Partner Settlement Management
Everything you need to fully optimize your partner management for better profitability
Interconnection Agreements
Prices and adjustments
This includes the initial level of interconnection charges, a definition of the currency in which interconnection charges are to be paid and how prices will adjust over the term of the agreement to account for exchange rate changes and inflation.
Points of interconnection
The physical locations, where interconnection will take place and the technical standards to be employed in the interconnection are defined.
Transport and traffic routing:
Some definition must be made for how calls will be routed and what will be transport to deliver the calls.
Quality of service
Quality standards are defined, particularly for time to provision circuits and for call blocking levels, and remedies are defined for when those standards are not met.
Billing and collection
When and how to collect traffic data, when and how to exchange bills, and when and how to make payment should be specified.
Reconciliation
A process for reconciling traffic data and for making inquiries to the other party and for handling claims also should be incorporated. A procedure for resolving discrepancies is useful which often involves seeking recourse to arbitration, the regulator, or to the courts.
Numbering Plan
Access of each operator to the country’s numbering plan and numbering resources must be defined.
Traffic Load
Capacity to deliver and receive the traffic that flows between the interconnecting networks should be discussed and documented.
Interconnect Billing
When increased profitability depends on your ability to reduce costs through improved efficiency, retrofit, manual and makeshift solutions just won’t cut it. Today’s partner ecosystem is simply too diverse and complex.
Standard Billing Manager Features
- Reference Data Management
- Data Manager
- Audit Logging
- Convergent Wholesale Rating
- Re-pricing
- Error Management
- Billing Periods
- Discounting & Special Charges
- Adjustments
- Summarisation
- Multi-Party Settlement
- System Administration
- Financial Extraction
- Standard Reporting
Optional Billing Manager Features
Optional Billing Manager Features
Volume Based Rating
- VBR deals with application of volume-based rates on Usage for a user-defined period
- Provides the Operator the capability to control
- the type and quantity of traffic received from Partners and
- take advantage of similar requirement from the Partners
- Acts as an incentive to Partners to provide the volumes of traffic that will optimize their rate
- Implemented as a post-rating process that simulates rating
- Re-rates relevant Daily Summaries
- ully auditable process
- Simple as well as complex VBR definition and VBR application criteria supported
Enhanced Rating
- Powerful, flexible rating styles supporting definition of complex rate structures
- Rate definition using user-definable fields (useful for introducing/testing new products)
- Matrix Rating – fields can take discrete as well as range values and with/without measurement Unit
- Mainly used for revenue sharing models
Country Loaders
Supports the definition of non-event one-off/recurring charges (cost/revenue) such as:
- Leased line rental
- Co-location fees
- Subscriptions (for content, services, etc)
- Directory services
- Redirection and Number Portability service fees
Partner Management
Rapidly evolving IP/Content Services require the Operator to perform multi-party settlement and manage agreements with numerous partners, so that the Operator can profit from these services and differentiate itself from competitors Operators need to be able to attract and retain profitable partners and avoid revenue leakage through untested partners. Partner management costs need to be kept to a minimum. Settlement processes should be timely and efficient. They must be agile in order to cope with rapid launch of new products and services.
CPM – VALUE PROPOSITION
For Telecom Operators keen to profit from new IP/Content Services, CPM enables timely & accurate settlement with a wide variety of carrier and non-carrier partners. CPM strengthens the Operator’s position in the content value-chain by Maximizing wholesale revenues by helping to attract and retain the best partners who are able to deliver popular and profitable content
Minimizing operating costs by helping to manage numerous partners efficiently and by enabling a convergent environment for all types of settlement (traditional voice, VoIP, data & content)
CPM – Components
CPM Core
- Agreement management
- Revenue sharing and Multi-party settlement
- Discounting & Volume-based rating
- Reference data management
- Data Manager/audit logging
- Error management
- Billing period management
Financial Manager
- Comprehensive invoicing, payment and financial ledger management facilities
- Invoicing, statement generation, taxation, account history and currency conversion
- Pre-estimates
- Pre-built output templates for SAP & Oracle Financials
PREP
- Collects EDRs from the network elements and/or probes
- Generates EDRs from disparate event information
- Correlation, Filtering, translation, mapping, enrichment, duplicate record detection etc
- Augments legacy mediation systems that are unable to handle input data streams
Recurring Charges
- Secure, Capture and maintenance of non-event agreements
- Creation and maintenance of complex tariff schemes
- Production of recurring and one off charges
- Generation of billing and reconciliation statements
Partner Manager
- Secure, web-based partner self-care portal
- Efficient management of numerous partners
- Promotes partner recruitment through partner self-registration
- Ad hoc partner support and inquiry
- Keeps partners informed and up-to-date
- Tailored to customer’s web environment
Traffic Reconciliation
Traffic reconciliation enables to compensate for the discrepancies of switch standards, time offset, etc. By the reconciliation results, the system generates the list of discrepancies in CDRs.
Reconciliation is an critical, control that ensures the financial integrity of any business. As well as being a strong foundation to financial control, most organisations perform reconciliation over the transactions and balances relating to all the varied different parts of their business. As such the reconciliation process contains a rich source of business data.
Reconciliation Process
This is the process of the reconciliation of invoices coming from an interconnect partner which relate to outgoing CDRs.
Every month interconnect partners exchange their CDRs for reconciliation purpose. It is very common to have discrepancies in the CDRs provided by the two partners.
Billing Systems provide reports facilitating reconciliation of incoming and outgoing interconnect CDRs. These reports keep parameters such as call type, destination, cost band, and duration so that these CDRs can be used by both operators to match those parameters and identify missing CDRs.
There may be a situation, when some CDRs are found missing at either of the operators’ side. After doing required reconciliation if matter does not settle, then various negotiations happen between the partners, and finally, matter is settled by paying some nominal amount to the impacted interconnect partner.
Increasing importance
Management Reporting, due to margin reduction
Ease of ad hoc reporting on any data item/field loaded to a reconciliation tool is also very important, as reconciliation is a great “window” across all business areas, as following best business practice every transaction that occurs across your operational and financial accounting systems should be reconciled. As such productivity indicators, measurement of service levels, operational efficiency, etc can all be achieved from reporting on reconciliation data.