The Role of Rating Engine
The role of the rating engine is to apply pricing rules to a given transaction, and route to the rated transaction to the appropriate billing/settlement system.
Rating steps:
(1)Determine
a.Connection date & time
b.Duration
c.Rate period for discounts
i.Time of day (TOD)
ii.Day of week (DOW), holidays
d.Rating increments
i.1, 6, 10, 30, 60 second increments
ii.Per packet, per byte
e.Jurisdiction
i.Regional, National, International
ii.May be used for rating, settlement, tax
(2)Rate table look-up using
a.Event date
b.Event type
c.Optionally
i.Rate table ID
ii.Rate period
iii.Jurisdiction
(3)Calculate event charge
(4)Calculate tax (optional)
(5)Store relevant information on the xDR
Steps to rate a call
(1)Determine charge points
a.Originating charge point
i.“A” number from the CDR (May be the originating cell site address)
ii.Originating charge point = country code + city code + exchange
b.Terminating charge point
i.“B” number from the CDR (May be the terminating cell site address)
ii.Terminating charge point = country code + city code + exchange
(2)Retrieve place names
a.Table: Charge point place names
b.Originating & terminating
c.Store on CDR
(3)Determine band
a.Fixed or Mobile
b.Terminating country
c.Terminating network
d.First 5 minutes etc
(4)Rate table look up using
a.Rate Table ID (optional)
i.Assuming rates specific to rate plans
b.Call date
c.Call type
d.Band
e.Rate period (optional)
i.May be a flat discount percentage applied
(5)Rate table look up may return
a.Flat price per event
b.Rate per increment
c.Rate per increment + discounts
Showing posts with label Operation Support System. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operation Support System. Show all posts
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Billing Process
Definition:Network data management (i.e., mediation) and rating are the key OSS elements that support the billing process.
Purpose of a Billing System:
•Meter and bill the services consumed by the customer
•Allow definition of different rates for services
•Allow easy management of customer accounts
•Maintain record of payments received
Billing Functionality:
Billing is more than just a means of collecting money. In a marketplace fueled by competition, Carriers are recognizing billing as a strategic weapon in the battle for new and retained business.
Various types of telecom billing includes
Wireless Billing
Convergent Billing
Interconnect Billing
IP Billing
Critical Billing requirements include
•Flexible rating capability for new services
•Multi-mode processing : real time, hot or batch
•Multi-party settlement capability
•Service convergent
•Unified accounting: postpay/ prepay/ nowpay
•Adaptability and ease of use
•Multi-territory and multi-role capabilities
•Carrier- grade performance
–Functional
–Scalable
–Useable
–Available
Key definitions
•Account: Any customer is represented in the billing system as an account. One account can have only one customer
•Plan: A plan is a bundle of services associated with the account
•Service / Product: Different billing vendors have different definitions for service…. check out the definition for specific package
•Billing cycle: A periodic cycle for which the customer is billed. E.g. from the 4th of a month to the 3rd of the next month. Can be weekly, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly
•Accounting cycle: A cycle for which the charges against an account are calculated (not billed)…typically monthly.
•Recurring Charge (RC): A predetermined charge associated with a product or service that is assessed on a regular interval i.e., monthly, quarterly, annually
Mediation Systems:
The role of mediation systems is to capture usage information from the network and service infrastructure, and distribute it to upstream billing, settlement, marketing and other BSSs.
Mediation processes the Call Detail Record (CDR), call, message, usage, traffic, ticket, event, xDR
Usage types can be
•Fixed to Fixed
•Fixed to Mobile
•Mobile to Fixed
•Mobile to Mobile
•Roaming
•Value Added Services (SMS, Call Forward, etc.)
Key activities in Mediation – Usage collection
•Polling / Data Collection
•Consolidator across network elements
•Standardize inputs to Biller
•Support for real time applications
•Drop non-billable usage
•Reformat, validate, number translations
•Direct usage between applications
•Insulate the biller from Network elements
The validation functions in mediation includes:
•Duplicate checks
•Drop calls
•Perform edits and translations
•Creating message legs
•Table look up and conversion (CLLI -> country code, city code, exchange)
•Assign a unique tag number to the event
Purpose of a Billing System:
•Meter and bill the services consumed by the customer
•Allow definition of different rates for services
•Allow easy management of customer accounts
•Maintain record of payments received
Billing Functionality:
Billing is more than just a means of collecting money. In a marketplace fueled by competition, Carriers are recognizing billing as a strategic weapon in the battle for new and retained business.
