Billing, All Jokes Aside

Billing experts of vendors and operators have met on equal terms, both with equal number of participants and equal weight category of their arguments. The main topic is market trends resulting in the billing system changes. Obviously, the discussion is not yet complete…

IKS №4,

Theory of changes: revolution? evolution?..

What general approaches to the operator’s billing system upgrade do you consider appropriate?

Mikhail Khomarov, Head of BSS Development at CBOSS: There are two options: evolution and revolution. The first presumes installation of the billing system releases without interruption of critical services; installation of new components without time-intensive integration and activation; reconfiguration (system clustering, etc) without interruption of critical services and system upgrade. The second option presumes installation of the new billing system, in case the current system cannot evolve. However, it should be noted that despite the choice between evolutionary and revolutionary approaches, upgrade budgets generally increase: the demand for convergent solutions, virtual solutions and web-services; requirements to the hardware resource optimization; availability requirements.

Alexander Kazakov, Head of Billing and CRM Configuration and Development at VimpelCom: No doubt, we should follow the billing industry trends. It is not easy for major operators to revolutionize their billing systems, therefore, the evolutionary approach will be preferred in the nearest future, especially in times of financial crisis. The main thing here is the service reliability.

Daniel Ragan, Director of Network System Integration Business Development in Russia and CIS, Alcatel-Lucent: There is a good reason to consider the use of industrial billing software from a foreign supplier and its integration by a local systems integrator, which is well aware of the operator’s market and business processes (enabling successful migration and integration); tight integration of convergent billing with CRM systems and contact centers.

Viktor E. Avdey, CEO at Inteline Pro Consult: Before choosing any general approaches to the billing systems upgrade, one should clearly understand the purpose of billing systems. Today, in pursuit of profit and in the rage of competition service providers forget about the user of their services. I think there is a direct relationship between the number of different tariffs offered by operators and the number of available billing systems. Already now the number of tariffs has exceeded one hundred, even two hundred. And tariff names are nothing else but a marketing ploy. Everything else is just gimmicks. The company is eager to get maximum profit; users try to reduce their costs. These two contradictions go hand-in-hand.

Dmitry Boginsky, Director of Software Solutions at Inline Telecom Solutions: Among different approaches to the billing system upgrade the most reasonable ones are the following: enhance multi-service support (support triple play at all levels); build customer loyalty (e.g. by self-care systems); enhance real-time hardware control and monitoring (including the billing system itself); enhance content support and financial systems.

Tatyana Ischenko, Head of Billing at Synterra: It would be helpful to get a ‘billing constructor’ consisting of modules implementing different billing models for different types of traffic: a module for IP traffic, another one for aggregate telephony data and a separate module for the detailed usage data. Incredible results can be achieved owing to the module pre-integration.

Yury Godyna, Head of Billing at Mastertel: The main requirement to the billing systems, as I see it, is the billing flexibility requiring minimum software updates when launching new services or changing billing requirements or billing procedures. Today’s convergent billing systems already meet this requirement well enough, especially if they are developed in accordance with the international standards, such as NGOSS from TMForum.

Oleg Pampuschenko, Information Systems and Technology Director at ASVT: The optimal solution, as I see it, would be parallel implementation of a new system and launching new services on its base, and stepwise transfer of users, grouped by service types or technology, to the new system.

Roland Smets, VP of Product Development at Irdeto BSS: Today, ‘standard’ billing systems should undergo a number of changes. For a solution to develop in line with the company’s business, all rules and logic should be flexibly adapted. To facilitate integration and management, service oriented architecture (SOA) should be supported. The competitive advantage will be ensured by user self-service enabling end users to tune the desired settings (outside of the system). For the operator’s convenience the solution should have only one database (multiple data warehouses makes it troublesome to collect full customer data). An open user interface will help simplify customer care enabling execution of all tasks in one window. Billing systems should be able to accept financial transactions from other billing tools, thus making an open convergent billing solution (in other words, other systems can bill VoIP usage, however, presenting the expenses to the standard billing system of the cable operator).

