1. RATING AND BILLING

2. Rating and Billing www.prolearninghub.com Module Objectives After you complete this module, you will be able to: Explain the basics of rating and billing. Explain baling system components. Explain piling concept. Explain rating and billing flow. Explain credit control. Explain the various billing models.

3. What is a Billing System? www.prolearninghub.com Billing system is: The heart of service provider's set of systems. A system which defines the revenue model. A system which bills the customer accurately in time with no over bill or no under bill. Over bill leads to customer dissatisfaction. Under bill leads to revenue loss.

4. Billing in Business Process Framework (eTOM) Model www.prolearninghub.com The billing process broadly comes under the Operations section in the eTOM model. CUSTOMER Strategy, Infrastructure & ProductOperations Strategy & Commit Infrastructure Lifecycle Management Product Lifecycle Management Operations Support and Readiness FulfillmentAssuranceBilling Marketing & Offer ManagementCustomer Relationship Management Service Development & ManagementService Development & Operations Resource Development & Management (Application, Computing and Networking) Resource Development & Operations (Application, Computing and Networking) Supply chain Development & ManagementSupplier / Partner Relationship & Management Enterprise Management Strategic & Enterprise Planning Brand Management, Market Research & Advertising Stakeholder & External Relations Management Disaster Recovery. Security & Fraud Management Financial & Asset Management Human Resources Management Research & Development, Technology Acquisition Enterprise Quality Management, Process & IT Planning & Architecture

5. COTS Products in Mediation Space www.prolearninghub.com Let us have a look at various COTS products in the mediation space. COTS Products GeneralRBRedKneeOracle BRM AMDOCS Ensemble, Enabler Single View Interconnect PriceMaker Kennon ArborLHS BSCS IXUnicorn

6. Billing System Components www.prolearninghub.com A billing system is composed of a series of independent applications. When these applications are run together, they are referred to as the billing system. Let us take a look at the billing system components in detail. Billing Rating Engine Others Example: Re- rating, Bulk Operate Collections Payment Bill Formatting Billing Engine Discounting ProductTariff Customer Customer Management Others. For example: Inventory, Collection, Payment Product Configuration Price Configuration Discount Configuration Data Base Server side process GUI modules for configuration

7. Billing System Components www.prolearninghub.com Customer Management This includes customer related configuration. Product Configuration This includes product related configuration. Price ConfigurationThis includes price related configuration. Discount Configuration This includes discount related configuration.

8. Billing System Components www.prolearninghub.com CustomerThis has customer related data such as customer name and customer address. TariffThis has tariff related data such as tariff plan name, SMS rates, and call rates. ProductThis has product related data such as product name, product number, and product cost.

9. Billing System Components www.prolearninghub.com Rating Engine Rating engine uses customer details, product details, and tariff details to prepare exact applicable changes. Discounting Discount is a way of giving customer money off. Discount defines an amount of money to be applied to the products or usage that meet certain criteria. Billing Engine Billing engine takes the input from various sources and pulls them together to calculate the charges and prepares the bill data. Bill Formatting Bill formatting generates final formatted bills. The bill formatters take the billing engine output and usually generate either post script file or a PDF file. Payment A customer can make payment using cheque, credit card, direct debit, cash, wire transfers, and so on. Collections Collection usually Involves sending notifications to the customer and taking approbate actions in absence of due payments after the due date.

10. Rating and Billing www.prolearninghub.com Billing Concept After learning about the billing components, let us explore the billing concepts in detail. We will consider Saurabh's example to understand these concepts.

11. Customer www.prolearninghub.com Customer is the legal person who orders, uses, and pays for the services. Customer can be either an individual or a company who purchases services. Customer can be hierarchical. Customer hierarchy is used to model real world hierarchy. A customer can have one or more child customers. A customer may be related to another customer in the hierarchy for the purpose of issuing statements. Saurabh is the customer of the company.

12. Account www.prolearninghub.com An account purchases, modifies services and products, receives invoices, and makes payment. A customer can have one or more accounts. Some billing systems use the concept of contract instead of account, whereas, in some billing systems, there is no notion of account or contract. Example: Geneva, Unicom: Concept of customer and account LHS BSCS: Concept of customer and contract AMDOCS: Concept of customer only. Saurabh is the customer and holds an account in the company.

13. Service/Product www.prolearninghub.com A product is a logical or physical entity which can be sold out to a customer by the operators. It represents a feature of service instance that can be provisioned to a customer. A billing system allows to add products or services directly under an account or a contract parent, child relationship. Let us have a look at some of the mandatory and optional services. Parent and child service: GSM voice is the parent service and call forwarding is the child service. Mandatory and optional charges: Parent services are generally mandatory as child services cannot be taken without parent services. Optional services will be associated to the customer based on the requirement. Network and non-network services: Call forwarding is a network service whereas itemized bill is a non-network service. Value added service: Song downloading is a value added service Saurabh has chosen the Gold plan.