Various types of telecom billing includes
Wireless Billing
Convergent Billing
Interconnect Billing
IP Billing
Critical Billing requirements include
•Flexible rating capability for new services
•Multi-mode processing : real time, hot or batch
•Multi-party settlement capability
•Service convergent
•Unified accounting: postpay/ prepay/ nowpay
•Adaptability and ease of use
•Multi-territory and multi-role capabilities
•Carrier- grade performance
–Functional
–Scalable
–Useable
–Available
Key definitions
•Account: Any customer is represented in the billing system as an account. One account can have only one customer
•Plan: A plan is a bundle of services associated with the account
•Service / Product: Different billing vendors have different definitions for service…. check out the definition for specific package
•Billing cycle: A periodic cycle for which the customer is billed. E.g. from the 4th of a month to the 3rd of the next month. Can be weekly, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly
•Accounting cycle: A cycle for which the charges against an account are calculated (not billed)…typically monthly.
•Recurring Charge (RC): A predetermined charge associated with a product or service that is assessed on a regular interval i.e., monthly, quarterly, annually
Mediation Systems:
The role of mediation systems is to capture usage information from the network and service infrastructure, and distribute it to upstream billing, settlement, marketing and other BSSs.
Mediation processes the Call Detail Record (CDR), call, message, usage, traffic, ticket, event, xDR
Usage types can be
•Fixed to Fixed
•Fixed to Mobile
•Mobile to Fixed
•Mobile to Mobile
•Roaming
•Value Added Services (SMS, Call Forward, etc.)
Key activities in Mediation – Usage collection
•Polling / Data Collection
•Consolidator across network elements
•Standardize inputs to Biller
•Support for real time applications
•Drop non-billable usage
•Reformat, validate, number translations
•Direct usage between applications
•Insulate the biller from Network elements
The validation functions in mediation includes:
•Duplicate checks
•Drop calls
•Perform edits and translations
•Creating message legs
•Table look up and conversion (CLLI -> country code, city code, exchange)
•Assign a unique tag number to the event
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Inventory Management OSS
The inventory management OSS keeps track of all the physical, logical and other network assets, as well as the assignment of those assets to customers.
Need for automated inventory management system:
•As communications networks evolve into more complex service platforms with layered technologies and multi-vendor systems, it is imperative to have a simple, flexible, and consistent way to manage and to maintain how networks are configured.
•Telecom operators must maintain configuration records and without integration, these records rapidly become unmanageable being a mixture of paper files, spread sheets or in-house localized databases.
Benefits include
•Increases the quality of the data in the system, and minimizes the administrative burden of re-keying data
•It achieves flow through provisioning by integrating with
oPre-Ordering processes.
oService Provisioning
oService Assurance
The Network Inventory and Design subsystem brings together several vital functions –
1.planning and development,
2.intelligent routing, and
3.inventory management
In Inventory system, a carrier stores all its information regarding the inventory (facilities and equipment) available on its network.
Determine whether or not the requested service can be supplied.
Answers questions such as:
•Is the proper equipment in place or must new equipment be installed?
•Are the proper facility circuits-the high-capacity circuits that provide backbone transport-already assigned, or do they need to be configured?
Inventory management includes both:
•Inventory creation: Inventory creation refers to creating new network resources in the inventory in accordance with network growth forecasts.
•The provisioning of customer services utilizes powerful network
oProvisioning of customer services.
oInventory algorithms to design and assign network components, ensuring rapid and accurate service delivery.
Network Inventory Management system does network maintenance and restoration to maintain the operational integrity of the network.
Network inventory manager provides you with wide variety of powerful tools to document almost every aspect of your network
Network Circuit Design:
•The circuit design module designs many different configurations of the network before finalizing on the optimum one based on the service provider's strengths and weaknesses.
