telecom billing
TRANSCRIPT
Thursday, June 2, 2011 1 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Telecom Billing
Thursday, June 2, 2011 2 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Content
● OSS/BSS● Overview of CRM, OM/OF, Billing,
Mediation,Provisioning, Payments, Collections, Inventory
● Overview of Interconnect● Overview of Roaming Process Flow
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BSS/OSS
Thursday, June 2, 2011 4 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
BSS
● BSS stands for Business Support Systems.● Software applications that support customer-
facing activities. Billing, order management, customer relationship management, call center automation, are all BSS applications.
● focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 5 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
OSS● OSS is either Operational Support System
or Operations Support System.● Software (occasionally hardware)
applications that support back-office activities which operate a telco’s network, provision and maintain customer services.
● built around product, service, and resource inventories.
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Billing Introduction● Collecting, aggregating, applying the required charges
and generating the invoices to the customers● Also receiving and reporting the Payments● Timely Billing● Accuracy
Thursday, June 2, 2011 7 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Overview● CRM, OMOF● Provisioning, ● Network Inventory● Mediation● Guiding & Rating, taxes● Discount, Adjustments, billing● Reporting, DWH, FMS, Supply
Chain, ● Payments, Collections
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Customer classifications
● Pre-paid, Post Paid● Individual, Hierarchical● Class based like VIP, General, ● Segmented like Police, Military etc● Mobile, Fixed Line ● Retail, wholesale like MVNO/Re-sellers,
Interconnect Operators, Roaming Partners
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Product
● Real objects (a mobile phone, for example).● Services (a call waiting service on a
telephone system, for example).● More abstract concepts (a service level
agreement, for example)● bundle more than one product into a single
group as a Package
Thursday, June 2, 2011 10 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Tariff/Rate/Price Plan
● Product Initiation Charges● Product Periodic Charges, Product
Termination Charges, Product Suspension Charges ,Product Re-activation Charges,
● Product Usage Charges e.g. Distance based, Volume based, duration based, peak hour rates
Thursday, June 2, 2011 11 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
CRM Billing Provisioning
Thursday, June 2, 2011 12 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
CRM/OMOF BILLING● CRM ( Customer Relationship Management) /OMOF (Order
Management and Order Fulfillment ) system contacts with the billing system and billing system contacts with provisioning system to provision the services and network inventory system as well to assign phone numbers or IP addresses etc.
● Second possibility could be that CRM/OMOF system itself contacts with provisioning system to provision the services and network inventory system as well to assign phone numbers or IP addresses etc
Thursday, June 2, 2011 13 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
CRM● Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for
products.,
● Create and manage customer profiles, Offering Packages/Products
● Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, trouble tickets, requests, and responses.
● Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related
● updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits.
● customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, pro-active campaigns, and retention/loyalty.
● Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.
● Validate customer identity ( Customer Verification)
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OM OF● Issuing new customer orders, modifying
open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders;
● Workflow Orchestration, tracking order starting from its creation till its completion
● Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled;
Thursday, June 2, 2011 15 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
OM OF● Verifying whether specific non-standard
offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable;
● Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process;
● Breaks Order into requests for other NEs● Request will have set of tasks for a NE● Assigning and tracking customer
provisioning activities;
Thursday, June 2, 2011 16 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Provisioning
● takes commands either from the Billing System or CRM/OMOF System to activate, de-activate and suspend the services
● contacts with core network system to activate, de-activate or suspend the services
● sends the response back to either the Billing System or the CRM/OMOF system
Thursday, June 2, 2011 17 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Network Inventory
● maintains all the network identifiers like phone numbers, MSISDN, IP addresses, email addresses etc
● maintain the life cycle of network identifiers which starts with available and then flows through different stages like activation, suspend, terminate, quarantine, and again available.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 18 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Mediation Billing Flow
Thursday, June 2, 2011 19 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Mediation● Collecting CDR files from Network Elements● Validating CDR files e.g. duplicate files,