Practice of changes: by whom and how is billing upgraded?

Question to operators: what billing system does your company use and how often do you need to upgrade it?

Alexander Kazakov: Our company currently uses three billing systems that have been successfully implemented and deployed: Amdocs Ensemble by American Amdocs – to manage the subscriber base and bill postpaid subscribers; Comverse RTBS by Israeli Comverse to bill prepaid subscribers in real time; and InterConnecT by British INTEC – for interconnect billing.

In 2008, the company applied dozens of updates of different nature and volume, most of which via the flexible setup system. Of course, it is hard to make fundamental changes in the system without assistance from the vendor (I don’t mean changes in regular settings). So we use two models here: the first one involves ordering new functionality from the vendor that provides it turnkey as black box, the second one is when all required updates are developed jointly by a team of the vendor and VimpelCom employees.

Tatiana Ischenko: We use the Onima billing system developed by Stek Soft. It provides billing of all services, from leasing of communication channels and Internet access to telephony and systems integration projects. However, there is no doubt that an information system alone cannot solve all problems with the same efficiency. So we believe that billing relies on people who level out imperfections in the system, deal with the vendor, and arrange statistics verification ensuring revenue flows.

The company’s business processes are continuously changing; updates are supported by the Business Process Service. Jointly with the vendor, we have developed regulations for interaction between the parties, which determine the time of vendor's response to our requests and response completeness. According to the agreement, IT system upgrades are the responsibility of the Onima developer. Our employees only administer the system and manage updates. More than 40 updates were made in 2008.

Sergey Aksenov, Deputy IT Director at AKADO Telecom: We also use the Onima billing system by Stek Soft to bill all types of services, including interconnect. As soon as new services are introduced, the system is adapted and new reporting formats are created on the fly. We solve some of these tasks on our own, others – with vendor’s assistance. What is really important is that the vendor takes into account new requirements for the system from different divisions of our company, when issuing new billing system releases.

Yuri Godyna: We use the Idealex billing system developed and customized for us by Mastertel. In 2008, no changes were made to the billing component, for it originally allowed us to adapt to changing market conditions by settings adjustment. Changes mainly applied to the business intelligence component, which was especially relevant in late 2008. The global economic system showed signs of instability and we needed to more quickly receive data from the billing system to be able to comprehensively analyze it. (The Idealex billing system vendor is Balmer Systems which, as well as Mastertel, is a member of the Prime Business Group Holding. This allows rapid problem solving with the minimum response time. – Editor’s note).

Andrey Meshkov, IT Director at ARCTEL: All ARCTEL branches use the centralized solution from CBOSS Corporation for interconnect and subscriber billing. The CBOSSbcc system provides billing of IN telecom services, local, long-distance, and international communications, as well as Internet access and data.

The CBOSSinterconnect solution is used for interconnect settlements. It provides billing of local, regional, long-distance, and international MO and MT calls, as well as verification of provider bills. The system includes a module for call prime cost calculation, which allows least cost routing and attractive tariff offerings.

Oleg Pampuschenko: Updates are made quite often, but they are not related to changes in any software-based billing procedures. They are mainly due to an endless number of changes made in accounting regulations (bills, invoices, etc).

This causes new output forms, summaries, reports, etc. There were some problems in 2006 when changes were made in the procedure of interconnect settlements, new Rules for providing telecom services and Rules for operator network affiliation were introduced, and agency relationship was established with long-distance telecommunications operators. Although we were to make lots of changes in the billing principles without service interruption, we made it! It was significant experience and in a way it pushed us to improve billing of subscribers and interconnect partners.

Sergey Nesterovich, Head of Technical Department at ChronoPay: ChronoPay provides Internet payment processing and we use an in-house billing system integrated with operators' billing systems. In other words, the billing system is part of the product we offer. It does not replace the general-purpose billing systems but adds new functionality to them.

