1. Taifun
Hans-Jürg Schneider VP Telecom Solutions & Business Applications
Ergon’s comprehensive service fulfilment & billing solution for telecom service providers & CNOs SwiNOG 13, Bern November 1st, 2006
4/19/2017

2. Contents Contents Ergon Informatik AG Taifun @ customers
Service Fulfilment & Billing
High automation of Offer to Cash process
Specific capabilities for Cable Network Operators
4/19/2017

3. Ergon Informatik AG Founded 1984 HQ in Zurich, Switzerland
Market focus
Switzerland, Europe
Business focus
Telecom, Banking, Industry, Authorities
Technology focus
Java, J2EE, HTML, AJAX, Oracle
Building Telecom solutions since 15 years.
4/19/2017

4. Ergon OSS/BSS solutions
Taifun Service Fulfilment & Billing Suite
Covering the full End2End customer facing processes, from offering to cash collection
implementing all billing scenarios for residential, business, wholesale & inter carrier
Specific B2B capabilities such as automated offer and contract document generation
TelcoBill Electronic Bill Presentment & Cost Manager Solution
Web-based Bill presentment and real time graphical cost analysis
Specific B2B capabilities such as cost assignment to cost centers or inventory management
Extends Taifun to EBP
4/19/2017

5. Taifun CRM & Billing Suite @ customers I
Initially developed in 1997 for Swisscom and put into production at tesion (now Versatel, Germany), estel (France), UTA (Austria) and Swisscom Italy (now grapes telecom, Italy). Taifun is based on a solution built by ergon for UBS (largest swiss bank) for the management of the UBS worldwide telecom services.
Swisscom Solutions will introduce Taifun for the service management of its “large customer segment”.
Cablecom, switzerland‘s largest CNO, uses Taifun for the management and billing of all their business line products.
UPC Broadband, a european holding with cablecom being part of it, introduces Taifun for all its business service divisions.
Globalzone, a swiss Reseller having more than 30‘000 customers, switches to Taifun per
Ringier, the largest swiss publishing company, uses Taifun to offer, sell & bill digital images per
4/19/2017

6. Taifun CRM & Billing Suite @ customers II
Wasserwerke Zug and Stadtantennenwerke Baar having nearly 100‘000 and over 10‘000 customers resp., use Taifun for the management and billing of their „Triple-Play“ (Voice, Data, TV) services.
The Taifun Workflow Engine and Taifun WebPortal are used for order entry, service provisioning and service billing of all telecom services used by the UBS group world wide.
Sunrise (TDC Switzerland, Nr. 2 swiss carrier), Versatel Germany and telenet Belgium use TelcoBill to offer their private and business customers realtime bill analysis and cost control.
Meinecom, a CH-Reseller, fully automates the end to end customer process with Taifun and TelcoBill.
AugustaKom, a bavarian carrier, uses Taifun to manage and bill their entire product portfolio. Two other bavarian carriers, M“net and NEFkom, will be migrated to Taifun starting July 2006.
4/19/2017

7. Taifun functional overview
Resource Management
Service Management
CRM
Provisioning
Workflow based Provisioning
Service
Offer, Order, Contract, Services
Web Portal
Order entry & Customer Self Care
Fulfilment
Customer
Network
Resources Phone numbers, Devices, ..
Product Prices, Discounts, Business Transactions
Customer Address, Contact, Finance, Ticket
Mediation
CDR, UDR, ..
Billing
Rating, Discounting, Invoice Generation,
Bill Archive
TelcoBill
Online Bill Presentment Bill Analysis &
Cost control
Billing
4/19/2017

8. Taifun system overview
Customer Mgmt
Order Mgmt
Billing
Web Portal
Wholesale/Carrier Service Management SOAP/XML Interface
Opportunity Mgmt SuperOffice
Service Management
Mediation Filter & Rule Management
Service Management Wholesale & Business Customers
Swisscom CPS Number Activation
Legend
Offering & Calculation
Product Management
Guiding & Rating Tariff Management
Electronic Bill Presentment & Analysis TelcoBill
Swisscom NOT DB Trouble Number Directory
Taifun Suite
BAKOM INA INet Server
recommended
Contract Management
Dial-Number
Management
Billing Discount Management
Interface to external system*
BAKOM ONP INet Server
Interface to internal system*
Direct Debit, LSV+, .. Collection
Contact Management
Invoice Generation Archive Management
Network platforms
Swisscom Directories Public Number Directory
(*) part of Taifun
A/R, Collection & ERP Navision Finance Mgmt.
Print shop Postscript/PDF
Phone Books Common & individual
BSS
Business Support Systems
Service Provisioning
Role Management User & Access Rights
Workflow Management Business Process Modeling
Taifun Service Fullfilment and Billing
SFTP Server Billing Data Transfer
Provisioning, CDR
Service, OSS Service Platforms and Operational Support Systems
Voice Service
Voice Switching Platform
Data Service
Data Switching Platform
Video Service
Video Delivery Platform
Application Service
ISP/other Services
Technical Provisioning
DOCSIS Provisioning Broadband Command Center
Transport, OSS Transport & Access
HFC
DOCSIS, PC, PCMM
DVB, Analog
DSL
Ethernet IP
Fiber
Ethernet IP
Other
Access

