Inspire Innovation Immediately with a Convergent Telecom Billing System

2021 requires telcos to think on their feet. It is very important that a telecom operator frequently changes its strategy and adapts to the current market situation. For smaller operators such as Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), the challenge is to perform in the segment they are in. This segment is actually very competitive, especially in the developed countries such as the US and UK. In order to overcome the challenge of competition, it is required that you either develop a good telecom billing software or employ telecom billing services that have proven their worth.

Choosing a Telecom Billing System that Inspires Innovation

A telecom billing system that allows telcos to be innovative is very important in today’s time. Below are some essential features of such a phone billing software solution:

Convergence

Real-time charging platforms allow for convergence, which is very important in today’s time. A convergent charging platform is the gold standard for today’s telecom operators. It allows them to print single unified invoices that have all service charges reflected at the same place.

Faster monetization

Rapid monetization is the key to succeeding with your plans in the telecom industry. When you bring your plans to the market quicker, you are able to attract the interest of your customers.

Point of Sale

A point of sale is where the customers buy their telecom plans. The point of sale should be well-tested and work as per the requirements of different groups of customers.

Self-Care Options

Nowadays, many customers want to build their very own telecom service bundles. Therefore, you should offer self-care options. A multi-tenant platform that supports multiple user logins is required for this option to be a success. The self-care should come with options such as plan changes, payment methods, upgradation of services etc.

Analytics for Decision Making

An analytical package alongside a telecom billing system can make all the difference in your business strategy. It allows you to make impactful decisions, which ultimately help your business to grow.

Scope for Monetizing Every Old and New Service

Monetization of both old and new services is very much required. Nowadays, your telecom billing system should excel at service offerings such as prepaid, postpaid, IoT, 5G and broadband apart from the new-age OTT services like video streaming.

At Telgoo5, we have a readymade platform that caters to the exact needs of telecom operators. We also offer intuitive APIs, which can be easily installed for bringing in new functionalities into the system.

Harness Power of Innovative Next-Gen Telecom Billing Services to Succeed in 2021

In this age of technology, you need to be one step ahead of your competitors at all time. When it comes to the telecom industry, the competitive struggle is more intense because there are different types of operators in the industry. MNOs, MVNOs, ISPs and OTT service providers collectively form the entire telecom domain. Every player in the industry needs to be competent when it comes to telecom billing solutions, if it really wants to make a mark.

The Challenges for Telcos in 2021

2021 is expected to be extremely challenging for telcos, especially for the smaller players like MVNOs. Have a look at some challenges for telcos in the present times:

Revenue assurance

You simply have to deliver services as per your contract with the customers. Therefore, it is important to have complete revenue assurance. Considering the number of telecom services delivered these days, it is quite a challenge to be 100% accurate with revenue assurance.

Quick monetization of innovative plans

To break away from the crowd and provide unique telecom services, you need to have a billing system that allows flexibility in monetization. As a telecom operator, you should be able to combine disparate services and deliver them in an attractive manner. Also, the monetization needs to be quick if you want to exploit the trends prevailing in the market. For example, in the times of lockdown, you can provide conference calling as part of the package as more and more professionals are looking to connect remotely with their peers.

Management of third-party partnerships

There are simply too many things that an operator has to manage these days. It is impossible to grow one’s service catalogue – horizontally and vertically – at the same time without third party partnerships. Therefore, the complexity and challenge is huge, unless you have access to pro telecom billing services that offer APIs for third-party partnerships. A flexible system can manage various third-party partnerships with suppliers, video streaming vendors, payment gateways and shipping services. You can even manage an interconnect partnership for roaming services through an intuitive telecom billing platform like Telgoo5.

To overcome the numerous challenges, it is vital that a modern-day telecom operator uses telecom billing systems that have the necessary functionalities. Telgoo5 is an outstanding telecom support platform that simplifies day-to-day tasks and makes the challenge in 2021 simpler. The system comes with cutting-edge APIs that add new functionality and help in the evolution of telecom businesses.

Transition From Legacy Systems To Modern Infrastructure with Telgoo5

We at Telgoo5 know that the ability to scale despite challenges and adapt to changes is crucial to your success in the telecom sector. This notion is especially true when it comes to online charging technologies – and dealing with the issues of legacy charging systems.

With new requirements and technologies at every corner, you have to be quick on your feet in meeting customer demands. Further, you must keep an open mind to making changes at a moment’s notice. Additionally, you must stay on top of the latest advancements.

In essence, we at Telgoo5 know that you must be ready for everything that your legacy charging system will not allow you to do.