missing File sequence number● Decode CDRs based on Record Layout of
Network Element● Validate CDRs e.g missing data in CDRs● Aggregate CDRs based on Call ID, Partial
Record indicator & Counters.● Encode & distribute CDRs for different
system like billing, FMS, Interconnect, DWH
Thursday, June 2, 2011 20 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Guiding & Rating● CDRs from the Mediation System or other service providers
or roaming partners in case of roaming usage● Validating the CDRs, eliminate any duplicate records. ● determine the customer account -- Guiding. ● calculate the cost/price of the event as per the rate.● apply rating time discounts.● To store the rated event in the database for a billing purpose
or send it to the external system for billing.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 21 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Billing Engine generate following :● Usage Charges from Rated CDRs in Billing database.● All type of charges ( initiation, installation, periodic,
suspension, termination etc.) product and services.● If there is any refund or any other charges applicable.● Total outstanding from previous bills and LPC.● Total payments made by the customer in the given month.● Total adjustment in favor of or against the customer.● Total discount given to the customer.● Total taxes on usage, NRC/one time and rental/RC charges.● Billing configuration parameter required to run the Billing
Engine, for example payment due date etc.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 22 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
BILL Formatting/Invoicing
● Accepts Data from Billing in ASCII, XML or any other file format
● Generates bill in different type of files like PS, PDF, AFP, XML
● Can have different format based on customer profile
● Can support regional language, currency, marketing messages
● Email bill, Duplicate bill, SMS-bill, Bill view
Thursday, June 2, 2011 23 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Payments
● Payment methods like Cheque, Cash, Credit Card, Direct Debit etc
● Through Bulk Utility from Billing for Cash, Cheque
● Bank interface with API or text file with billing system for payment transfers.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 24 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Collection
● Soft Collection Actions – Sending emails, SMS reminders and requests, Calling the customer
● Hard Collection Actions - barring the services, or disconnecting the services
● If all fails then the service provider may write-off the account and marks the due amount as bad debt or may hand over (sell off) the account to a collection agency.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 25 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Interconnect
Thursday, June 2, 2011 26 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Interconnect ● Interconnect is the process of handling calls
for other service providers. e.g.● Operator A's customer makes national call to Operator B's
customer. In this case operator A will pay to B.● Operator A's customer makes international call through
Operator B, because operator A does not have direct agreement with any international operator. In this case operator A will pay to operator B and operator B will take care of setteling down international operator.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 27 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Interconnect CDRs, Reports
● Every month interconnect partners exchange their CDRs, Reports for reconciliation purpose since error are possible due to different tariff set-up, missing CDR.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 28 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Interconnect Billing
● Bilateral or Unilateral Agreement● Settlement Process– Done for a service for
a period like Monthly, Bi-Monthly, Can be Automated or on demand.
● The Outgoing (Expense to Interconnect Owner) and Incoming (Revenue to Interconnect Owner) traffic
● Netting is done by multiple settlement period for the multiple services.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 29 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Roaming
Thursday, June 2, 2011 30 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Roaming Partners● National or International Roaming.● TAP3 (Transfer Account Procedure 3)
protocol/Standard used to transfer the CDRs data and settlement for the services.
● Returned Accounts Procedure (RAP) files are rejected files/event from TAP files by Operator due to errors
● Roaming Partner will rate the calls and then charge the subscribers home network for all the calls within a file.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 31 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Roaming Process Flow● Create TAP3 standard file send to the Clearhouse● Clearhouse is body who interface between roaming partners
to help them to exchange their CDRs, setting up roaming agreements and resolving any dispute.
● Clearhouse Submit the Data to the Operator it belongs.● Operator process the TAP files , send back the RAP files to
Clearhouse to submit it to Roaming Partner ● Operator Invoices its customer for Roaming Usages.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 32 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
Some Billing System Vendors
system website
Convergys IRB http://www.convergys.com
Amdocs Ensemble http://www.amdocs.com
Ascade http://www.ascade.com/Kenan FX http://www.comverse.com/
Single View http://www.intecbilling.com
Ericsson IN http://www.ericsson.com
Oracle BRM http://www.oracle.com
Thursday, June 2, 2011 33 IBM Confidential, Made by Navin P Chanchal
THANKING YOU