Billing functions can be grouped to three areas: [|operations], [|information management], [|financial management]. In the broad sense, when billing and revenue management is considered as a single process bundle, as special functional areas could be picked out revenue assurance, profitability management, fraud management.
Operations
Operations area includes functions of capturing usage records, rating consumption, applying prices, tariffs, discounts, taxes and compiling charges for each customer account, rendering bills, managing bill delivery, applying adjustments, maintaining of customer account. Operations area functions implementation can vary significantly depending on communications type and payment model. In particular, for prepaid customers billing should be realized continuously, and when a lower threshold amount at the account is reached, systems could automatically limit a service. In postpaid service model there are no vital requirements to decrease a balance of a customer account in real time, in this case charging scheduled to be rarely, usually, once per month.
Information management area unites functions that responsible to support customer information, product and service data, pricing models, including their possible combinations, as well as billing configuration data, such as billing cycles schedules, event triggers, bill delivery channels, audit settings, data archiving parameters. Customer information often integrated with customer relationship management system; collaboration with customer can be a function of information management area of billing system or can be completely allocated in CRM.
Financial management area covers functions of payment tracking and processing, mapping correspondence between payments and consumed services, managing credits and debt collections, calculating company taxes.
Convergent billing
Communication service providers, which operates with multiple services in multiple modes used to integrate in one bill all charges, unify customer management in one system. Term convergent billing system refers to such a solution, that could maintain single customer account and produce a single bill for all services and also do it regardless a payment method.
Telecommunications billing systems market
A global market of the packaged telecommunications billing systems estimated to $6 Billion at 2007 and forecast to grow up to $7.2 Billion in 2012. Market shares by application specific as of 2007 were following:
