Billing System Migration Difficulties

Communication operators, who for may decide for some reason to change the billing system software they are using, face a choice. Firstly, to migrate independently or to seek help from the developers of the chosen new system. In the first case, billing system migration is always carried out in half-manual mode – it is a one-time operation, there is no sense in automating it. As a result, errors occur, time frames shift and resource costs often grow well beyond the original budget.

In turn, developers of billing solutions, such as JeraSoft, do several dozen similar projects per year. Therefore, these professionals who are constantly engaged in migration can automate even the bottlenecks commonly found in the process. One of these bottlenecks is the transfer of data from the old billing system to a new one. And today we will talk about common troubles and how this process can be managed without loss of data or waste of time.

Difficulties OF Billing System Migration

When the telecom operator’s management authorizes the project to switch to a new billing, it expects that the solution will not only reduce costs in the future. Also, he expects to get rid of any problems or concerns they have existing in the current system. They also anticipate that the migration will not in itself difficulties with the implementation. Ideally, users should not notice that the billing software has changed, except to see improvements in speed and responsiveness. This means that after the completion of the implementation process, all subscribers should receive the same or better services. Meantime, the balance of funds on each personal account must converge, network addresses and contact information must be kept up-to-date.

But it’s easier to say than do, and the problems begin at the stage of uploading data from the old system. Even with the use of serial billing, this can be a difficult task and when working with self-written solutions the situation often becomes more complicated. Usually, only a few employees know the details of the implementation and if something happens to these people (illness, dismissal), then it takes a lot of time and energy to restore the full picture in cases of system or hardware failures.

As a result, companies are faced with a choice: to try to somehow unload data from the old billing and enter them into the new one manually, or with the help of the new billing software provider. Small operators can afford to go along the first path – to allocate several low-paid employees who manually transfer data from the old billing system to the new one.

But for larger companies this approach is not a realizable solution – it is very long and time-consuming process where the volume of data exceeds a practical level. In addition, the information in the billing changes in real time and these changes must be taken into account, so transfer needs to be made in near real time to maintain accuracy and history of transactions.

Simplicity Of Moving To JeraSoft

Billing is a large-scale product that uses not always obvious approaches and solutions. Therefore, we decided to abandon any attempts to transfer data from one similar system to another in one step. It is much more effective to break this process into intermediate stages.

It implements within a so-called “interim scheme” – a simplified format (a set of tables) in which you need to download data from the old billing. The process of guided by the JeraSoft billing engineers from the very first step. These are personal client data, terms of verification and the balance of the client. Further, on the JeraSoft side, the data is imported into the billing system. As a result, the client receives a new billing with the old introductory notes in a short time. All he has to do is set the rates. But even then, if necessary, the JeraSoft command can help.

It happens that the old system is not able to ensure compliance with these standards (this is important, for example, for addresses and telephones) or forces us to use controversial solutions (for example, store IP addresses in the field with the TIN). If in a new billing this data is stored in a structured form, then it makes sense to bring the data into compliance with the standards or a new storage scheme, instead of “pulling” the unsuccessful solutions. Migration to JeraSoft is facilitated by the fact that the company removes a large number of problems from the operator and makes the most of the processes on new system. Operators do not need to source their own developers to facilitate this. Jerasoft allows them to make the billing system migration process much easier and faster from the customer’s aspect.