Billing is not an isolated process 
Billing is not an isolated process, particularly in the telecom and ISP industry. Multiplay service providers continually face the following challenge: “Deliver what you sell and invoice what you deliver." This in turn places stringent requirements on an integrated business support system for multiplay service providers.

In practice, this is often a tough assignment in the telecom and ISP industry due to the often complex dependencies between the various disciplines: sales, technical delivery (provisioning) and billing and collection. Often, separate systems are purchased for each of these disciplines. This makes it difficult to manage the subsequent processes that start at order entry.

Ideally, the following would take place: the order entry process drives workflow processes. The workflow results determine the subsequent actions: the provisioning and billing can be activated or deactivated for specific customers and/or services.

An important element in all of this is the product portfolio, which consists of the commercial, technical and financial data and definitions of products (or parts thereof). These are used respectively in sales (order management), technical delivery (provisioning) and finally billing and collection.

These processes are dynamic: the services and products that a customer purchases change (based on customer wishes or other reasons). The so-called MACD process (Move, Add, Change and Delete/Disconnect) places stringent requirements on the continual synchronisation of sales, provisioning and billing processes throughout the entire cycle. Therefore it is essential that a supplier of billing systems is aware of the complexities of the MACD process and of the consequences these processes have on the financial processes.

FIQAS has extensive experience and expertise in this field as well as in the fields of product management, order management and provisioning. In the telecom and ISP industry the FIQAS vision, 'adaptability is the key to success', simply works.

Billing processes: the FIQAS solutions
From the perspective of a Usage Detail Record, the billing process is a complex series of various sub-processes and steps, from collecting data (“usage data”) to payment by your customer. FIQAS delivers products (based on the advanced billing and collection platform Abillity®) and services (Outsourced Billing & Collection Services) that support the billing process 'from collection to collection'.

The FIQAS billing processes has the following systems, which are set up entirely using configuration (rather than programming) and can be managed based on the customer’s wishes and requirements.

• Mediation (= Collection + Conversion)
       collecting “Usage Detail Records” and converting them to “standard” format
• Data-Load 
       transporting data to standard Abillity® Sybase database
• Linking 
       linking usage to the correct customers using unique identifiers
• Deduplication
       quality guarantee against “double” records, based on one or more features
• Rating 
       calculating prices for each “usage detail record”
       “Content Based Rating” for use of any time of information to calculate prices
• Discounting 
       discounts per customer, per invoice (bulk discount) and based on other information
       packages (main product and sub-products)
       cross-selling (dependencies)
• Order Generation 
       compose order lines with fixed sums (subscriptions) and variable sums (usage)
       merge invoice details / collate invoices
• Invoice Generation 
       generate invoice records based on order lines for specific period and using correct currency
• Invoice Printing 
       printing invoices with the correct lay-out and language(for each group of customers), to printer or files
       for print house
• Handling 
       prepare batches for manual processing (for each lay-out, customer type, payment method, etc.)
• Distribution 
       in addition to paper invoices (by mail), also digital invoices (by e-mail)
       and online ( Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment)
• Collection
       Use Accounts Receivable module for automatic collection and payment processing
       reminders and collection procedures

Conclusion
Abillity® shows that FIQAS is a skilled partner that translates its extensive experience in the field of critical business applications to flexible and reliable financial software for the telecom and ISP industry.

More information
For more information about FIQAS in the telecom and ISP industry: call FIQAS on 0297 – 382323. Click here for a case.