Facts and More: the B4E Newsletter

The current low cost for manpower services and Billing SW licenses may lead into a trap: the number of vendors has already significantly decreased - and will further do so. For a good part this happens as major changes in the billing infrastructure just have been avoided in the last 2 years. If the Billing Manager now takes the chance of favorable vendor offers to start and re-innovate the billing process he will be prepared best for the next years before his buyer market conditions change again, especially when he is making use of so-called NextGeneration Billing systems. Why and How? Please read:

What to expect from NextGen Billing Systems
Most of the current billing systems are stemming from the early days of GSM or Internet. Due to new product and service offerings, and new business models, they have now old architecture and much legacy built-in. Their many “bolts-on” are increasing the efforts to cope with ongoing changes and additions. So, the most important aspects of a Next Generation Billing system shall not only be to increase tremendously flexibility – it has to reduce the total process cost drastically at the same time.

A pretty “old” picture of Nokia is representing the business model for Next Generation communication and commerce over 2.5 and 3rd generation networks. Underlying is the stunning thought of processing an EVENT just once to determine its price for the customer and – at the same point of time – the revenue shares for all parties involved, be it a service or content provider, a roaming or interconnect partner. A striking, even though simple idea!

The concept behind the straight forward processing of events (including revenue sharing events) means to have all parties involved under one single umbrella, the Business Partner Concept. A Business Partner has one or more accounts against which all the credits and debits are booked. They have been calculated considering free definable rules for pricing, revenue sharing and rating relevant discounts. The billing process itself reduces to collecting the rating information from all accounts, including those of interconnect, roaming, or content partners, and possibly apply discounting and loyalty program rules as well. Finally, the billing information is shaped into the requested format(s) for invoicing and the subsequent systems.

Increase Flexibility while reducing TCO
A view at the automotive industry provides new insights to us telecom industry veterans into the way good billing software should be designed, developed and used: Since long vehicles are designed with CAD software (Computer Aided Design), whereas such software is developed and implemented following a few decisive factors:

• Product Family Approach: already developed components are re-used all the time for similar parts (e.g. one software for the Motor Management Module monitoring many engine variants).

• Incremental Approach: the development and subsequently the implementation process does not happen in Big Bangs but instead in very surveyable increments causing implementation being much saver and by far more efficient.

• Self Assembly: a car can be self assembled on-line and then tested with computer simulations using the logical structures developed and put together by the user.

In the automotive industry it’s a standard to design parts, e.g. a screw or a mirror, just once and re-use it all time long in many variants. Of course, the design of the “first” screw or the “first” mirror has been done by the user and not hard-coded by the software vendor. What is required for billing is a system which allows to shape a (new) structure from which the information for rating and billing can be derived automatically. We call this the “Self Assembly Process”: using the available system and data elements and already developed tools to define new structures for products, price plans etc. on-line with Drag & Drop.

This is not just a vision: since many years such software is standard in the automotive industry. For us it means the most important cornerstone of Next Generation Billing: such a system must allow to design or “self-assemble” products, services, price plans, discounting schemes, contract types, and Business Partner structures without programming. It avoids the long leadtimes we are used to today. It’s a Business Enabling Tool: speed-to-market and dramatically reduced total cost of ownership are the result. Of course, "Self Assembly" is a standard feature of B-oo-levard®

The Quintessence
NextGen Billing hasn’t only to do with Next Generation networks and services – it has to do with current business, current marketing and current cost! So-called Cost-Savings-Projects, a standard mechanism in the Automotive Industry since many, many years, have to be planned and executed. Even in their cash–poorest times such projects were automatically approved by the Boards of General Motors and Ford provided they had a payback period of less than one year. And introducing CAD enabled for a “Next Generation Product Design and Manufacturing Process” as well.

The introduction of a true Next Generation Billing system means a change in the way how things are being done: describe a market initiative and implement it. That easy. The NextGen Billing System inherent iteration process provides a secure and controlled, nevertheless fast implementation of the system along with streamlining the related processes.

Next Generation Billing means:
making use of a clear, intelligent, and robust architecture and of the proven technologies of today in order to increase competitiveness while reducing the billing cost drastically.