Legacy Charging Systems Set You Up for Failure

If you have made it this far with a legacy charging system, the first thing you require is substantial applause. The next thing you need is to instantly look for a better Online Charging System (OCS) such as Telgoo5.

Remember that if you stick with the limitations of a legacy charging system, you introduce your customers to a world of trouble. In a day and age where customer experience reigns supreme, your consumers will find themselves stuck with tolerating problems from the past.

Standing by your legacy Charging System even in the face of better alternatives can expose your service to a host of issues. The following examples highlight the most glaring of these problems.

Latency Problems

You can face high-latency issues frequently if your network infrastructure is not set up for modern communication.

This can be quite a problem for data-savvy customers, which describes every customer segment in today’s day and age.

Charging Delays

Apart from overall latency, you can also face online charging delays.

This causes massive headaches for your customers and your billing department alike. Inaccuracies in billing could very well cause your whole operations to crumble with their consequences.

Poor Customer Experience

When performance issues become an everyday instance for your customers, they take pride in describing their overall experience as a bad nightmare.

Customers don’t know, and they frankly don’t care what is going on behind the scenes with your OCS. What they need is a better service, and failure to deliver on this promise can affect your overall brand.

Loss of Consumers

With better OCS services being offered at other providers like Telgoo5, it is not long before your customers start looking for a change for the better. Switching providers proves easier than sticking with your service. As a result, your customers decide to leave in favor of better service experiences.

Sticking with your legacy charging system drives your operation into the ground faster than you can think. It is absolutely necessary to get your ducks in a row and proceed towards better Online Charging Services.

The Ability to Scale and Adapt to Better Systems is Crucial Here

Fortunately, upgrading from your legacy charging system is not that difficult. All you need is an efficient online charging system provider. The rest falls in line if you know what you are doing. Most importantly, it gets easier when you show the ability to scale and adapt in the face of change.

Telgoo5 offers new technologies such as real-time charging and allows you to better serve your customers better. Along with improved customer experience, it also helps you cut unnecessary costs that come with the upkeep of legacy charging systems.

That is the reason why most companies are actively looking into upgrading their legacy charging systems.

Adapting to Change Doesn’t Cost You Much, But Provides a World of Benefits

We at Telgoo5 know that with the right Online Charging System Provider, proper upgrades will not cost you an arm and a leg. It doesn’t require you to pay a fortune in upkeep costs. And it will not ask your customers to start dealing with higher tariff prices.

Also, with that, you still receive smoother service delivery, timely modification features, and a better overall customer experience for your target market. This strategy effectively resolves any issues caused by your legacy charging system.

To understand the improvement process and its effects on your specific network, don’t hesitate to reach out to Telgoo5 today. We at Telgoo5 will be glad to answer any questions you may have and set you up with improved online charging services right away.

Why CDR Meditation Is an Essential Part of Telecom Billing?

Telecom billing is probably the most confusing and scrutinized task in the telecom industry. The scrutiny comes from customers who are more often than not dissatisfied with their bills. This leads to confusion amongst the telecom vendors who start looking everywhere for new telecom billing solutions. Mostly, this problem arises because the telecom billing software used by them are subpar and do not meet the high requirements of modern-day businesses.

Why Telecom Billing Solutions Are Important?

All the efforts made by telecom service providers in setting up a network will amount to nothing if telecom billing is not up to standards. This is why, telecom billing solutions become important as they play a crucial role in accounting for those services. Not only is the revenue generated by a telecom provider dependent on billing, customers’ trust is also directly connected with the quality of the billing services. For instance, if a customer starts receiving wrong bills, his trust in the services nosedives from that moment onwards. On the other hand, if the billing services are sound, the customer stays faithful and brings in new customers.

CDRs: The Fundamental Unit of Telecom Billing Process

CDR (Call Data Record) is the fundamental unit of telecom billing process. All interactions between the user and telecom networking elements are captured by CDRs. A CDR has the following attributes:

1. Date and starting time of the call

2. Duration of the call

3. Calling party

4. Called party

5. Type of call e.g. voice, SMS, data etc.

6. Unique record sequence number that is used for identification

The captured CDRs are vitally important for the proper operation of a billing system. However, these CDRs are raw in nature, which means they cannot be interpreted by a billing system.

CDR Meditation System: The Unsung Hero of Telecom Billing Solutions

To ensure the captured CDRs are converted into a format that is understood by the billing system, a CDR meditation system is employed. The meditation system receives the unformatted CDRs, converts them into the necessary format and sends them to the billing system. Besides conversion, it also performs the operation of filtering out calls that do not meet set criterion by the telecom vendor. For example, if a call with duration less than 10 second needs to be filtered out, it is done by CDR meditation system. Moreover, if some extra information needs to be provided that is crucial for billing procedure, the meditation system gathers that information based on certain attributes and then sends it to the billing system via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP is required for transfer of this information as both billing software and meditation modules are installed on different systems.