•These networks can be displayed graphically with drill-down capabilities to equipment, including routers and ports.
•The user has the ability to manage capacity at the link/connection level, as well as the equipment level, in order to support the provisioning of traditional and converged networks.’
•Rules-based Design functionality promotes following capabilities:
oDefine Logical Network Systems–You can specify a collection of elements that can be combined and arranged to define logical network systems and the services enabled by the networks.
oDefine Logical Network Templates–These templates allow you to define and maintain rules governing the ordering, design and provisioning of various logical network systems.
oDesign Connections–You can design connections for data, voice and video.In addition Graphical Layout Record (GLR) supports the design of physical connections.
•Circuit design is more related to the service delivery part as it involves configuration and design for providing a service to the end customer.
•The network inventory provides the service assurance part as it takes care of the network data, fault management and recovery from disasters.
Inventory Management system functionality:
•Standard interfaces to integrate with order management, customer care and provisioning etc.
•Web enabled solutions.
•Real time discovery of network elements and fault management.
•Client/server distributed architecture
•Scalability—integrate with server group to reduce database traffic, allowing more users to work expeditiously
•Sophisticated but easy-to-track system of network views
•Network configuration data represented by maps, drawings, symbols, and icons
•Dynamic, interactive relationship with hierarchical browser display and graphics window display, thus providing up-to-date physical locations and specifications in text and graphics
•Easily accessible vendor information on all network objects
•Built-in library of maps, locations, floor drawings, and network object symbols
•Management of network design stages and role assignments
Need for automated inventory management system:
•As communications networks evolve into more complex service platforms with layered technologies and multi-vendor systems, it is imperative to have a simple, flexible, and consistent way to manage and to maintain how networks are configured.
•Telecom operators must maintain configuration records and without integration, these records rapidly become unmanageable being a mixture of paper files, spread sheets or in-house localized databases.
Benefits include
•Increases the quality of the data in the system, and minimizes the administrative burden of re-keying data
•It achieves flow through provisioning by integrating with
oPre-Ordering processes.
oService Provisioning
oService Assurance
The Network Inventory and Design subsystem brings together several vital functions –
1.planning and development,
2.intelligent routing, and
3.inventory management
In Inventory system, a carrier stores all its information regarding the inventory (facilities and equipment) available on its network.
Determine whether or not the requested service can be supplied.
Answers questions such as:
•Is the proper equipment in place or must new equipment be installed?
•Are the proper facility circuits-the high-capacity circuits that provide backbone transport-already assigned, or do they need to be configured?
Inventory management includes both:
•Inventory creation: Inventory creation refers to creating new network resources in the inventory in accordance with network growth forecasts.
•The provisioning of customer services utilizes powerful network
oProvisioning of customer services.
oInventory algorithms to design and assign network components, ensuring rapid and accurate service delivery.
Network Inventory Management system does network maintenance and restoration to maintain the operational integrity of the network.
Network inventory manager provides you with wide variety of powerful tools to document almost every aspect of your network
Network Circuit Design:
•The circuit design module designs many different configurations of the network before finalizing on the optimum one based on the service provider's strengths and weaknesses.
•These networks can be displayed graphically with drill-down capabilities to equipment, including routers and ports.
•The user has the ability to manage capacity at the link/connection level, as well as the equipment level, in order to support the provisioning of traditional and converged networks.’
•Rules-based Design functionality promotes following capabilities:
oDefine Logical Network Systems–You can specify a collection of elements that can be combined and arranged to define logical network systems and the services enabled by the networks.
oDefine Logical Network Templates–These templates allow you to define and maintain rules governing the ordering, design and provisioning of various logical network systems.
oDesign Connections–You can design connections for data, voice and video.In addition Graphical Layout Record (GLR) supports the design of physical connections.
•Circuit design is more related to the service delivery part as it involves configuration and design for providing a service to the end customer.
•The network inventory provides the service assurance part as it takes care of the network data, fault management and recovery from disasters.
Inventory Management system functionality:
•Standard interfaces to integrate with order management, customer care and provisioning etc.
•Web enabled solutions.
•Real time discovery of network elements and fault management.
