MVNO Billing System from EarnBill allows MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) to deal with tracking and charging of mobile plans of subscriptions as well as the usage billing related to the various mobile services, such as national and international calls, SMS, MMS, Mobile Data usage, international roaming, and more.
How EarnBill Works in an MVNO Billing Ecosystem?
The diagram below depicts how EarnBill works in an MVNO Billing Ecosystem.
As it would be expected, an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) will have to sign with National Carriers as well as the International Carriers. The mobile VN referred to as MVNs (or Mobile Network Operators) in the diagram. The MNO1 and MNO2 are shown as national carriers and they would provide the network infrastructure for the MVNOS network to work. The MNO3 and MNO4 are the international carriers which provide coverage for international roaming for Zone 1 and Zone 2 countries respectively.
The usage feed of CDRs is transferred from the MNOs (both national and international) to the MVNO is the form of CDR files. This usage feed is pushed to EarnBill's MVNO Billing System. Here the usage is rated using EarnBill's Billing Mediation module. The rating engine uses the Plans, Bundles and Rate Cards from the Product Catalogue to rate and charge the usage accurately. The MNO rate cards as received from the carriers can be uploaded into EarnBill's Product Catalogue to create the rate cards specific to each MNO.
EarnBill's Invoicing and Payment Collection processes ensure effective billing and auto payment processing of the customers. EarnBill integrates with the CRM system to ensure that all the billed invoices and payments are updated and available into the CRM system. This allows other people to support departments to view the complete billing details of each customer to help them properly.
The Sales Agents do work of front desk's business users and sell new subscriptions via the CRM system. The integration between the CRM and EarnBill ensures that the subscription is captured in the MVNE billing system and used for processing the invoices as per the billing cycle defined during the customer onboarding.
The customer self service portal integrates with the CRM system and efficiently provides the data required by the sales and customer to effectively manage their various subscriptions and accounts. Typically the MVNO will support the use cases like viewing of invoices, payment portal, provisioning new numbers or auto recharge of services. EarnBill API can provide this data required from the CRM or portal system.
MVNO Billing Use Cases
The two most important areas where the MVNO and the MNO systems integrate are Network Provisioning and CDR processing (or billing mediation on usage billing).
Network Provisioning
EarnBill's network provisioning activates or deactivates services on the carrier network when the new plans or subscriptions are sold by the MVNO or when the cancellations take place. The MVNO adds a SIM card as part of the mobile plan and the SIM must be activated so that the new mobile subscriber can start using the mobile service to get provision. Similarly in case of cancellation of a service, the SIM must be deactivated on the carrier's network.
CDR Processing | Usage Billing
The carriers' systems generate call data records (CDRs) and send them to the billing system. MVNOs will use this information in two ways. Firstly the complete charging for mobile data usage and calls should be handled by EarnBill Billing Mediation for SMS alerts, some files could be shared every 30 to 60 minutes. This allows MVNOs to comply with the telecom regulations to alert customers about their mobile data usage in a timely fashion. EarnBill provides an effective framework for sending SMS/ alerts to users about their mobile and usage levels.
The CDRs provided by the carrier can also be used to validate the billing from MNO to the MVNO. EarnBill has an effective tool in Bilateral that allows to validate the cost of usage charges incurred by the MVNO for using the MNO's services.
MVNO Billing System - EarnBill's Features
Product Catalogue
The products and plans have to reflect the offerings of the onboarded MVNOs or Carriers. EarnBill allows innovative pricing that can segment margins and renewal on the MVNO. The pricing needs to be simple for the end consumers to understand.
Rate Cards
An MVNO billing system needs an effective mechanism to maintain complex rate cards provided by the carriers to the MVNOs. EarnBill offers rate card customization and upload of the carriers' rate cards, allowing management of price changes from the carriers from time to time very easily. This ensures there is no revenue leakage and price changes being applied in quite time and on short notice.
Customised Pricing
EarnBill is a customized billing system offering support for customized, complex pricing support in usage billing.
Billing Mediation
More information about EarnBill's comprehensive Billing Mediation feature is available here.
Working with Multiple Carriers
The carriers network will have the capability of handling CDR Processing feeds coming from multiple carriers. There could be some little custom formats to deal with during the implementation stage but this is minimal work with the Framework and structure for customization already in place.
Handling feeds for different services
The usage billing needs to scale to CDR feeds from different services such as the mobile data, international roaming and regular CDR files. EarnBill is a fully expandable MVNO billing system that can process multiple CDR processing data in parallel and provide great scalability for rating and charging a huge number of CDRs continuously, 24/7.
Validating Carrier Costs
EarnBill provides the ability to process the CDR files to calculate the costs incurred by the MVNO and payable to the carrier at the end of the month. The carriers will typically do structured to calculate and charge the usage charges to end customers. Thus, the same feature supports calculating the revenue as well as the costs for the mobile service usage.
Convergent Billing System
EarnBill allows MVNOs to use both Prepaid Billing or Postpaid Billing or employ both types of plans under a Convergent Billing System.
Getting a Converged Account Statement
This section explains how EarnBill produces a converged statement for different types of services, whether prepaid, postpaid or both of them offered together on the same account.
Financial Reports
MVNO specific financial reports can be quite different. EarnBill allows tracking revenue under different heads by attaching GL codes (General Ledger codes) under the Product Catalogue to Products, Bundles and Plans. The revenue reports can be generated online in some cases and as part of batch jobs for more complex runs.
Revenue Reports
EarnBill provides different variants of revenue reports in summary and detail format, including revenue reported to GLs, costs and revenue by carriers, charges, unearned and unbilled revenue etc.
Tracking Usage Margins
EarnBill allows an MVNO to make sure they operate in sync with business decisions with respect to optimizing margins for usage margins. An MVNO is paying back to carriers for the using from the carriers. As for calls and usage data tracked from the carriers and CDR files. This allows the MVNO to compare margins against the plan and update the usage pricing and plan management allows MVNO to ensure they have the control over their operating margins.
For example, an MVNO at the time of launch may make a business decision to launch the service with no margin on usage charges and make its revenue only from the plan fees. However, with ease of configuration over margin, they can slowly revisit their prices and rate cards to their customers so that they can better margins on the usage charges with passage of time.
EarnBill Allows Fine Control for MVNOs
EarnBill allows an MVNO a fine control over its billing operations, puts it in command with the features like the product catalogue, billing mediation, online charging system, towards provisioning and financial reporting. It allows MVNOs to go the developer layout of its services and ensure business viability as enterprise billing features make it an ideal partner for growing businesses.