After the billing system receives the formatted CDR, it is able to interpret the information and rate the services utilized by customers.

Summary

Billing system in telecom is quite complex and requires processing of data at different levels for accomplishment of billing-related tasks. Although the user is not aware of what goes on behind the scenes, the role of systems like meditation system that converts raw CDRs into formatted CDRs is extremely important. All telecom billing solutions require correct formatting of CDR for reliable and accurate completion of billing tasks.

Don’t Let Your Customers Suffer Anymore, Switch to OSS Telecom Billing Software

Technology does not always change for the best. But, that does not mean it does not try to make things better. When we look from the perspective of telecom industry, BSS and OSS have been two pillars of technology that have transformed the way business takes place. And the good news, everything has changed for the best. Compared with platforms used in the other industries, these two solutions have been in the market for a long time and have garnered trust from most telecom vendors. So, if you are still clinging onto the telecom systems of old, it is probably time to let go and switch to OSS telecom billing software.

Why Change Is Important for All Industries?

When we look at industries of today, hotel industry stands out as the one that has probably seen the biggest transformation in terms of its operations due to technology. In the past, it was tough for hotel chains to manage their properties spread over different parts of the globe. But, with the coming of PMS and cloud-based technologies, almost all hotel chains are using it or planning to use it in the future. A study has revealed that in the next 4-5 years hotel companies will invest up to 8% more in cloud-based technologies.

Compared to hotel industry, operations in telecom industry are much more complex. Monitoring of customer, interactions, provisioning, billing, meditation systems, and the list goes on and on! A telecom operator requires all the help he can get. So, when the solution is staring at you in your face in the form of OSS telecom billing solutions, why not upgrade?

Drawbacks of Legacy Systems

Legacy systems are much more cumbersome and require manual intervention for smooth operation. This may lead to recurring errors that can diminish the customer’s faith in you. Let’s say a customer wants to upgrade his plan and calls up customer support. Upon receiving a request, the agent sends it forward for execution. Now, the system employed by the service provider lacks the service assurance feature normally found in OSS applications. In this case, there is a high probability that the request may be completed but not up to the service level agreement between the provider and the customer. This may reduce the trust of the customer in the system and he may opt for a different provider.

Now, compare this situation with an OSS-backed operation. The OSS telecom billing software has service assurance as one of its primary feature. Unless, there is a terrible malfunctioning of the system (which is very rare), it is highly unlikely that the request will be mismanaged or delivered incorrectly. All the more reason to employ, quality OSS telecom billing solutions, don’t you think so?

The One Thing You Did Not Know About Telecom Billing Software

Telecom billing is a thankless task. You can be right 99 times out of 100, but if you make a single error, all the good work you have done previously goes down the drain. Just like politics, customers have short memories when it comes to the telecom services they use. Politicians have the advantage of evoking the right emotions at the time of elections but telecom operators do not enjoy such a luxury. They have to be right all the time and then some.

Not so long ago, when telecom billing systems were not as evolved as today, it was even harder to provide accurate bills to the customers. But at that time, the competition in the telecom industry was relatively low. At the sight of a wrong bill, customers used to think twice before crossing over to another provider. Not anymore! In this age of information and evolving telecom market, the playing field is a lot more competitive. Every year we see new entrants who try to lure away customers with flashy schemes and minimum tariff plans. This trend makes life difficult for established players in the market, especially for those who are still using outdated OSS telecom billing software.

“Hello! Have You Heard About Our New and Improved Telecom Billing Software?”

Do you know what most telecom operators do after hearing this line from a sales representative? They disconnect the line. It is not as if all the telecom billing software solutions made by IT companies are good and work well for every business. Not at all! However, complete disdain for something that you automatically think of as an exorbitant expense. Doesn’t make good business sense!

If till now, you have refrained from purchasing OSS telecom billing solutions because you thought they cost too much, you are in for a surprise. Most telecom entrepreneurs, in spite of their vast knowledge, do not know that telecom billing software can be procured as Software as a service (SaaS). If you are still not clear how this can help…read on.

Telecom Billing Software as SaaS

One of the least expensive ways of employing telecom billing software in your business operations is via SaaS model. With SaaS, you do not have to purchase any license or acquire any infrastructure. You can even decide on whether to host the services on your company’s cloud or employ the billing platform already operating in a cloud provided by the vendor.

This approach best suits startups and organizations with a limited budget. Enterprises that wish to integrate the billing software ASAP have to wait for only a day or two before beginning the use of billing software as part of SaaS model.