B/OSS Improvements Help Save $3.4m for a US Satellite Provider

The customer was a US-based global satellite network provider offering satellite-based broadband access services that connect home and business users to the internet.

The network provider, while focusing on service expansion, realized that its legacy billing system was incompetent to handle large volumes of traffic and was not flexible and robust enough to roll out new offerings in a timely manner. As part of its long term strategy, the network provider felt a need for the adoption of new Business and Operations Support Systems (BSS/OSS) and new technologies. A converged, highly flexible, and highly scalable BSS/OSS solution was required which would ensure faster time to market and rapid roll out of new offerings, while integrating with legacy applications. The key challenges were to:

  • Develop a customer-centric roadmap which included roll out of new services and applications;
  • Identify the automation needs in the existing billing system, define requirements in the RFP to billing system vendors, evaluate and select a new billing system and implement a customized solution;
  • Integrate and test a complex ordering system for multiple transports and migrate the existing customers and usage database to the new system;
  • Design order management, customer management and self care, service management, and service control systems;
  • Enhance the solution for e-business interactions.

Aricent Solution

Aricent partnered with the customer in the evaluation and selection of BSS/ OSS products, improving business processes, BSS/OSS solution architecture design and end-to-end BSS/OSS system integration, testing and deployment.

Aricent executed the project in multiple phases:

Consultancy

Aricent consulted with the customer to understand the business processes, identify business process improvements, evaluate various billing systems, design the architecture roadmap, and define business and system requirements based on parameters such as ease of integration to various third party systems, system architecture, features, extensibility and billing requirements.

Implementation

Aricent customized the Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) system to fit the customer’s needs and implemented the system with services configured to the new platform. Order management, customer management and self care, and other related systems were designed and developed as per the design requirements. The applications were integrated with various internal and third party applications, and the complete solution was deployed and tested.

Maintenance, Support and Enhancements

Aricent was involved in scaling and optimizing the billing system to support an increased subscriber base, maintaining and upgrading the solution, business intelligence reporting, eTOM/NGOSS alignment, technology upgrades to web services / SOA and new functional enhancements.

Results

  • Aricent helped the customer save $3.4 million per year through customization, support, and maintenance of the new off the shelf billing system;
  • Reduced operational expenses through the automation of manual business processes;
  • Improved pricing flexibility and time-to-market performance;
  • The customer was able to plug revenue leakage by using real time financial, subscriber, and products/services information;
  • Accelerated time to market and reduced project cost owing to Aricent’s global service delivery model.

Aricent scored over competition by demonstrating superior expertise in the telecom billing domain, proven billing experience and a strong understanding of OSS/BSS architecture. Excellent customer references for Aricent’s billing expertise reinforced customer’s confidence in Aricent’s capabilities. Aricent was very proactive in understanding and addressing customer’s concern for its legacy systems transformation. Aricent worked closely with the customer to identify the automation needs in their existing billing system, define requirements in the RFP to billing system vendors, evaluate and select a new billing system tailored to address their needs.