Why Telcos Can’t Do without a Good Telecom Billing Software Solution?

Telecom industry is under great pressure to churn out enticing offers and schemes to attract new subscribers. This can only happen if a company utilizes cutting-edge telecom billing software. A good telecom software solution should be able to do everything from rating to credit control to offering discounts. Moreover, it should also be able to manage customer-specific information efficiently and put it to good use.

The Widening Scope of Telecom Billing Software

Telecom billing software is not limited to one or two tasks in the telecom industry. It has a wide scope and it interacts with various telecom entities like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, provisioning system, network inventory system and many other systems for proper completion of critical telecom billing tasks. 

Some of the major tasks performed by a telecom billing software are listed below:

1.      Usage capturing – A telecom billing software should be able to capture Call Detail Records (CDRs). A CDR can have different attributes like time of event, source number, received number etc. There are different network elements that capture different CDRs e.g. Voice calls are captured by the MSC (Mobile Switching Centre) and SMS traffic is captured by the SMSC.  These CDRs are transformed into a format understood by the billing system, which stores them for subsequent charging and rating.

2.      Rating CDRs – Once CDRs are captured, they need to be rated by the telecom billing software. Firstly, the software validates the CDR and removes any duplicate record. After that, the charges are calculated by applying the cost/price of the service used on the duration or number of events. It also picks up the account from which charge needs to be deducted by searching for customer information in the CDR.

3.      Application of discount – Discount provides a great way to attract new customers. A quality telecom billing software should be able to provide rating time and billing time discounts. Rating time discounts are provided for usage only and can only be applied at the time of rating a service. On the other hand, billing time discounts can be offered on rated usage and also on product & service charges.

All the above mentioned tasks performed by telecom billing software are mission critical for the correct operation of telcos. Hence, it becomes the responsibility of every telecom operator to either build a quality telecom billing software or take the help of established telecom billing software companies for accurate billing.

Summary

Telecom billing, if not done right, can be hazardous to the health of any telecom operation. It can decrease the trust of customers in the telecom provider, which can further dent a company’s future prospects. Hence, a telecom network operator should always focus on finding the right telecom billing software for enhancing the quality of his operations and winning the customer trust.

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