Integrating Billing with Communication and Energy Industries

This chapter provides overviews of billing systems integration of the communications and energy industries and enterprise integration points (EIPs) used in the communications and energy industries, and discusses how to define configuration parameters to implement billing systems integration for the communications and energy industries.

Understanding Billing Systems Integration

Integration with billing systems facilitates seamless data flow between PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM and third-party billing applications in the following ways:

Billing-integration enables communication and energy service providers to provide superior customer service.

Through billing integration, industry solutions offer customer service representatives (CSRs) access to a complete, multidimensional view of all customer information (accounts, billings, installed services, and so on), in addition to account and billing application functionality.

PeopleSoft industry solutions deliver EIPs for the integration with billing systems.

Through the use of EIPs, which prompt and initiate actions in business processes to communicate with the billing system, the integration leverages application functionality provided in account, billing and service management (for example, update account information, view bill details, and change service features) to support the entire customer lifecycle, from acquisition through support.

PeopleSoft Integration Broker develops the integration between PeopleSoft industry solutions and external billing systems.

Integration Broker is an industry-standard tool that enables open flow of information between systems, which is extremely critical for system-to-system integration. It accomplishes true internet system integration by leveraging ubiquitous internet technologies such as XML and HTTP.

PeopleSoft industry solutions provide prebuilt integration messaging capability.

Request and reply messages prepared for all EIPs are stored in Integration Broker. Using configuration parameters, you can either turn on all prebuilt EIPs or just a subset.

Note. The discussion on integration in this chapter is primarily focused on the functional account and billing frameworks, workflow, and predefined inbound and outbound messages that are delivered with the application. It is assumed that some degree of configuration is required during the implementation project to tightly integrate specific industry solutions offered by PeopleSoft with third-party or legacy billing applications.

Understanding EIPs

An EIP is an instance of enterprise integration between a PeopleSoft application and an external system or application: a seamless connection between the two products to accomplish a specific business purpose. PeopleSoft industry solutions implement EIPs to integrate with billing systems.

PeopleSoft delivers EIPs. While most billing EIPs are initiated by a customer-facing event that occurs in a particular industry solution (for example, new service order, service change order, view accounts, change account information, view bills, and dispute bills), some are driven by business projects (for example, account creation through the order management process). Several EIPs are built into components themselves (for example, account view or bill view).

The following are account-related EIPs:

• Create account.

• View account balance and usage.

• Change payment details.

• Change billing address.

The following are bill-related EIPs:

• Get Bill List EIP.

• View Bill Items EIP.

• View Bill Events EIP.

• Create Disputes and Adjustments EIP.

Get Bill List EIP

PeopleSoft CRM industry solutions enable CSRs to get all bills that are associated with an account over a period of time. Billing data are retrieved from the billing system and viewable by CSRs as well as customers (using the self-service application).

To mitigate the dependencies on billing systems to access bill-related information, you can replicate bills on a monthly basis and force CRM industry solutions to access the local data store. The CRM system does not replicate billing information automatically.

The diagram shows the Get Bill List process flow:

View Bill Items EIP

A customer can contact a CSR and inquire about bill items associated with an account.

The following diagram shows the View Bill Items process flow:

View Bill Events EIP

A customer can contact a CSR and inquire about bill events (within bill items) associated with an account.

Create Disputes and Adjustments EIP

As a bill dispute gets saved in the CRM system, it needs to be reflected in the billing system accordingly so that proper adjustments can be made to customers’ accounts in a timely fashion. Customers can create bill disputes through CSRs, or by themselves using the self-service application.

Disputes can be raised against:

• Bill items (for example, if the wrong rate plan is used to calculate long distance charges).

• Bill events (for example, dropped calls).

• Account balance and usage (for example, an account is not credited accurately).

See Also

PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 8.9 Process Integration Packs PeopleBook

Defining Configuration Parameters

This section provides overviews of configuration parameters and the Billing Account component and discusses how to:

• Define configuration parameters for integration.

• Set up the Billing Account component.

Understanding Configuration Parameters

You need to complete two setups for the integration with billing systems to run properly:

• Set up for Integration Broker.

  • Set up integration gateway properties.

  • Set up local and remote nodes.

  • Define integration messages and corresponding channels.

• Set up for PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM.

  You can turn messaging for EIPs on or off and define threshold values for application rules (to handle disputes. The configuration options are the same for customers in the communications industry and the energy industry. The financial industry and the insurance industry share the same configuration parameters.

  Customers want complaints addressed and settled quickly. While some issues take time to resolve, you can take care of those that do not by setting up parameters in the CRM system to make instantaneous adjustments to disputes with insignificant disputing values, for example, less than 1.0 USD in a bill dispute or one minute in a usage dispute.

  For instance, a customer in the communications industry files a bill event dispute on a long-distance call he did not make. According to the configuration of the above table, if this dispute is not the sixth one (or more) in this billing cycle and the dispute amount is less than (or equal to) 1.0 USD, the CRM system makes the adjustment automatically. The customer’s account is credited with the amount in dispute, and a message is sent to the system for an account update; the case is then closed.

Pages Used to Define Configuration Parameters

Defining Configuration Parameters for Integration

Access the Communications Setup page.

The following table lists configuration parameters that are used to integrate with billing systems. These parameters can be used to turn integration functionality on or off and to enable or disable integration messaging, at the message level, for each EIP.