Telecommunications

Purpose and main characteristics of the system Automated settlement system (ACP) “Fido Billing” is a multifunctional information system for large and medium-sized companies with an extensive organizational structure that are providers of telecommunications services. ACP “Fido Billing” is designed to automate technological processes associated with the provision of telecommunications services, to automate the calculation of the cost of services provided, to manage financial and legal relations with clients. One of the main advantages of the system is that a company that has a geographically distributed network of telecommunications service providers who use their own tariff and accounting policies has the opportunity to centrally manage and implement accounting and tariff policies in a single data processing center. This opportunity eliminates the need for each territorial division to have its own software and hardware complex for settlements with the company’s clients. The system is implemented in a three-level architecture (WEB technology) with a single information processing center. RDBMS Oracle 10g is used as a database server; any application server with J2EE container support can be used as an application server, in particular, Oracle AS, Resin AS, JBOSS and others. Composition ACP “Fido Billing” functionally consists of the following subsystems:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM);
• Accounting and control of payments;
• Administration;
• Information and reference service (Personal account);
• Tarification (billing);
• Collection and preliminary processing of information;
• Telecommunications equipment management;
• Statistics and analytics.

The automated payment system “Fido Billing” is implemented in accordance with the requirements of the industry standard TSt 45-063:2007. Customer Relationship Management This subsystem implements the functions necessary for successful interaction with clients - functions for storing and processing information about the client, his needs, as well as functions that automate the company’s activities in providing services to clients, attracting and retaining clients, as well as improving interaction with clients. The main functions of the Customer Relationship Management subsystem are:

• Working with client identification data;
• Working with client contact information;
• Working with client payment bank details;
• Working with client personal accounts;
• Working with contracts with clients;
• Working with guarantors;
• Working with client requests;
• Working with client requests;
• Working with payment documents;
• Working with additional charges;
• Working with debtors;
• Working with information about services received by the client;
• Working with client balance data;
• Working with reference information;
• Search system for clients and others.

Accounting and control of payments This subsystem implements the functions necessary for registering and monitoring customer payments. The system provides support for such types of payments as cash payments, bank transfers, payments through prepaid and bank cards, payments through electronic payment systems, postal transfers. According to the methods of entering payment information into the system, the following can be distinguished:

• Manual entry of payments by system operators;
• Automatic recording of payments based on information received from the Client-Bank system;
• Automatic recording of payments based on information received from the card platform;
• Automatic fixation based on information received from external systems.
• The payment registration and control subsystem provides the following:
• Registration of all types of payments with control of date, format and exchange rates on the date of payment;
• Registration of all types of payments with control of date, format and exchange rates on the date of payment;
• Deleting and adjusting payment data;
• Transfer of payment data from one client to another;
• Creation of payment registers and balance sheets;
• Creating a list of debtors;
• Registration of all inputs and changes to payment data and many other functions.

Administration This module implements functions that provide software protection against unauthorized access to the system, management of access rights to certain functions for various categories of users, and monitoring of user actions and powers. In addition, this module implements functions that allow you to keep records of internal organizational information.structure of the enterprise - list and hierarchy of divisions and departments, list of employees. The system includes a flexible mechanism for creating and modifying user roles (automated workstations) depending on their job responsibilities. Roles are formed by the system administrator when registering new system users. Each role is assigned a user menu and an accessible set of objects, and these, in turn, are assigned a named set of access rights to each object. Users of the information system have limited access to modules and system functions. The rights and privileges of system users are controlled by the system administrator. The system administrator will also control the system settings. The main functions of this subsystem are:

• Registration of system users;
• Creating system roles;
• Distribution of access rights to users and roles in the system;
• Configuring system parameters;
• Setting up a system for monitoring user actions and auditing.

Information and reference service (Personal account) This subsystem implements the functions necessary to provide comprehensive information to clients on the services provided to them. The subsystem Information and reference service (Personal Account) allows the company's clients via the Internet to have access to the following information and functions:

• View registered customer identification data;
• View client contracts;
• View the history of using services;
• View information about invoices for services provided;
• View information about paid customer invoices;
• View aggregated data on services provided to clients;
• View detailed data on services provided to clients;
• Changing client password;
• Change tariff plan;
• Account replenishment;
• Submission of various types of applications and others.

Tariffication This subsystem implements functions that allow flexible setting of tariffs for services of various types, charging of services based on the data received and according to pre-configured tariffs, and maintaining financial records for the services provided. In this implementation, the system supports charging and setting up tariff plans for the following types of services:

• Public telephony services;
• Services for providing Internet traffic over dial-up lines;
• Services for providing Internet traffic over leased lines;
• Video telephony services;
• IP telephony services;
• IP-TV services.

The system implements flexible configuration of tariff plans, which allows you to charge the provided service according to various criteria (time, quantity, direction, threshold and others). The system implements functions that allow making calculations during the inter-settlement period, recalculating accruals, and charging “discarded” statistics, i.e. re-charge data after eliminating charging errors or failures. The system implements support for automatic management of services on switching equipment and notification of clients when the threshold value of their personal accounts and debt is reached. Notification can be carried out in voice or electronic (e-mail) mode. Collection and preliminary processing of information This subsystem is designed to collect primary information about the services provided to customers from telecommunication devices, clear it and then transmit it for charging. The information collection and preliminary processing subsystem supports the following types of information sources:

• Information received from telecommunications equipment via the NetFlow protocol;
• Information received in the form of CDR format files;
• Information received in the form of test files.

The subsystem implements flexible configuration for various sources of information, which allows, in particular, to receive and process data transmitted via various versions of the NetFlow protocol, receive and process data received in the form of CDR files of various formats, as well as receive and process data from structured text files. Telecommunications Equipment Management This subsystem implements the functions necessary to manage various telecommunications equipment in the context of providing services, in particular:

• Enabling/Disconnecting clients from services;
• Blocking/unblocking services to clients;
• Installation and configuration of additional services;
• Restricting client access to services.

Statistics and analytics This subsystem implements the following functions:

• Input, adjustment, task planningto obtain analytical and statistical information;
• Obtaining analytical and statistical information in various aspects.
• The subsystem implements procedures that allow generating analytical and statistical information, conditionally divided into the following categories:
• Financial information: to provide information on financial relationships with clients, to be provided to fiscal authorities;
• Statistical information: to provide information about the services received (traffic distribution by clients, by zones, telephone call distribution by zones, etc.);
• Analytical information: information generated on the basis of financial and statistical information, showing analytical information about the profitability of certain partners, the distribution of payments according to tariff plans, etc.
• Special information: information for end users (volume of services provided, charges for services provided, payments, list of registered services, invoices issued, personal account status, etc.); service information (list of services offered, volume of services, invoices, cash receipts, channel loading, distribution of traffic and communication sessions).