Mediation Manager

As network elements evolve and mature, the quantity and quality of data they can provide increases. Systems must be in place to collect this data, make the necessary correlations based on business rules, and deliver a normalized stream of data to downstream systems.

Mediation Manager provides service providers with the flexibility they need to efficiently capture usage data, enabling accurate billing for new services. This flexibility also allows service providers to create billing plans, which differentiate their services from their competitors.

MM collects, correlates, and normalizes data from all types of network elements. Data is collected from network elements within the same network and across different types of networks such as PSTN, IP, or wireless. Once the data has been collected, MM looks to correlate the individual records according to predefined business rules established by the Service Provider. The data is then prepared for delivery to billing systems or other support systems in the specified format.

MM integrates with legacy systems and Service Manager to provide a total solution for flow-through activation, customer support, and billing of new and existing services.

ServiceSPAN can implement MM as a data center based application or as a hosted application. Either implementation provides a comprehensive and powerful solution for improving service, reducing costs, and increasing quality of subscriber services.

Challenge

"Too much time is required to modify our billing system to accommodate the introduction of new services." "Our network elements cannot be efficiently, and/or cost effectively, integrated into our back office billing system." "The infrastructure that exists today has not been updated to include billing of complimentary features across subsidiaries." "Our current systems do not allow us to quickly develop optional pricing plans to meet subscriber demand." "We cannot offer usage based billing because our billing system will not support it." "Our billing system cannot handle the various native formats from each network element without major changes and considerable dollars."

Solution

ServiceSPAN's solutions answer the challenge by: Gathering data from multiple sources and providing a normalized data stream to billing systems, and other support systems in the enterprise Minimizing the changes service providers must make to billing and support systems upon offering new services Simplifying the interfacing of multiple network element types to legacy systems Facilitating the development of creative pricing plans, which rely on usage data, and serve as a way of differentiating a service provider's offering Reducing the time-to-market for new service introduction by providing flexible environment for interfacing with legacy back-office systems