Our basic rule is “if it’s working, don’t touch it!” (at least if you don't understand exactly what for). I'm a follower of the evolutional approach to the development of complex systems so even if our billing system changes, it does so on a modular basis. This is more time- and resource-consuming but it provides non-stop operation and ensures reliability.

To what extent are billing system vendors ready to join the process of billing upgrade in compliance with changing business processes of telecom operators?

Mikhail Khomarov: Virtualization and outsourcing are currently the key tendencies in the development of telecom operators’ business processes. Particularly, in the last few years many vendors have been developing poweful data centers designed to take backup load to ensure data safety and integrity for the most sensitive client processes.

Dmitry Boginsky: Vendors’ flexibility to the changes in telco business processes is one of the requirements in the ever changing telecommunications market. This shows itself in using new equipment types and service models, new payment methods for subscribers and reporting forms in accordance with the latest changes in the legislature, efficiency of billing system and business processes management from the operators’ viewpoint.

Daniel Ragan: This is rather a task for a local systems integrator such as, for instance, Alcatel-Lucent, which is well aware of not only business processes, but also local market conditions and regulations. It also has technical knowledge and experience in integration, which is required to develop applications built on industrial billing software.

Dmitry Moiseev, Acting Head of Marketing at EastWind: If readiness is seen as the capability to meet the changing customer requirements, we can affirm that today the competence of the key developers provides a high level of billing system adaptability. In other words, most of the market players can adequately respond to changes taking place in telecom business.

If we speak of readiness in terms of a developer’s policy with regard to individual customer requirements, it, in its turn, is determined by the business model and market goals of the vendor as well as its production organization. Relatively speaking, the vendor tries to reach the golden mean between the operator’s requirements and its own interests.

Oleg Pampuschenko: There is no unambiguous answer. In a marketing sense, their products are positioned to timely satisfy all operators’ needs: they immediately provide new modules to bill new services – just pay for them! In fact, these are most often certain updates of existing products.

There is also another option – an allegedly self-adjusting system, i.e. operators are offered a constructor when they are free to customize everything at all stages, from downloading to output forms. However, the operator won’t do without specialists who have the same competence as software developers.

Tatiana Ischenko: Our company was one of the first in the telecom market to adopt the strategy for outsourcing all non-core activities. In fact, a vendor upgrades billing under outsourcing conditions.

Andrey Menshikov: The trouble ticket registration system and the capability to monitor trouble ticket progress; the clearly-defined time of feedback; a supervisor who knows the specifics of ARCTEL business and is responsible for fast response and high quality of trouble ticket processing – all this allows the ARCTEL Billing Department and CBOSS Technical Support Service to work as one team.

Law of changes: competition is going on?

Do you think in the competition between local and foreign developers all i's are dotted and t's are crossed?

Alexander Kazakov: I don’t think so. Telecom operators will be consolidating. This process will make them unify their infrastructure, thus having to reject some solutions. My forecast is that the developer market will also face mergers and acquisitions in the nearest one-and-a-half or two years. Who will remain in the end – we’ll see.

Oleg Pampuschenko: Nothing is decided yet. Certain representatives of developers now speak of a decrease in demand for their products and of their readiness for new approaches to pricing. It is a positive tendency and, perhaps, it will lead to a more transparent pricing mechanism. After all, it is next to impossible to see a price list for certain billing solutions (with rare exception of some out-of-the-box solutions). It is provided “only after analysis, conversation”, i.e. “how much can we get out of you” after finding out your current financial state.

Anyway, I think distribution between Russian and foreign developers will always be in favor of the domestic ones, as the very approach of foreign developers to selling billing at the commercial project level is considered as a project “at the amount of at least Х,000,000”. Moreover, mutual understanding with them is complicated in spite of the fact that some of them have representative offices in Moscow and recruit local staff.

