A Billing's Diary

For your information, the billing system not only registers bills, but also its impressions on the days lived, which is evidenced by an electronic manuscript found in the ARCTEL archives. Having ventured to publish this document, the company employees consider it necessary to add their comments.

IKS №4, April 2009

Founded in 1999, ARCTEL started as a carrier’s agent. Today ARCTEL is a telecom operator providing a wide range of telecommunications services. Along with the company developed its billing system, the first being InterBill by Niklaus. Well then.

Five days from the diary of InterBill, ARCTEL’s first billing system

Day One

There now! Hardly have I come into this world, They start weighing and measuring me, approving and reconciling something. It’s obvious: I’m a VIP to Them. And it's good to know They have few services to rate: I'm simple and easy to deal with - a dream of any operator…

I’ve been born. It’s been a quiet day.

Comment. Early in 2001 InterBill was used to account subscribers, charge for communication services, and export reporting data to the accounting system. The cards were blocked and reactivated manually; dialup connection and in-house programs were used for accessing and managing the station.

Day Two

I’m scared. Calls keep coming, and They’re molesting me all the time. I might even end up making a mistake.

Now, this is not funny anymore. Making me work round the clock is not enough, so they’ve increased the load. Just you wait, I’ll show you that Blue Screen of Death. There you go! Like it?

Hmm… Somehow they’ve come and fixed it all way too fast. So boooring. Operational status ok, scripts running fast.

Comment. Late in 2001 InterBill serviced already three platforms in ARCTEL: Olga, RINO and DISA. All these platforms supported telephone cards for long-distance communications.

Day Three

It’s my birthday today, so They’ve decided to make me a present: a debiting system. If they had only tipped me a wink, I would have come prepared. Offered the lady tea with After Eight Mints.

We spent all day getting to know each other better. She’s such a good company, kind and caring. She counts a lot and scotches not. It feels like we’ve known each other for all our lives.

Comment. In 2002 the system was run on platforms RINO and Olga and performed simple billing tasks: telephone cards were activated and deactivated by SQL queries to the database. The system was sufficient to provide services to individual clients, but did not give the best fit for managing a large amount of telephone cards.

Day Four

Today They were issuing bills and mining my databases again. They do it to me twice a month, and, for some reason, always at night. Actually, there’s no getting a good sleep with Them. I itemized the calls again and it surprised me how much people had spent, as if they had nothing better to do than chatting.

That was before lunch, and then… Noooo, what’s that? Who are these people? What do they want from me?

They measured me again and set out to discuss something. I suddenly felt ill at ease. They embarrassed me by getting Their dextrous little hands everywhere. Debiting system keeps silent, also in dismay.

Well-well… They want me to meet someone. His name is RINO Billing, but friends call him just Super Rino.

On this occasion we had a drink and a snack, and then all went blank...

Comment. Early in 2003 almost all the processes that used to require low-level operations were automated. ARCTEL developed RINO Billing application, which performed nearly all operations of customer data and telephone cards management, generated and printed itemized bills, created aggregate files, prepared various reports. The application, originated six years ago, is still in use as it fully meets the business requirements.

Day Five

Ugh. Had a headache for half the day. Vague and blurry recollections of the previous night flashed through my mind every now and then.

It turns out that They’ve decided to extend my functionality and to enhance my capabilities as new services were launched.

The debiting system is happier than anybody else, as now we two can do a lot. But why is it that I’m the only one suffering a headache?

Comment. In 2004–2005 similar software was made for the platform ‘Excellent’ and in 2007-2008 for the platform ‘Proteus’.

Epilogue

Within eight years from ARCTEL establishment, the company resorted to in-house billing systems. As new services, tariffs and payment methods emerged (outsourced call center, ‘Multi-number’ and flat rates), the systems were enhanced: new subsystems were added, certain processes automated. Thus, to implement customer-oriented approach, ARCTEL created an in-house CRM system based on the billing solution. To charge and bill the ‘Multi-number’ service, the billing system was upgraded and integrated with an intelligent platform where the said service was implemented. To implement flat rates, the system had to be upgraded again. For the outsourced call center an in-house billing system was developed.

In 2006 CBOSS billing system implementation started, to finish in 2008. In less than two years ARCTEL migrated from in-house systems to CBOSSbcc. The new system has a number of modules to support business users, customer care, bill reconciliation and services for interconnect partners (long-distance and international calls included), automatic upload and update of tariffs, calculation of call net cost. These modules are integrated with the accounting system, traffic routing system and ARCTEL’s switching equipment.

The projects on billing the 8-800 service, long-distance and international calls with operator prefixes are going through the final phase. Billing is being integrated with the payment systems of ARCTEL’s partners, new capabilities of CRM systems are being developed. Billing is inseparable from the company’s business - business drives the changes in all its components, including the billing system.

…So InterBill became a relic of the past. These diary records are its only souvenir, which we found fit to publish.