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Converting Services into Revenue
Obvious though it may seem, it’s vital to state that the billing system must help operators to turn services into revenue. Two considerations come into play:
• Full support for real-time transactions. The system must check credit balances, charges, discounts, loyalty points and provide authorization in real time before a customer can access the service.
• Flexible credit parameters. Online charging systems should offer different rules on how a credit is used. For example, funds could be reserved when the service is requested, with the actual charge levied once the service has been delivered. The system should also show customers the cost of a service so they can decide whether to proceed.
Sophisticated Partner Management and Settlement
One of the chief appeals of IMS is the ability to quickly turn up new services. Just as in the media business, operators will compete on their ability to deliver a constant stream of exciting new content and services. Increasingly, they will rely on partners to help create and deliver services to the end user. Support systems will need to accommodate and drive this development. The billing system, for instance, should be able to handle all aspects of service delivery and revenue settlement associated with partner activities.
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"As partner activity and service portfolios grow, so do the demands for high scalability and availability in the billing system." |
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As a result:
• Scalability needs to be achieved in an operationally efficient and manageable way, including the option of using multiple smaller servers, rather than a huge single server, to reduce costs.
• Availability needs to be a top priority, as down-time is costly and potentially increases operators’ risk of credit exposure.
Migration and Implementation
A handful of aggressive IMS transition plans call for a short window to migrate customers from the legacy network to IMS. But for most operators, this type of flash cut switchover will be the exception rather than the rule. The majority of service providers are likely to run legacy and IMS networks side-by-side for a decade or more as they gradually migrate customers to IMS. During this transition period, IMS products – and the BSS that support them – must co-exist.
Further, operators need to recognize that implementing IMS projects will involve greater challenges than was the case with previous network upgrades. One reason : A natural
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Settlement and partner management is a complex process that goes far beyond managing revenue flows between parties. The value-chains that accompany the growth of content services will offer operators the opportunity to derive income from each transaction.
Conditional Settlement
Settlement periods for retail billing and various merchants won’t always match. As a result, the billing system should provide ‘conditional settlement’ to manage such disparate settlement periods. With conditional settlement, the operator can settle with merchants when the consumer pays, thus improving risk management and cash flow.
Scalability and Availability
As partner activity and service portfolios grow, so do the demands for high scalability and availability in the billing system. Rating and billing will be used by all IMS applications, and the system will be expected to handle the increased volumes of subscribers, higher numbers of transactions and a growing body of content/service provider partners.
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offshoot of using multiple vendors will be increased complexity of the implementation. The rise in the number of partners, and in the types of content and services delivered, will increase the need for open system architectures, products with published application program interfaces (APIs) and a proven integration strategy.
Conclusions
IMS holds strong potential to drive new services, new revenue streams, enhance customer loyalty and open the way for more cost-efficient support infrastructures. But IMS will not emerge in a vacuum, separate from the BSS that govern the ability to deliver services and support. The success of convergent IMS services hinges on tight integration with convergent BSS.
To realize the vision of IMS, operators must make customer centricity a top priority, adopting a new way of thinking that puts the customer the central focus of the business. Most importantly, operators must commit to support systems that “operationalize” this new business logic, capture revenue and deliver the full potential of IMS.
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