Lipstick on a bulldog

Slapping a graphical user interface onto a legacy system has been compared with putting lipstick on a bulldog. It doesn't look good from a distance-and it looks even worse up close.

Moving from the kennel to information technology, carriers that simply put a GUI front end on a legacy system may realize some short-term benefits, but they won't get everything they need to support competitive business moves. When it comes to billing systems, most wireless providers are stuck with the old and hoping for something new.

Wireless carriers' billing systems need more than a cosmetic makeover to provide the flexibility needed to support today's evolving service mix

Not long ago, the biggest worry was keeping the data center and mainframe cool. Today, however, three main forces are driving the need for advanced, flexible and scalable billing and customer care.

The first is the need to handle extremely diverse data sources. Because of acquisitions, expanding partnerships and a multitude of new services, carriers may have to manage data from more than a dozen disparate sources. Call data from regional switches, paging data from around the world and Internet service data are just a few examples.

The second driving force is the trend toward offering more and more complex services to consumers. With individuals and companies changing services so frequently, carriers that want to compete must offer a highly diverse product that can be easily customized.

Capturing and retaining a new customer may come down to price promotions, invoice options, multiple voice and data services, or customer support. This growing complexity and the need for mass customization place enormous demands ona carrier's information technology architecture.

The last driving force is the accelerated rate of information technology advancements. For example, many customers now demand the ability to provision new services via the Web.

Any new service or support option that can be offered electronically will give carriers a competitive edge and help reduce costs. Network technology is changing so rapidly that carriers must offer their services through a larger variety of media just to keep pace with the rest of the market.

Typically, a carrier's billing and customer care systems were created long before any of these issues came to the forefront. To address them, carriers may be tempted by a quick-fix approach.

Many packaged applications, as well as billing and customer service front ends, might improve a system's looks. Underneath, though, little will have changed. Those stubborn, inflexible legacy systems will still be there.

A new architecture Today's advanced information technology architectures extend access to legacy systems through the use of network computing technologies and also leverage new tools such as advanced messaging, rules and metadata. A new foundation for competitive applications can help carriers begin building more flexible data repositories and smoothly migrate from older systems.

The fundamental approach is to build intelligent, distributed layers throughout the enterprise network that can bridge old and new technologies (Figure 1).

By using object-oriented technology, linked via powerful messaging capabilities, carriers can create an architecture that scales with their customer growth and enables effective information sharing across business divisions.

It is essential, however, that service providers realize benefits quickly and use legacy data rather than wait a long time for legacy systems to be re-engineered. New technologies must be powerful enough to provide the flexibility that converging communications companies require. They must also be simple enough so that users can dynamically and quickly alter the business rules whenever a new service, pricing promotion or customer request arises.

For example, a wireless carrier already may have a billing package that works well for its cellular service. But when the carrier expands to provide data service to businesses, the existing billing package may not have the capabilities it requires.

If the carrier designs its new information technology architecture correctly, it can enjoy the flexibility of preserving its current technology investment and also creating a customized solution for the new part of the business. In developing this solution, the company must recognize that both sides of the business should be able to communicate and share data when needed. The carrier also must be assured that only minor changes will be required to bring additional services or promotions to market quickly (Figure 2).

Of course, carriers can't throw out their legacy data systems, but they also don't want to invest much in updating them. The question, then, is how to interface between the new architecture and existing data repositories.

Most applications rely on a traditional import/export function that moves the data to the new system. While this approach gets the job done, it creates a lot of overhead because a new interface is created each time users export data. This approach also requires code changes to the legacy database itself, which is time consuming and requires experienced programmers.

By using an advanced data translation method, the number of interfaces created is greatly reduced, often from several hundred to fewer than 10. Object-oriented translation now becomes an inherent part of the new architecture and decreases the need for continual importing and exporting of data.

Object-oriented translation creates unobtrusive hooks into the legacy database using messaging technology, for example. The same interface used to obtain legacy data remains consistent throughout the architecture. Using messaging software throughout the new system and limiting data importing and exporting can substantially increase the speed of data flow, leverage legacy systems and provide a smooth transition of data throughout the enterprise.