•Client/server distributed architecture
•Scalability—integrate with server group to reduce database traffic, allowing more users to work expeditiously
•Sophisticated but easy-to-track system of network views
•Network configuration data represented by maps, drawings, symbols, and icons
•Dynamic, interactive relationship with hierarchical browser display and graphics window display, thus providing up-to-date physical locations and specifications in text and graphics
•Easily accessible vendor information on all network objects
•Built-in library of maps, locations, floor drawings, and network object symbols
•Management of network design stages and role assignments
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Service Fulfillment Process : OSS
The "fulfillment" process embodies a range of OSSs — including
order management,
inventory,
provisioning,
service activation.
Order Management :
The order management and provisioning processes is the key OSSs involved in configuring the network to deliver the service desired by the customer (i.e., fulfillment).
The aim of an order management system (OMS) is to order the service the customer requests, support changes when necessary, keep the customer informed with meaningful progress of their order, and track and manage to successful and on-time completion.
The process begins with an order or, in some cases, pre-sale activity. The process ends with a completed order, a delighted customer and sufficient information to build or update a customer account record in trouble/problem handling, performance reporting and billing processes and systems.
Benifits of Order Management :
Time-to-market for new services is minimized
Failed orders is reduced to zero
Time to deliver services is minimized
Labor-intensive manual processes are eliminated
Reliable service to customers
Features of Order Management :
Accepting orders
Pre-order activity
Integration with Inventory database
Integration with SLA to know whether the customer is eligible for the service ordered and also to estimate the price for the service.
Reserve available facilities to support the order.
Initiate service installation
Notifying the customer
Initiate billing process
Order plan development
Request customer deposit
Issue order and tracking order status
Integration with workflow management system to dispatch a technician to install a service
Web ordering
Data-driven Architecture
API Support
Workflow engine
Notification for new ticket assignments or escalations to appropriate personnel, individuals or teams
Multi Platform Support
Quote service price
Payment engine
Integration with CRM
Core Business processes in Order Management:
Accepting orders
Pre-order activity and Credit Check
Price estimates
Order plan development
Request customer deposit
Reserve number
Initiate service installation
Notifying the customer
Initiate billing process
Order Manager:
The order manager coordinates all aspects and processes related to fulfilling an order — including validation, service decomposition, inventory update, provisioning, billing and testing
Provisioning Process:
The provisioning OSS works with the order manager to activate the service within the corresponding network element(s).The provisioning OSS also handles configuring the network for dynamically-oriented transactions — such as authentication, accounting, authorization, roaming, etc.
OMS Detailed Business Processes[Generic]:
(1) validate the order whether it is completed or not
(1 A)Determine which services create the product offering/Product Bundling
(1 B)Determine key configuration/design attributes for the service
(1 C)Steps required to configure the service.
(2)For each service , check whether inventory is available and assign.
(3)If additional infrastructure is required schedule the installation via the WFMS[Work Force Management System] or any partner.
(4)Schedule any internal configuration CPE installation etc.
(5)Provisioning Commands to the network subsystems or the network elements.
(6)Update Inventory [Logical and Physical]
(7)Perform Testing
(8)Start Billing
(9)Update customer management ,service assurance.
Service Fulfillment flow:
•Sales process caters for the customer queries, for the various available services.
•Customer places the service order directly to the order management system or through sales process.
•Order management process hands over this order to Service Configuration process to activate the service.Customer related details are saved in the OMS, which can be used by the assurance and billing processes.
•Service Configuration system assigns this service request to Network Provisioning System , that in turn sends this request to its sub-process “Network Configuration and Routing” to actually configure the service at Network Element Level.
•Network Configuration and Routing system checks the validity and availability of the network data through Network Inventory Management sub-process and then configures the service on Network Element Management and network elements .
•After configuration of Service, Security sub-process checks for the network access on the configured elements .
•Network Configuration and Routing sub-process requests the Test Management sub-process to check the configured service . This test sub-process checks whether configured service is working or not . Test completion results are sent back to the Network Configuration and Routing sub-process .
•Network Configuration and routing sub-process sends the network completion status to the Network Provisioning process . If the Service is successfully configured, Network Inventory Management sub-process is updated with data used for assigning the service.
