Telecom Billing Software Development

The customer is a UK-based B2B telecommunications provider and airtime distributor offering cost-efficient mobile, data, voice, IoT and cloud solutions to 30K+ enterprise customers. Its intelligent, fast and self-optimizing cellular networks let business users stay connected around the world. The company has 1.5M+ users and offers 120K+ services and 2.5K+ products. 

The customer’s business model consists in buying calls, SMS, and traffic in bulk and selling it to enterprises at a margin. The network providers process call data and generate call detail records (CDRs), saving them using File Transfer Protocols (FTPs).

Our customer had a legacy system for processing rating data, updated unbilled data, and their invoiced clients’ records, consisting of two components: a web portal and a billing module. 

The web portal was used as a platform where end business users could get consultations regarding tariffs, pricing models, and contract duration, and select the most suitable telecom solution for their business. 

The billing module was based on a third-party SaaS solution that rated the usage of connected services, generated invoices, managed financial transactions, etc.

Iflexion developed a new BRS to replace the existing solution, as well as set up effective collaboration processes between the customer’s and our teams.

The new system followed the habitual general flow of the rating process and introduced the missing functionality, including the invoice management module. This new built-in module processed all rigid structures and added flexibility at the architecture and design levels, making the system highly dynamic, rule-based, and configurable. It eliminated the need for manual invoice management outside of the system. 

The key features of the invoice management module are:

• Invoice generation

• Flexible invoice distribution schedules

• Branded invoice templates

• Branded email templates

The invoice distribution scheduling feature solved the invoicing and payment issues typically occurring at peak times. Batch API and temporary payment items helped resolve the issue of little control over the final decision to post invoice and direct debit transactions. Additionally, the unbilled data set provided admins with the ability to view the unbilled state of the rated usage. 

A large pool of improvements concerned automation, namely:

• A re-rating module built into the BRS that eliminated the need for manual re-rating of late events.

• A payment processing module that automated most manual processes.

• A new integration layer based on the REST principles that solved the problem of the poor communication between the integrated components.

• A new BRS API, a UI layer, and a web hook system to notify third-party systems of tasks, results, issues, and alerts.

• Background modules for the processing/rating of individual and contractual recurring charges.

• Automated integrations with the customer’s other systems.

In the two years of our cooperation, we have become a trusted technological and development partner for the UK-based telecommunications provider. We released their new billing and rating system that helped them achieve the following results:

• The rating processing power grew to 10 million records a day with no performance hindrances.

• We made the invoice distribution process predictable and configurable. 

• Thanks to the improvements to the PHP part of the system, the invoice run time execution was decreased from 8 to 1.5 hours (by over 80%) for the same amount of data. 

• The system became highly scalable, dynamic, rule-based, configurable, and integrable. 

• The business processes supported by the solution became predictable and transparent overall.