The Case of Telikom Papua New Guinea – Implemented in Just 5 Months

In one of the most beautiful areas of the world, deep in the southern hemisphere, North-East of Australia is a very special country; Papua New Guinea. With a history in the communications service provider industry which spans six decades, Telikom PNG is a market leader, with a telecommunications system that is among the most modern in the South Pacific region.

Telikom offers consumer voice and data broadband services as well as a wholesale business of these voice and data services.

The Challenge – having been in the industry for six decades, Telikom PNG had many out of date systems and processes, as well as unconnected and unsynchronized legacy systems. When attempting to add services or to support customers using these services, the company had multiple information issues and found that processes were often inefficient or incomplete.

When attempting to bill and invoice for services, Telikom IT department found that they had many discrepancies, billing mistakes, fraud in the form of service and usage that was not billed for and loss of revenues due to incomplete solutions for advanced services.

Invoices were delayed because billing and rating processes had mistakes in them. The service provider’s invoice credibility was low, and collections were incomplete since customers were not trusting the invoices they were receiving.

The basic mediation between the different systems was at fault and information from one system to another did not flow.  Also, provisioning of services for the customers was a slow and incomplete process. Activation processes from a management and technical perspective were long, disparate on many systems and partially done manually. As a result of these processes mistakes were created and delays and low customer satisfaction.

The Solution

The first hurdle to crack was to mediate information between the CISCO QPS to a legacy post-paid billing system. This required mediation and enrichment of CDRs coupled with intermediate logic. This gave the ability to include data services in the original invoice (until then data usage was charged separately)

The BD CRM module was integrated with CISCO QPS, HUAWEI BSS, AVABILL, and AMDOCS this enabled the customer to have unified one screen customer provisioning and activation process that allowed to see both technical and commercial data on one screen. Because of this successful integration, it was possible to launch the Self-Service system.

Telekom PNG evaluated their IT solutions, and recognized the need for the following changes:
1. A new Business Support System that could integrate with all the legacy systems regardless of how old or complex they were.

2. A single Customer Relationship Management system to serve all products and services they were supporting. It would include a simple to use intuitive interface for the customer service teams. One single window to all platforms for the call center to provision and bill for services.

3. A module to create new business allowed for billing of HOT SPOTS right on time for the Pacific Sports Games. The captive portal allowed for self-registration, top up to WiFi credit and billing history review.

4. The most advanced important system implemented was the system that upgraded the service to the end customers. The customers of Telikom PNG were provided with a self-service application for self-management of their services and costs. This application included the services which were most important to the customers such as:

• Checking their balance so they know how many calls they can still make, reviewing their past usage, so they know why they were charged and for what.
• The ability to buy new bundles and benefit from new offers – so they can switch from old packages and enjoy new more attractive packages.
• Top up their balances using credit cards, reviewing their balance and seeing their usage history.

A login and a password protected all these important self-service capabilities that the customers could determine and change. The independent password setup allowed customers to feel secure when topping up their account with funds. This transparency created renewed trust in the billing and invoicing and improved collection.

The BD Innovations modules required by PNG

CRM – CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGER
Our CRM module integrates easily, is friendly to use and will help you gain deeper insight into your customer behaviour. Your customer care department will be able to see the customer usage behaviour and suggest offers based on the information they glean from the CRM.
More on this module

BILLING & RATING WIZARD
Our billing and rating wizard can be set up for any service, it is scalable and highly flexible. It provides real-time billing of all telco services along with the easy and intuitive creation of rating and billing procedures for new services. More on this module

MEDIATION MADE EASY
Our mediation module collects any form of data from any number of sources in any format, and re-formats, re-maps and applies rules and logic to it to your exact specifications. The interface is friendly and versatile and gives you control of your data. More on this module

EVERYTHING INVOICES
Invoices need to be accurate, self-explanatory and easy to set up. The invoicing module aggregates all customer and partner charges into a predefined format and layout, making it seamless for you to deliver it to your customers. More on this module

SELF CARE UNIT
Cut down on service cost while providing a 24/7 service channel for your customers. This easy-to-use feature-packed web portal is the high point of self-reliance. More on this module

POINT OF SALES SOLUTION
Provides all the POS functionality you can wish for. All you need is a tablet or a phone with an Internet connection and you’re set to go! More on this module