•Network provisioning system updates the Service Configuration process after assignment of service is completed .
•Service Provisioning process informs the Order Management about the result of Service Request . It also updates billing system to start the billing for the given customer.
•Sales process or Order Management system informs the Customer about the activation of service it has asked for.
order management,
inventory,
provisioning,
service activation.
Order Management :
The order management and provisioning processes is the key OSSs involved in configuring the network to deliver the service desired by the customer (i.e., fulfillment).
The aim of an order management system (OMS) is to order the service the customer requests, support changes when necessary, keep the customer informed with meaningful progress of their order, and track and manage to successful and on-time completion.
The process begins with an order or, in some cases, pre-sale activity. The process ends with a completed order, a delighted customer and sufficient information to build or update a customer account record in trouble/problem handling, performance reporting and billing processes and systems.
Benifits of Order Management :
Time-to-market for new services is minimized
Failed orders is reduced to zero
Time to deliver services is minimized
Labor-intensive manual processes are eliminated
Reliable service to customers
Features of Order Management :
Accepting orders
Pre-order activity
Integration with Inventory database
Integration with SLA to know whether the customer is eligible for the service ordered and also to estimate the price for the service.
Reserve available facilities to support the order.
Initiate service installation
Notifying the customer
Initiate billing process
Order plan development
Request customer deposit
Issue order and tracking order status
Integration with workflow management system to dispatch a technician to install a service
Web ordering
Data-driven Architecture
API Support
Workflow engine
Notification for new ticket assignments or escalations to appropriate personnel, individuals or teams
Multi Platform Support
Quote service price
Payment engine
Integration with CRM
Core Business processes in Order Management:
Accepting orders
Pre-order activity and Credit Check
Price estimates
Order plan development
Request customer deposit
Reserve number
Initiate service installation
Notifying the customer
Initiate billing process
Order Manager:
The order manager coordinates all aspects and processes related to fulfilling an order — including validation, service decomposition, inventory update, provisioning, billing and testing
Provisioning Process:
The provisioning OSS works with the order manager to activate the service within the corresponding network element(s).The provisioning OSS also handles configuring the network for dynamically-oriented transactions — such as authentication, accounting, authorization, roaming, etc.
OMS Detailed Business Processes[Generic]:
(1) validate the order whether it is completed or not
(1 A)Determine which services create the product offering/Product Bundling
(1 B)Determine key configuration/design attributes for the service
(1 C)Steps required to configure the service.
(2)For each service , check whether inventory is available and assign.
(3)If additional infrastructure is required schedule the installation via the WFMS[Work Force Management System] or any partner.
(4)Schedule any internal configuration CPE installation etc.
(5)Provisioning Commands to the network subsystems or the network elements.
(6)Update Inventory [Logical and Physical]
(7)Perform Testing
(8)Start Billing
(9)Update customer management ,service assurance.
Service Fulfillment flow:
•Sales process caters for the customer queries, for the various available services.
•Customer places the service order directly to the order management system or through sales process.
•Order management process hands over this order to Service Configuration process to activate the service.Customer related details are saved in the OMS, which can be used by the assurance and billing processes.
•Service Configuration system assigns this service request to Network Provisioning System , that in turn sends this request to its sub-process “Network Configuration and Routing” to actually configure the service at Network Element Level.
•Network Configuration and Routing system checks the validity and availability of the network data through Network Inventory Management sub-process and then configures the service on Network Element Management and network elements .
•After configuration of Service, Security sub-process checks for the network access on the configured elements .
•Network Configuration and Routing sub-process requests the Test Management sub-process to check the configured service . This test sub-process checks whether configured service is working or not . Test completion results are sent back to the Network Configuration and Routing sub-process .
•Network Configuration and routing sub-process sends the network completion status to the Network Provisioning process . If the Service is successfully configured, Network Inventory Management sub-process is updated with data used for assigning the service.
•Network provisioning system updates the Service Configuration process after assignment of service is completed .
•Service Provisioning process informs the Order Management about the result of Service Request . It also updates billing system to start the billing for the given customer.
•Sales process or Order Management system informs the Customer about the activation of service it has asked for.
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