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21st Century & Billings

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DQI Bureau
New Update

“As IP-based services evolve, the focus on content increases. Thus, it is imperative to adopt a system ensuring flexibility and top functional value”

Atul Chopra

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The mobile telecom industry continues to grow through restructuring and

consolidation throughout the globe. Increasing competition and corresponding

drop in average revenues per users (Arpus) mean that operators are under

pressure to adopt cost-saving measures and face corresponding delayed sales

cycles.

The onset of high-end network generates inherent complexities for billing

systems, in terms of decisions related to installation, pricing, replacement,

upgrades, integration and scope of the deals. As IP-based services such as data,

video, graphics and location-based services evolve, the focus on content

increases. Thus, it is imperative to adopt a system ensuring flexibility and

optimum functionality.

Convergent billing



Investing in a new off-the-shelf billing system every time, for each new service
introduced, is an expensive and sub-optimal proposition for operators.

Convergent billing, which enables multi-service packaging and pricing, entices a

service provider’s existing customers to subscribe to new services, and

attracts new customers through innovative service bundling.

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In a highly competitive market, service providers must seek new services that

differentiate them from the rest. Unified customer account records enable

multi-service providers to get a 360-degree view of customers.

Traditional rating for service providers provides a set of hard-coded

programs into the core software of the billing system. A rules-based rating

engine would enable service-providers to bring new services to market quickly,

to increase profitability and improve customer satisfaction by managing services

in real time. The number of call detail records (CDRs) rated per day would be

more meaningful, if CDRs are rated and billed online. This would help service

providers to keep track of subscriber usage and outstation payments, and spot

fraud patterns.

Organizations across the world are increasingly adopting a

"self-care" approach to their business. Using this approach, employees

and customers are empowered to fulfill their requirements by self-service. This

approach reduces incremental operational costs for organizations, hastens

internal processes and reduces the cost of acquisition of new customers, through

Internet based self-provisioning. In addition, a Web-enabled, self-care

solution, acting as an electronic channel, would give customers the ability to

manage their own accounts and would support one-to-one marketing, online

shopping and ordering, account management and electronic bill presentation and

payment.

The growing adaptation of telecom business processes requires a sophisticated

and robust "Electronic Bill Presentation and Payment" system. This

system would go beyond ordinary bill "presentation" and would include

"analysis" and personalization as well. The 21st century billing

system would need to be far more than just a machine chruning out basic receipts

and papers–it would need to incorporate out-of-the-box functionalities that

help capture new markets, provide end-to-end solutions for point of sales to

churn management. This would be coupled with the benefits of providing a

significant cost advantage and an easy of deployment of the solutions. In

addition, billing systems would also provide other functionalities, apart from

being quickly customizable. Therefore, it is imperative for service providers to

optimize their billing solutions to suit to the need of the hour.

The author is chief executive officer of Lifetree Convergence. The full

column can be accessed at www.dqindia.com

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