Dramatic change in the telecoms industry is redefining the sector's approach to process control, margin management and billing and rate changes. To keep pace with these developments and commercial pressures, providers need a state of the art wholesale billing system. Undoubtedly next-generation wholesale billing software can offer better controlled and more efficient processes, allowing users to add value to their organization and achieve not only sustainable performance but demonstrate strong governance as well.
We identify ten key issues operators need to consider when investing in next-generation billing solutions.
Flexible billing architecture
As the market becomes increasingly dynamic, operators need to support a range of billing and settlement models in a single integrated platform, from simple voice and data traffic using international route-based tariffs, to new IP-based traffic and complex revenue sharing agreements involving multimedia, content and commerce partners. There is an increasing trend for multi-party settlement to be supported where a single event record can be used as the basis for revenue settlement with any number of partners, as well as the need for real-time, web-based partner access. In short, the wholesale billing system needs to be highly adaptable and support any type of settlement model.
Billing for new revenue streams
To exploit the opportunities presented by content-driven business models, wholesale billing systems must be able to provide full support for processing data and varied content in addition to traditional voice traffic, for a variety of different scenarios. This requires the ability to account for non-usage events such as leased lines and facility rentals, as well as one-off charges for IP peering agreements. To tap into new revenue streams, operators need to deploy sophisticated cross-product and cross-partner discounting schemes, a crucial first step in developing intricate business to business content settlement agreements.
Rapid time to market
Systems that can improve an operator's time to market for new and more complex business scenarios are essential. The sooner a new service scenario can be supported the better, so that marketing departments can create and launch new products faster than their competitors. A billing solution should be able to manage financial, call count, usage, tiered and threshold discounts as well as penalty rates. Once these triggers have been activated, the system should allow for certain types of traffic to be cross-discounted. Operators also require volume based settlement capabilities to negotiate or offer flexible agreements and defined rates based on traffic volumes.
Billing on time
High on the agenda for most operators is the need to increase productivity, eliminate delays in revenue recognition and improve cash flow. One area in which they can achieve this is by removing repetitive administration processes associated with generating interconnect statements and invoices - making them more accurate, controlled and auditable. Invoice production can be streamlined by enabling the segregation of the billing period into revenue and expense elements so that revenue can be closed off and invoiced immediately without having to wait for outstanding rating information to be in place before the billing period can be closed. In addition, users need a flexible user interface that allows them to aggregate and filter invoice information and generate generic or operator specific invoice formats, as well as automate multiple levels of tax calculations, exchange rate conversion, payment tracking and supplementary invoice generation.