The MiBAS solution covers the necessary Provisioning, Billing and additional modules for an iDEN operator:
- Provisioning subscriber units
- Billing and Rating
- Add on modules
Provisioning Subscriber Units: Provisioning consists of adding new subscribers to the network, defining the services they can use, modify the services or disconnect them as requested by the customer. Enabling a subscriber for dispatch, telephony, SMS or packet data, allocating a telephone number or a supplementary service to the subscriber or removing a service are examples of provisioning operations. Users who are familiar with other provisioning systems may find that MiBAS differs conceptually from other systems. For instance, in most systems service allocations are derived from subscriber’s rate plan, whereas in MiBAS provisioning is independent of rate plans, but still automatically updates billing for the services the subscriber or customer should be billed. MiBAS also allows provisioning multiple subscribers concurrently, which very applicable to a dispatch environment, and which is very different than in any other cellular environment.
MiBAS supports provisioning subscribers with all the services supported by the FNEs.
Billing and Rating: MiBAS Billing and Rating module consists of five basic modules:
- Product Catalog
- Rating Engine
- Billing Engine
- Customer Care – Billing and Customer Relationship
- Billing Control
The Product Catalog moduleThe Product Catalog module is designed to build rate schemes and various marketing billing related promotions. Rate schemes are the actual tariffs according to which subscribers are charged. Additional promotions can be discount plans, usage packages, credit schemes, friends and family/VPN plans, geographical based rating (home coverage area) etc. Rate schemes consist of the following elements:
Fixed charges: Fixed charges that are applied to customers and subscriber units in each bill. MiBAS allows operators to build different fixed charges sets and to apply them to different customers and subscribers.
Usage charges: The Product Catalog module allows operators to build multiple tariffs for different airtime, data and SMS consumption types. For example, different airtime tariffs can be built for calls between individual units, between a unit and a group, over multiple service areas, within or across fleets.
Discount plans: Discounts can be defined for different groups of charges. A discount plan is associated with a rate scheme. During the billing process, MiBAS calculates the charges according to the rate scheme and then applies the discount plan associated with each customer or subscriber.
The Rating engine The rating engine calculates amounts for individual all usage types CDRs – Telephony, Dispatch, Packet Data & SMS depending on Network capabilities. Usually rating processes run daily and can run also in a near real-time mode for specific customer/accounts. The resulting output of the rating processes are rated CDRs and accumulated data for the following billing engine. In addition to amount calculation as defined in the rate plans, this module applies various rating marketing features such as – Access Numbers (Friends & Family), Region sensitive rating (Home Coverage Area) , special numbers etc.
The Billing engine The Billing module periodically calculates the amounts by which customers are to be billed for consumption. Customers are billed based on:
- The services they are configured for (by Provisioning)
- The actual consumption (–Accumulated Usage data prepared by the rating engine)
- The rates of the services as they were defined for different customers (rate schemes)
- In addition to accumulating usage and fixed charges for customers, the billing engine applies various billing features such as discount plans, usage packages, cost sharing contracts etc.
The resulting output is billing records that can be directed to an external invoice production system. (Invoicing functionality is proposed as an option).
All provisioning events that take place in MiBAS affect billing, except for a few management events such as refreshing the data held in the network switch (Refresh FNE). The events for which the subscriber is eventually charged are events that were pre-defined as billable events (to be distinguished from non-billable events).
Customer Care – Billing and CRM This module enables the users to administer billing features to customers and accounts, such as rate schemes, discount plans, one-time credits/debits, definition of access numbers (Friends & Family), etc. It also presents billing related inquiries such as usage details, billing charges etc.
In addition, basic CRM functions can be performed such as tracking customer/account notes, presenting alerts, maintaining addresses, enable tracking of operator defined customer/accounts additional data elements (ex – Customer type, business unit, rank etc.) and issuing service adjustments.
Billing Control The MiBAS Billing Control module is especially designed to quickly identify billing errors such as gaps in receiving calls into the system, unjustified charges or unexpected drops in fixed charges amounts. Billing Control helps the network operator reduce the number of mistakes in the billing process by identifying them in due time. The purpose of this application is to highlight potential errors, by comparing averages and by identifying gaps.
Billing Control allows:
- To retrieve gap reports to locate problems in processing CDR files
- To presents actual call data for a user-defined period, broken down by dates
- To compare two periods.
- To identify problems in the billing process, such as a big drop in income from one billing period to another.
Add on modules:MiBAS offers add-on modules to complement the MiBAS core Provisioning and Billing solution:
Web Access moduleThe MiBAS Web Access is a Web based application designed for remote access to MiBAS functions over the Internet or an Intranet, using Microsoft Internet Explorer. It supports remote access for activation and various other provisioning transactions for the dealer or the customer’s administrator.
Using its web-based multilingual GUI, the administrator can access its customer list, activate the inactive subscribers, configure the handset, or replace subscriber units. (Translation to local language is customer’s responsibility).
The operation of MiBAS Web-Access is very intuitive and straightforward. Providing this tool to dealers and customers will result in prompt and better customer service while keeping a low CSRs/Customers ratio and reducing operator’s operations costs.
MPPS – MiBAS Prepaid Module MiBAS proposes a solution for convergent billing of post-paid and pre-paid subscribers. MPPS – MiBAS internal CDR based pre-paid engine, enables the use of the MiBAS rich product catalog and billing features for pre-paid subscribers. The module supports all usage types – Telephony, Dispatch (PTT), SMS and Data.
RoamingRoaming CDRs exchange processes are supported for both own subscribers and guest subscribers of other roaming partners.
Calls made on network by guest roaming subscribers are rated using the rate scheme defined for each roaming partner. These calls are later converted to TAP3 format and sent to the operator’s Roaming Clearing House. Setting up roaming agreements and contracting with a clearing house is Customer’s responsibility.
MiBAS invoicing The MiBAS Invoicing module is a browser-based application designed to define the invoice layout, to prepare invoices and to produce invoice files to be sent to the customer’s Bill Fulfillment Vendor (BFV), accounting system by processing and formatting data retrieved from MiBAS Billing, the operator’s accounts receivable system and, if applicable, taxation modules.
Based on user-defined parameters, the invoicing engine processes information for:
- Printing customer invoices
- Generating electronic bills that may be imported into other software packages for further analysis
- Crediting and debiting general ledger accounts with the invoice amounts
MAS – MiBAS API Layer MAS, the MiBAS Application Server, enable access to the MiBAS engine from external applications and streamline user processes via a unified XML interface.
Taxation MiBAS has interfaces to external taxation packages. It includes an operator controlled mapping between MiBAS charge items and the relevant taxation package codes. When the system is mapped to a taxation package, billing charges are passed to the relevant package using the package MiBAS mapped definitions. In addition it also maintains tax exempted customers and accounts, and forwards it to the taxation package. Taxation charges are forwarded to the invoicing system.
