Telesoft

The main task in CC&B (Customer Care and Billing) System is to receive and rate call data records and generate invoices for your customers. Business operation comprises the fields’ customer care, administration of resources and dealer structures, mediating subscriber data to switches, call rating or charging, billing, financials, reporting, marketing and sales, and data exchange with international roaming partners, partner networks, or service providers. CC&B System can be employed by network operators and service providers all over the world. It covers all range of telecommunication markets.

It may interface several other systems such as SAP for financials or workflow management systems. Of dominant importance are the mediation of activations to the switch (or provisioning in fixed networks), collection of call records from the switches, generation of invoices with specific format and layout and automatic processing of payments ordered or received from bank or credit card institutes. It also can be interfaced CRM for improved and extended customer relations management.

It is able to handle and maintain various kinds of networks simultaneously. Following the multi-market concept the subscriber-related data are entered only once. An individual subscriber may have one or several contract entities. Hence, all modifications which are service and market related can be made by the same account. An individual subscriber is payment responsible and held several subscriptions belonging to various markets, he will receive the invoice for all contracts and he will pay for all contracted services. Typically, a contract subscribes several services as a package. The possibility to provide one invoice containing prices of different services is called convergent billing. Therefore the billing process takes all CDRs of a billing period together and creates on invoice.

Figure below depicts the Network Management Forum (NMF) simplified diagram of the business processes used by a typical operator company. The boxes with the black indicator in the upper corner of Figure below represent processes not usually associated with billing:

NMF Business Process Model

Billing System Requirements

The following are standard telephony requirements used when issuing a request for proposal (RFP) for a new billing system or an enhancement to an existing one:

• customer-interface management—The billing system must be able to handle customer-initiated contact, oversee outbound customer contact, and manage the contact life cycle.
• sales and marketing—A satisfactory billing system should answer customer query, handle commissions, provide sales support, track prospects, manage campaigns, analyze product performance, and acquire multiple dwelling units (MDUs).
• order handling—It is crucial that the billing system maintain customer-account information, manage the order-entry life cycle, and oversee the order-completion life cycle.
• problem handling—Billing systems should also be able to manage trouble-ticket entry, coordinate trouble-ticket closure, and track the resolution progress of a trouble ticket.
• performance reporting—A satisfactory system will provide performance reporting, ensure quality-of-service (QoS) reporting, create management reports, and generate regulatory reports.
• invoicing and collections—It is important that the system perform billing inquiry, generate bills, handle collections, process deposits, perform account administration, maintain tax and fee information, process financial information, and manage customer-premises equipment (CPE) inventory information.
• rating and discounting—Billing systems must manage products and services, coordinate rate plans, and rate customer-usage records.
• installation and maintenance—The system should also provide workforce scheduling and manage activities performed at the customer premises.
• usage and performance data collection—An adequate system will collect data and handle interface from other providers.
• information-systems management—Billing systems might also be called on to perform configuration management, ensure security management, oversee fault management, monitor performance, and manage accounts.
• systems architecture and environment—A billing system should perform data audits and integrity checks