-
Frens Jan Rumph
Profile: I am a researcher, technical consultant and software engineer based in Holland. I have specialized in Charging, Accounting and Billing architectures. From both a technical point of view (IETF, 3GPP, etc) and a business point of view (TM Forum, GBA).
Main interests: Telecom, Charging, Accounting, Billing, Service Orientation, Software Architectures, Software Engineering
Disclaimer: All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only.
I do not make any representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis.
Furthermore, this is a personal weblog, the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
Global Billing, Customer Experience and Revenue Management Initiative
It’s becoming a bit tumultuous in the group previously known as the Global Billing Association. After naming themselves the Billing and Customer Experience Initiative after teaming up with the TM Forum, they have now changed their name into the Revenue Management Initiative.
Although their actions (and probably their vast personal and professional network) define their right of existence, I’m not sure about their new name. I can understand the move to drop the name GBA, although it still is a very strong brand name in my perception, billing on itself is probably setting the scope to narrow. Also the integration within the TM Forum calls for a different name. And while the Billing and Customer Experience Initiative doesn’t really sound that catchy it does align with my perception of the challenges and opportunities in charging and billing.
The bill is traditionally an important part in the communication towards the customer. Yet we still only send a bill once a month and then leave it at that, while one can easily image that service usage and perceived service value can be increased by more direct feedback in relation to the service and the billing relationship. As an example: lack of transparency in the tariff function can unnecessarily be a prohibitive factor in using a service, especially if the service is complex or consumed abroad. But also customer usually will be quite happy to see when he or she can consume or just has consumed a service with a discount or even for free, this is completely different effect then when you see the aggregated discount at the bill at the end of the month!
So for me, charging, billing and settlement is about more then just the monetisation of a service, the usage to cash process. And the term revenue is an operator focused term, and focussing on the operator instead of the customer is not going to keep us in the game when competing with the internet domain…
Al together I hope they (or we actually, due the participation through my employer) can increase the quality of the billing stack in the Enhanced Telecom Operations Map!
Building Marketplaces with Managed Syndicated Services
The TM Forum’s catalyst project ‘Building Marketplaces with Managed Syndicated Services‘ presented its results at Management World 2008 in Nice. The project aims to implement standards-based B/OSS for cross-platform next generation service management’.
The project is sponsored by BT, Microsoft and Telefonica. Further contributions are made by Accenture, CA, Iptivia, Netcracker and Tribold.
The idea of the project is to create a service delivery concept which reassembles SOA service repositories. A service provider exposes a number of services that can be syndicated by a party that combines the services into a new service for the end-user. These syndicated services could be voice or any other multimedia communication services, content services, et cetera.
The project gives the following example, it neatly shows how a service supply chain can be instantiated by syndicating a number of loosely-coupled services:
- A conferencing service is exposed by Service Provider A to be syndicated under three contracts: small, medium and large conference
- A real time video session delivery is exposed by Service Provider B to be syndicated under two contracts: slideware presentation and animated presentation
- A common billing service is exposed by Service Provider C to be syndicated under one contract: detailed charging
- A service aggregator will contract an animated video presentation for a small conference with detailed charging. The service aggregator has the capability to capture events/information related to the health and usage of services provided by SP A and SP B before using SP C for invoicing the end user.”
Phase I of the catalyst project demonstrated the end-to-end product assembly, provisioning and service quality management capabilities ready for service syndication. The next phase, scheduled for the second half of 2008, will include settlements, billing and revenue allocation.
It sounds like a very interesting project; especially the second phase is of particular interest for me personally. I have done some research on similar problems from a charging and billing perspective already in the Ambient Networks project and more recently in an in-house research project within my company. Some of these results have landed in a paper called ‘Accounting, Charging and Billing for Dynamic Service Composition Chains’ which is currently under review for the 17th International Conference on Information Systems Development. This paper gives some views on the changes required on Accounting, Charging and Billing processes and enabling systems in order for them to support service composition similar to the service syndication concept presented in this TM Forum catalyst project.
This project is definitely on my watch list!
TM Forum Creates Interface Factory
Some of the benefits claimed:
- ‘freely choose the operations support systems they want, based on price, quality and functionality’
- ‘reduce the risk of service delivery by eliminating the need for proprietary interfaces”lower integration costs’
- ‘clear migration path’
This all sounds good, but I’m a bit sceptical. I hope the interface specifications from this factory will be supported by the industry. Otherwise, I don’t see the point…
Source: billingworld.com
Frens Jan Rumph
Billing and Customer Experience – A New Initiative
The Global Billing Association (GBA, www.globalbilling.org) has been dissolved and the Billing and Customer Experience Initiative has been founded in its stead.
This means on one hand that the knowledge of the group is accessible from all TM Forum members. And on the other hand that all TM Forum members can add their experience and knowledge to the group. I do hope that the group will still be pushing the state of the art or at least bringing the state of the art from the research plane down to the business plane. Be it through updated versions of the GBA Map (or should I say BCEI Map) or through enhancements and modernisation of the TM Forum’s eTOM.
Link: The announcement by Alex Leslie
Frens Jan Rumph