Effective billing for corporate customers

In modern "tough" competitive environment any company aims to be the most effective on its market in order to have more chances to win the competitive battle.

Inline Telecom Solutions offers a product based on B&CC Billmasterfor corporate customers: financial institutions, manufacturing companies, trade and transport companies, supply and logistics centers, etc.

This solution allows to control usage of resources (corporate telephony, Internet) by company’s employees, getting complete reports on volumes and costs of services, used by each employee for a specific period of time. This information can be used by managers of a company for purposes of finding ways to optimize expenses on communication services.

Realization of the solution

The solution, based on B&CC Billmaster allows to arrange accounting and tariffication of phone calls, information about which can come via the RADIUS protocol, as well as in the form of records, which contain the information about a call made (СDR, UDR, etc.). Accounting of used Internet access services is performed by way of processing of information, which comes via protocols, which are intended for gathering of information about IP-traffic inside the network (Netflow, SNMP, Remote Shell (RSH), NetSream) with the possibility to get detailed information on each IP-session, made by each employee of a company.

Wide integration possibilities of this solution allow to work effectively with network equipment and software solutions of different manufacturers (Mera MVTS (IP Centrex), Cisco, Quintum Tenor, Juniper) and with a wide range of different ATS of different vendors, such as Avaya Definity, Siemens, Ericsson, EWSD, etc.

Main components, which are included into solutions for corporate customers:

• VoIP telephony module and/or Traditional telephony module;
• Leased line module
  

Voice over IP module is used for accounting of VoIP-services and allows to service regular subscribers, connected to the network. The information about duration of calls comes over the RADIUS protocol. When the conversation is finished final calculation of duration and cost of this call is performed. When an office IP-PBX is used the information about duration of a call is imported from the IP-PBX data base as CDR-packages.

Main tariffication possibilities for this solution when Voice over IP module is used, are the following:

• calculation of call cost, depending on directions (telephone zones) and time, when a call was made;
• rounding up of call duration to the closest specified interval (for example, to one minute, to 10 seconds), as well as setting of non-tariffed duration and minimum duration, taking into account different telephone zones;
• volume price coefficients.

The module of fixed telephony is designed for calculation of call costs in public switched telephone networks (PSTN). The information about duration and direction of calls is generated by equipment of exchanges and transferred as CDR-packages.

Main tariffication possibilities with the fixed telephony Module are the following:

• calculation of call costs taking into account telephone zones and tariffication schedules;
• flexible identification of subscribers – subscribers can be identified by phone numbers, trunk numbers, numbers of trunk-group, combinations of a phone number and trunk-group, identification can also be performed by IP-addresses of exchange servers;
• rounding of call duration;
• volume price coefficients.

The leased lines Module is design for accounting of Internet access services in case of permanent connection via leased line. For collection of information about traffic there are used external collector-programs. They interact with network appliances over protocols, which are intended for collection of information about IP-traffic inside a network (Netflow, SNMP, Remote Shell (RSH), NetSream, etc.) and record the information about the volume of a specified service into files, which are then processed and tariffed.

This solution includes collectors for obtaining of information about traffic over SNMP and Remote Shell (RSH) protocols. The first collector reads the information from the management information base (MIB) on network appliances, the second – receives Cisco IP-Accounting statistics. For interaction over the protocol NetFlow there are used collectors of third-party manufacturers, for example FlowCapture collector, which is a component of a popular package Flow-Tools.

Fulfilled tasks

Usage of a billing solution based on B&CC Billmaster allows companies to fulfill the following tasks:

• accounting and tariffication of telecommunication resources, used by the company, division, department and each employee for a given period of time;
• identification of the most costly units in a company; making of a decision about optimization of expenses on telecommunication services;
• control of proper use of telecommunication resources by employees of the company;
• carrying out of verification of services, provided over a specific period of time, with telecoms operators;
• estimation of correspondence of the service quality to the level, specified in the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Advantages of the solution

Inline Telecom Solutions offers a complete billing solution for corporate customers, which allows to make better decisions concerning optimization of communication service costs, increase business efficiency, improve competitive advantages.

This solution also has the following advantages:

• flexibility and high performance, which allow to work with large data volumes and complex tariff schemes;
• wide integration possibilities allow to implement solutions regardless of equipment used;
• wide possibilities for drawing of bills, capability of independent "building" of required reports;
• short term implementation of this solution – it can be launched within two months;
• optimum cost of solution, as it is possible to use only those functional possibilities, which are required;
• quick adaptation of solution to individual needs of a client, if necessary.