Case Studies
Telecoms - A complete maintenance and development service
"Ascent staff members are today deeply ingrained in our development cycle and bring a tremendous amount of value into our relationship. Their excellent skill set, very short learning curve and their 'can do' attitude has been instrumental to our growth plans."
Chris Robson
Operations Director
Abacus Billing
The challenge
When they came to Ascent, Abacus Billing were already leading providers of convergent end-to-end billing and customer care product based solutions for tier 2 and tier 3 carriers worldwide. They supplied call accounting (call logging) solutions for corporates and a complete range of billing applications for Wireless, Wireline, VoIP and Quad-play carriers worldwide. These applications were designed to differentiate services and bring products to market more quickly.
Ascent was commissioned as an outsourcing partner to support and further develop existing customer care and billing systems. The solutions were subject to very frequent upgrades and had to remain flexible, scalable, multi-lingual and multi-currency. They also had to be developed rapidly with minimum disruption to clients.
The solution
In taking over responsibilities for Abacus, Ascent started with a small pilot project, which went on to evolve into the current levels of provision. The organisation went on to enjoy a rolling ring-fenced resource pool of over 1,300 person-days per year. The Ascent team regularly develops new or revised modules that are rapidly integrated onto the main billing platform for both new and existing clients.
The maintenance software used to help non-technical staff initiate changes is written with the latest .NET front end. The actual billing platform is built on the Microsoft SQL Server platform and all systems are written in SQL Server 2000 and 2005.
The client has to interface with many different client systems and Automated Call Detail Record (CDR) collection software is developed for each client, coping with various formats of data files downloaded via different communication protocols such as FTP, web services and e-mail. After conversion to standard format, Ascent-supported Customer Care & Billing (CC&B) software handles processing and enables wide-ranging billing options. Ascent supports a range of rating engines, which handle both wholesale and retail rating. All product types are included (such as fixed line, mobile, SMS, GPRS and others) and can be presented on one invoice or on multiple invoices.
Extensive reports are generated by Crystal Reports and SQL Server Reporting Services (including a version in German for one client). These include reports on margin analysis; call analysis; pre billing metrics; post billing metrics; usage detail; and usage summary.
The benefits
Abacus was able to access very rapid development times, flexible resourcing and reliable support through its partnership with Ascent. Four Ascent developers now work on various applications, maintaining a thorough understanding of requirements and a very close working relationship - with contact several times a week.
Because Ascent is connected directly to the client's servers, new developments can be placed directly for testing and transfer to production is subject to strict quality control that includes regular peer reviews. Ascent has already developed modules for fifteen end clients. The quality of communication and the levels of trust established led to the commissioning of a Wholesale Line Rental Provisioning System (see further case study) and other projects are in the pipeline.