14. Plan/Tariff www.prolearninghub.com Plan or tariff contains information about the charges of the services as well as information about any applicable discount. Typical charges being put are: One time charges Recurring charges Usage charges Billing Concept GSM Voice Plan Service/Product Customer: Saurabh Account: Saurabh’s Account GSMFixed

15. Saurabh’s Tariff Plan www.prolearninghub.com Let us have a look at Saurabh's tariff plan. Plans Name RGSIMPLE99NEW Rental (Rs) 99 Plan Type Rental General Rental Monthly Commitment 99 Intracircle GSM voice Offnet Mobile Offnet Fixed Rs. 0.50 Rate/SMS (160 characters) Local SMS (GSM) Local SMS (CDMA) Rs. 0.50 National Roaming Plan Local Outgoing Calls-CDMA Local Outgoing Calls-GSM STD Outgoing Calls-GSM STD Outgoing Calls-CDMA Incoming Calls Rs. 1.00 Rs. 1.50 Rs. 1.00

16. Rating and Billing www.prolearninghub.com We have already seen Saurabh's tariff plan details. Let us now understand how the tariff plan was made. The billing team lead, Prachi will explain the new billing team members all the tariff plan processes. Let us see whether the explanation answers cur queries.

17. www.prolearninghub.com How the service charges are planned? How this plan was made? What are the rating differentiators?

18. www.prolearninghub.com Billing Hello everyone, we are here to discuss the tariff planning in detail. Service Tariff: Types of Charges.

19. www.prolearninghub.com Billing You all must be aware that, we apply some charges lo the services we provide. Service Tariff: Types of Charges.

20. www.prolearninghub.com Billing Yes, but what are the types of charges? I will explain the details of tariff charges. Service Tariff: Types of Charges.

21. www.prolearninghub.com Service Tariff: Types of Charges. Customers start generating usage of network as soon as they start using the products and services sold by the operator. There can be different charges based on the usage. Pay for what you use Which service What time/day? Where is the call made? How long? CUG/NCUG Friends and Family Usage Charges

22. www.prolearninghub.com Non-Usage Charges One-timeRecurringEvent based Installation fee Set-up fee Bill Frequency Proration vs. advance charge Suspension, reactivation Change SIM Change mobile Rate plan change

23. www.prolearninghub.com Rating Differentiators We also have some other details with us which we need to consider while preparing any tariff plan. Let us also have a look at those details. Rating Differentiators

24. www.prolearninghub.com Rating Differentiators Rating is a process to calculate subscriber's usage charges which includes voice, SMS, and other services as per the subscriber's rate plan Let us take a look at the various rating differentiators. Time Based -Peak, off peak time -Day, evening, night -Weekday, weekend -Holiday special rate More You Call Less is the Charge -Linear -Non-linear charges Unit of Charging -Seconds, mb, per click, per view Distance Based -Local, STD, ISD -Toll free -On Net, Off Net Services -Network: Voice, MMS, SMS, data, Video -Non Network (VAS)

25. www.prolearninghub.com Discounts Did you understand how the plan was made? Yes. Discounts

26. www.prolearninghub.com Discounts Do you have any queries? I would like to ask one question. Do we provide any discount facility to our customers? Discounts

27. www.prolearninghub.com Discounts Yes. It is a powerful tool to attract and retain the customers. Ok. Can we discuss discount in detail? Discounts

28. www.prolearninghub.com Discount Discount is a way at giving the customer a money off. Discount defines a set amount of money to be applied to products or usage that meet certain criteria. Rating Time Discount Rating time discount includes all the discounts given at the time of rating process. Example: 10% discount on all local calls. Billing Time Discount Billing time discount includes all the discounts given at the time of billing process. Example: If monthly bill is 500, then get 5% discount on the monthly rental bill. Single Product Discount If the monthly usage of GSM is more than 500, then 50% discount on monthly rental of GSM. Cross Product Discount If monthly charges are more than 500, then two movie tickets for free.

29. www.prolearninghub.com Features of Discount Let us have a look at the features of discount. Evaluation: Evaluation is done based on discount and service revenue. Customer loyalty is important during evaluation of a discount. Also the number of accounts and services used by the customer is important during evaluation. Application: Absolute or percentage Flat or tiered Free units as discount If Evaluation criterion Then Application criterion

30. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Now Saurabh's plan has bean activated and he has started using the services. Let us now learn the rating and billing cycle of Saurabh's GSM plan service. This will help us to understand what happens at the backend, when Saurabh makes a call.

31. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Rating is the process of determining the charge of individual events. Billing is the aggregation of all non recurring, periodic, end chargeable everts, on an account by account basis. Call 1 Network Data Capture: Once the customer starts the usage, the usage related data is captured in the network data capture. Mediation: Mediation is the process of collecting and processing usage data from networked devices. Network data capture Mediation Customer

32. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Rating Engine: The output of mediation is given to the rating engine. Rating engine rates the call considering the customer data, tariff data, and product data. Transaction Data: The data from the rating engine is stored in the transaction data. This data acts as the source to the billing engine.

33. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Call 2 This is the rating process which is followed every time when Saurabh makes a call. Let us understand the billing process which is followed only at the end of every billing cycle.

34. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Billing Engine Billing Engine: It refers to the product, tariff, and customer delate to apply any other required charges like monthly or recurring charges and calculates the bill.

35. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Invoicing & Dispatch: Actual bill is prepared and dispatched to the customer. Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Billing Engine Invoicing & Dispatch

36. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Billing Engine Invoicing & Dispatch Customer Query/Dispute A dispute is a record of a query about an amount of money on an account. Normally, a dispute will be recorded when a customer queries some aspect of the bill.

37. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Billing Engine Invoicing & Dispatch Customer Query/Dispute Adjustments: An adjustment is a method of crediting or debiting an account with an arbitrary amount of money. Adjustments can be lodged against either an account as a whole or against a particular rated event on that account. Adjustments

38. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Billing Engine Invoicing & Dispatch Customer Query/Dispute Adjustments Taxation Taxation: Taxation refers to the act of a taxing authority actually levying tax.Taxes are being applied on the bill.

39. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Billing Engine Invoicing & Dispatch Customer Query/Dispute Adjustments Taxation Accounting Accounting: It gathers the payment information and these details are given to the biting module.

40. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Network data capture Mediation Customer Rating Engine Customer Data Product Data Tariff Data Transaction Data Billing Engine Invoicing & Dispatch Customer Query/Dispute Adjustments Taxation Accounting Debt Mgmt/Recovery Debt Management/Recovery Any information related to late payment or no payment is captured in debt management.

41. Post-Pay + 500 Rs. Safe Zone Pre-Pay - 100 Rs. Credit Control www.prolearninghub.com Credit control is a regulatory mechanism which minimizes the risks in the telecom business. It keeps constant check on the payment and usage. The unusual pattern in the customer usage is also tracked in this process. 0

42. Credit Control www.prolearninghub.com Credit Control Process. This process can be done either online or offline. Credit Control Actions The credit control members inform the customers if they are crossing their credit limit. If still the payment is not done, some operators ban the facilities.

43. Credit Control www.prolearninghub.com Credit Control Classes There are three types of credit control classes. VIP credit class: This can be assigned to VIP customers and would have very high value of credit limit. General pubic class: This is the most common credit class and would have almost $100 or $200 credit limit. Segment specific class: These classes can be defined based on different segments, like military or bank officers.

44. Billing Models www.prolearninghub.com Now, let us understand the billing models in the telecom industries. There are various types of billing in the telecom business. Wholesale and Retail Billing Postpaid Billing Prepaid Billing Interconnect Billing Roaming Billing

45. Billing Models www.prolearninghub.com Wholesale and Retail Billing Wholesale operator a one who provides network services end solutions to communications companies, network operators, and service providers. Let us have a look at how a wholesale operator is connected to various retail operators. Exchange 1 Exchange 2 Exchange 4 Exchange 3 A C D B

46. Billing Models www.prolearninghub.com Postpaid Billing A postpaid bill is generated in arrears periodically stating what was owed to the CSP by the customer. The customer is expected to settle the bill. Event Files File based Offline/Batch Mediation Rating Engine Rated Events

47. Billing Models www.prolearninghub.com Prepaid Billing Prepaid billing involves the customer paying a sum in advance. This amount gels depreciated as the telecom services are consumed. Messaging Interface Real time Mediation Rating Engine Rated Events Let us have a look at the prepaid model works. Real Time Rating System Reverse Rating Money Wallet Reservations SCP IN Platform Account & Rateplan Creation: Reservation 1 Call Continues Extension: Reservation 2 Extension: Reservation 3 Call Continues Insufficient Credit: Rejected Call Complete: Commit Incoming Call

48. Billing Models Interconnect Billing Interconnect is the process of handling calls for other operators. The basic aim of an interconnect solution is to produce an invoice for the calls received from another operator and to validate the invoices received from other operators for the calls they have handled. B A www.prolearninghub.com

49. Billing Models Roaming Billing Roaming is the ability to use one device in the foreign network. Roaming is applied when a customer uses the available network which is other than the home network. In order to bill the customer, the roaming information is passed back to the customer's home network. The foreign network collects information on the usage from it’s switches and sends it to the home network. The roaming billing is done according to the usage. www.prolearninghub.com

50. Rating and Billing Flow www.prolearninghub.com Now we have learnt the basics of rating and billing, billing system components, the various billing concepts, rating arid billing flow, credit control, and the various billing models. Now let us have a quick knowledge check on this topic.

51. Knowledge Check Start www.prolearninghub.com

52. Which of the following leakage takes place in between mediation and rating and billing? Rating dimensions www.prolearninghub.com Rating differentiators eTOM model Billing components

53. The normalization of CDR’s is done by rating and billing engine. True www.prolearninghub.com False

54. Which of the following is a billing model? Interim billing www.prolearninghub.com Transaction billing Taxation billing Interconnect billing

55. Which of the following is a credit control class? SIP credit class www.prolearninghub.com VIP credit class DIT credit class TIP credit class

56. The Results