[18][19] The deal was estimated to increase CSG's revenues by 38 percent and its headcount by 65 percent.[20] 200 Lucent employees were laid off as a result of the acquisition.[18] An additional 100–150 CSG employees were laid off later that year in response to poor economic conditions.[21]

AT&T acquired TCI in 2000, inheriting its agreement with CSG.[14] AT&T alleged CSG was not abiding by the contract's terms to provide favorable rates. A legal dispute between the two companies began in 2001 in arbitration court. Before the dispute was resolved, AT&T Broadband was acquired by Comcast, which wanted to use its own billing and customer service vendor. In October 2002, a judge ruled that CSG owed Comcast a $120 million refund and that it had to reduce its prices.[22][23][24] The two companies disagreed over whether the ruling would allow Comcast to halt their agreement before the end of its term.[25] CSG and Comcast reached new agreements or extensions in March 2004[26] and in 2008.[27] In 2014, its work with Comcast was expanded to cover all of its customer support and billing for residential services.[28]

In March 2005, co-founder Neal Hansen retired at the age of 64. Ed Nafus, prior president of the broadband services division, took his place.[29] Nafus was replaced as CEO by Peter Kalan, at the end of 2007.[30] In November 2015, it was announced that Bret Griess would be succeeding Kalan as president and CEO.[31] In August 2020, Brian Shepherd took over as president and CEO.[32]

As of December 31, 2019, CSG operates across more than 120 countries worldwide and has a total of 4,339 employees, an increase of 374 employees compared to the previous year.'[1]

CSG originally sold two versions of its billing process outsourcing services. Under new leadership in 1994, it began developing additional software and providing consulting to in-house billing departments.[7][10] During this period, it developed CSG Workforce Express® (now Field Service Management), a suite of software products that manage the dispatch of technicians and other logistics at customer sites. Workforce Express consists of three applications: CSG Workforce Management, CSG TechNet and CSG TechNet CE, which integrate with CSG's databases and billing systems.[7][55] It also developed CSG Care Express, which is for creating online self-service portals for consumers to view and pay their bills online.[7][56]

In the 1990s, CSG introduced the ACSR (Advanced Customer Service Representative) system.[7] An extension to ACSR called ProfitNow! was introduced in 2003. ProfitNow! used a consumer's account data to advise customer service representatives on the likelihood of a caller cancelling their service or buying a new product.[57] It was later turned into an online system with a user interface similar to Microsoft Windows at CSG.net.[7] CSG purchased the Kenan FX software from Lucent Technologies in 2002. Kenan software managed billing and ordering and provided middle-ware to help various customer service and billing products integrate with each other.[58] CSG NextGen was introduced for international markets, with support for multiple languages.[7] In March 2014, CSG added a cybersecurity suite to its product portfolio, under the name CSG Invotas.[59] The company released CSG Ascendon®, a digital platform for communications service providers, in March 2015. The platform uses content monetization and delivery systems without making excessive changes to existing infrastructure.[60] In November 2015, the Invotas unit was spun off into a separate entity.[61] Invotas was acquired by FireEye in a transaction that closed February 1, 2016.[62]

The company released CSG Detect,[63] a software as a service (SaaS) system, in February 2019.[64] The system is aimed at detecting and notifying telecommunications companies real-time of potential fraud in their billing process. In July 2019,[65] the company introduced CSG Field Service Management, a cloud-based advancement of its Workforce Express product suite.[66] CSG Field Service Management is part of the company's Customer Communication Management portfolio, which customers use to send over 1.5 billion messages to their end-users each year. The company announced[67] the availability of its Dispute Reconciliation Management system (DRM) in September 2019.[68] The system provides service providers with the tools and support to automate the reconciliation and dispute process. CSG Dispute Reconciliation Management is a part of the company's digital Wholesale suite of products and systems. The company introduced[69] Ascendon Communications, the industry's first software as a service (SaaS)-delivered, cloud-based business support systems (BSS) system, in October 2019.[70]

In April 2019,[71] CSG announced the opening of a technology lab to adopt blockchain technology across the wholesale business support systems (BSS) industry.[72] In May 2019,[73] the company announced the availability of its Mediation platform as a cloud-based system.[74] In June 2019, CSG and ITW Global Leaders' Forum (GLF) announced a partnership[75] to create an open blockchain ecosystem called the Communications Blockchain Network (CBN).

In March 2020,[76] Forte®, a CSG company, announced its BillPay system including omnichannel accessibility, payer-friendly navigation, biller customization, and advanced tech.[77]