The power of metadata Today's existing billing applications cannot effectively handle diverse data formats. Often, carriers have created a different billing system to support data input from each region or specific type of service. Each billing system produces its own invoice, which is an extremely expensive option in terms of printing and mailing.

While some service providers may offer consolidated bills, they still may maintain separate billing systems. The work-around solution is to use service bureaus that merge the output data and print a document that appears as a single invoice.

Although this gives the customer a single document, the data isn't truly integrated. Customer data is maintained and updated in multiple repositories, making it difficult for a single customer service representative to support a variety of services.

The new billing architecture relies on a sophisticated metadata model that defines all information in a single format. It describes all input data consistently, regardless of the source or initial format, then maps it throughout the billing system.

Since the data is now defined within a database that can be changed easily, carriers quickly can add new services without having to rebuild the entire application. The built-in intelligence matches specific events with customers and billing plans based on very complex selection criteria.

For example, all data flowing through a certain system may be measured in fractions of a second. The system would be able to automatically calculate the amount due for both paging service and cellular phone service, create a single invoice and sort the data by whatever criteria the customer has defined.

Carriers would not need to run concurrent billing systems-one for paging and one for cellular service-and would not need to outsource invoice printing just to consolidate service data. Since the metadata model can define output data in any format, carriers also have the option of creating invoices using traditional paper or offering bills via secure Web access.

When a carrier is ready to add a new service or begins a partnership with another service provider, new data sources can be easily added to the architecture. Rather than creating a separate billing system, the new input data is defined at the metadata level and then integrated into the existing architecture. This approach greatly reduces the need for additional programming time and maintains a cohesive system for managing all customer information.

The greatest stumbling block to adding new services is the capabilities of existing information technology systems. Again, the typical solution is to create a new billing system to manage the specific billing, rating and support aspects of a service. As a result, the information technology staff is taxed, customer service representatives must be retrained and new data repositories must be created (Figure 3).

At the time a carrier deploys a packaged billing application, it may be able to foresee many upcoming services or promotional needs. Yet the carrier is bound by the specifications built in at the beginning.

The market is changing too quickly for carriers to predict all their needs today. By moving to this next generation billing architecture, internal domain experts have the ability to expand the system to support new services.

This is accomplished by placing a portion of the application's rules set in the hands of users. For example, some basic application functions will never change and are built into the architecture. However, rules that may change frequently, such as call rates, currency translation and invoice preferences, are open for users to define and revise.

Rules engines are used throughout the architecture to define user interfaces, data mapping, rates, customer service representative commissions and other specific billing and customer care functions. With an open rules engine, carriers can easily identify the qualifications for a service promotion based on customer age, region, type of business or other variables.

Rather than waiting for the information technology department to reprogram an existing application or create a new one, users simply add the new rules into the system. This flexibility enables faster time to market and a greater competitive advantage.

One area in which flexibility is especially important is a carrier's overseas operations. While the ability to expand into overseas markets creates great revenue opportunities, it also can create headaches because few legacy systems can manage multiple languages or currencies within a single system.

Supporting multiple languages is usually accomplished by creating two separate systems that are maintained and updated separately. However, an advanced billing and customer care architecture can offer real-time language and currency translation within a single system.

With this capability, customers can choose to speak to a service representative in English or Spanish, for example, and carriers don't have the hassle of managing two separate systems. Even within the United States, the ability to offer customers a choice of languages can be a significant market advantage.

Customers viewing invoice data on the Web could also have a choice of languages. This allows a service provider to build consistent billing systems in various countries, regardless of multiple currencies.

Because the metadata model is capable of supporting multiple languages and currencies, a carrier can configure a single architecture to output data in any format rather than build diverse systems to support international services.

An information technology architecture based on a layered approach and components-based software can give carriers the flexibility to support the business model changes that will be required to compete in today's telecom market.