Convergent Billing

In today’s marketplace, service innovation and real-time capabilities are critical to maximizing revenues. Real-time convergent charging (RTCC) enables service innovation, allied to real-time control of debt exposure for more partner services and the ability to rate and bill on behalf of partners.

To remain competitive, Communications Service Providers (CSPs) need billing systems that support new business models, the rapid rollout of new services, and highly personalized offerings. A simple aggregate of data and platforms is not enough. CSPs need a convergent billing solution that will enable them to improve operational efficiency, enhance customer care, and achieve greater profitability.

Business Challenges

At its core, convergent billing is the integration of all service charges onto a single customer invoice. To achieve this, CSPs face numerous challenges, which include:

• Applying real-time, multi-service package pricing and cross-service discounts
• Generating an accurate bill by taking raw usage and pre-rated data from disparate legacy and next-generation billing systems
• Integrating with CRM systems that enable unified customer care, customer acquisition, and service order entry
• Supporting high configurability, personalization, and comprehensive loyalty programs

NetCracker Solution

NetCracker's Convergent Billing solution comprises a highly flexible and scalable billing system that can be used by any service provider. It provides:

• Real-time charging for different payment models (prepaid/postpaid) and network types (wireless/wireline/converged/IMS)
• Streamlined rating and billing for value-added services through rich billing data models, extended business policies, and powerful pricing models
• A library of pre-configured business rules, components, and processes that support mediation, payment processing, and reporting
• An easily configured, modular architecture and interfaces that are pre-integrated to external systems such as CRM, Self Service, and PoS
• Unique customer billing experience management, extended revenue assurance, and customer data protection

Telecom Operations & Management (TOMS) Components

Customer Billing Management, Product Information Management, Rating & Charging, Billing Mediation, Business Process Re-Engineering, End-to-End Data Migration

Solution Benefits

The Convergent Billing solution enables CSPs to:

• Increase revenues via diversification of the product portfolio
• Improve average profit per user across all segments of the customer base
• Lower operational costs
• Reduce churn among high-value subscribers
• Reduce time-to-market for new product and service launches
• Enable single-bill and single-point customer care with data aggregation and rate inputs from various sources
• Fully support different billing and payment models for any type of network
• Maximize ARPU by providing personalized offerings, improving customer service, and decreasing churn
• Lower TCO through fast, simple deployment and maintenance

Ensuring an appropriate Convergent Billing solution implementation is essential in order to control costs.

NetCracker’s experience supports the view that no one Convergent Billing solution fits all. Instead the solution should be driven by each operator’s requirements, which is why NetCracker’s Convergent Billing solution can be deployed in a variety of ways from a staged approach to a full implementation providing flexibility in deployment as well as in service definition.

Contact us for more information