Yuri Godyna: A choice between a domestic and imported solution is often marketing in nature. Nowadays, major telecom operators are not giving consideration to one billing system vendor only, they often create their own billing systems built on the “bricks” from different vendors, both domestic and foreign. This is due to the uniqueness of each telecom operator’s business. It is not possible to create an off-the-shelf solution that will ideally meet the requirements of two different operators. Such integration approach increases the competition in the billing system market and makes vendors work on the weaknesses of the packages they offer and, at the same time, allows operators to compile a billing package of the best solutions available in the market, irrespective of the vendor. From my point of view, in the near future the emphasis in the Russian market will slightly shift to domestic solutions. Yet, it won’t be significant due to the instability of the economy.

Judging by the current competitive environment, we will soon be able to see a certain specialization among billing system vendors. This will happen because not every vendor can afford investments in unpopular development areas. Such specialization and focus of efforts on specific solutions can help some small local vendors win a large piece of the market share from the giants, especially foreign ones, which will most probably continue advancing all areas of billing system development. Their main goal in this case will be to provide the best integration options. It is the integration flexibility that may soon become critical when selecting a billing system.

Viktor E. Avdey: In my opinion, we, Russians, should not fight but unite. There should be not more than one or two billing systems. Everyone will benefit from it, both operators and users. A large number of different billing systems in our country causes unnecessary competition between local companies. Moreover, the discrepancy of billing system databases and functionality does not allow users to correctly estimate the pros and cons of services provided by different companies.

Daniel Ragan: The changing behavior of end users regarding the use of telecom services and their fees allows us to speak of fast changes in the industry on the whole. These changes in their turn create new requirements to billing platforms, which, from our point of view, creates potential for new players on the global billing software market. They can bring to the Russian market the best world practices in the development, deployment, and use of fully convergent billing systems.

Tatiana Ischenko: The world is facing crisis so the i's will be dotted not by the product but rather by the vendor’s quality management, its ability to find common ground with the customer to jointly create new qualities of commoditized products and services.

Dmitry Boginsky: The strong point of major foreign vendors is a broad product line and highly detailed business processes. Their weak points are insufficient business process localization and high cost of implementation/adaptation. Unlike OSS vendors, BSS vendors can't surprise the market by “young”, earlier unknown active players.

Among the pros of Russian systems I’d mention their initial emphasis on the local market and experience in product implementation. However, a common feature of nearly all vendors is a certain functional narrowness as they are designed to support specific services (only telephony, mobile + fixed-line communications, Internet billing, etc).

Even if the current ratio of the key vendors is going to change, this will be due to large mergers in the operator market with future migration to one of the legacy systems. Such an event will formally change the formal correlation of forces at once, but the migration may take quite a long time.

The picture can be complemented by operators that have well-developed business support tools and are politically motivated to migrate to a single (e.g. foreign) system. Due to operational risks they actually keep using proprietary systems. The way out of the situation is outsourcing of the solution by a third-party vendor or integrator. Whether you consider such an operator a foreign or local customer is an ambiguous question.

Dmitry Moiseev: The Russian market of billing systems is still attractive not only for local, but also for foreign vendors. The backbone of the national market players already exists and it will hardly change significantly in the near future. The same can be said about the balance of forces in the more or less established market of billing systems for mobile operators, where foreign developers are leading if we judge by the subscriber base size. As for the market of billing systems for fixed-line operators, that is where we can forecast increased competition between Russian and foreign vendors if we take into account building of NGNs by operators. Hence, I can conclude that it is yet too early to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

Andrey Meshkov: I cannot say the point is perfectly clear at the moment. After the liberalization of the long-distance communications market, the operators got new opportunities for development. This served as a stimulus for the upgrade of both telecom networks and information systems.

The market of software for telecom operators is highly competitive now so each operator has a lot to choose from.