9. „End-to-End“ Taifun Product Catalogue
Res Mgmt
Ser Mgmt
CRM
Comprehensive Product Catalogue covering all business automation aspects
Prov
Ser
Web
Fulfillment N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing
A central product catalogue is the swiss army knife of the product manager to seamlessly define:
Business transactions for automated service activation & change
Service & price elements, discounts & margins for consistent pricing
Offer and contract templates to automate document creation
Service resources item and their use such as phone numbers, CPE’s, access lines, …
Offer
Order &
Contract
Service
Fulfilment
Service
Assurance
Billing &
Collection
Examples:
Valid configurations
documents
workflow
SLA
Tariffs
„End-to-End“ Taifun Product Catalogue
=> Product definition without redundancy. No need for costly interfaces.
4/19/2017

10. Reusable Service Modules for flexible offerings
Res Mgmt
Ser Mgmt
CRM
Prov
Ser
Web
Fulfillment N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing
Business Requirements
Standardized product lines (vs. customer specific products)
Short time to market for new or improved products
Lower operational costs
Improve quality
Solution
Build new products effectively out of modular base products (e.g. a VLAN product is built on top of P2P-connectivity products)
a product specification contains all the models & definitions necessary for offering, ordering, delivering and billing
Highly automated, workflow driven End-to-End “Offer to Cash” process
=> Reusable service modules for speed & flexibility
4/19/2017

11. The 360° customer view Explore
Res Mgmt
Ser Mgmt
CRM
Prov
Ser
Web
Fulfillment N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing
Efficiently maintain the entire relationship with your customer:
Sub customers (over n-hierarchies)
Offers
Orders & Contracts
Services
Addresses & Contacts
Bill account
Discounts
Associated Inventory
Journal
Invoices
Explore
=> One user interface for your CRM
4/19/2017

12. Service Fulfilment: From process definition…

13. … to automated provisioning workflow
=> what, when, by whom; ok? problems?

14. Controlling the workflow
Task addressed to role ‘VDA‘
Task handled by user ‘kurmch‘
Task description
Start time
End time
Task states:
planned
ready / executing
finished

15. Taifun Billing Key features Delivering the key billing scenarios
Res Mgmt
Ser Mgmt
CRM
Prov
Ser
Web
Fulfillment N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing
Key features
Implementing billing stream from network element to printed bill
billing of any billable event from any voice, data and other services
Delivering the key billing scenarios
Direct billing of customers
Wholesale billing of partners (e.g. other CNOs or switchless resellers)
End customer billing per partner network for white label products
Intercarrier billing
=> Taifun support all Telecom billing scenarios
Aggregating
& Rating
Bill consolidation
Discounting
Bill formatting
raw events
Rated billing events
Bill items
Bill archive
Printfiles
Accounting
Billing
Invoice Generation
4/19/2017

16. Interconnection Carrier
Billing scenarios
Res Mgmt
Ser Mgmt
CRM
Prov
Ser
Web
Fulfillment N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing
Reseller e.g. CNO without own switch but with own access network)
Customer
Retail Billing
Retail invoice
CDR
Reseller invoice
Own Network
Interconnection Carrier
Carrier invoice
Customer
Retail
Billing
Reseller
Billing
Interconn.
Billing
Interconn.
Billing
Retail invoice
Reconciliation
CDR
CDR
CDR
Control invoice
Carrier invoice
CDR
Control invoice
Reconciliation
Partner Carrier Carrier with own switch but without end customer
Reseller invoice
CDR
CDR
Legend:
Reseller Billing
Billing Type by Taifun
4/19/2017

17. Taifun for Cable Network Operators
Triple-Play Service Fulfilment:
Data, Voice, Cable-TV, D-TV
Service & Technical Provisioning
Voice switch or partner carrier
eMTA, CM, D-TV (Nagra & Conax: 2007)
Mailserver
Inventory & Stock Management
Modems, routers, settop-boxes
Rating & Billing
All service types

18. Inventory Management

19. „Triple Play“ solution overview
Customer
Taifun Web Portal (Self Care & EBP)
Taifun Bill Formatting
Printshop (PDF, PS3)
Taifun Service & Inventory Mgmt
Taifun Rating/Billing
Collection (SAP, Navision, ..)
Taifun Service Provisioning
Taifun Mediation
Service usage
Incognito BCC
Technical Provisioning
Taifun/BCC
D-TV Nagra/Conax
CAS
other components
DATA
(Euro) DOCSIS
IP Voice
(Euro) Packet Cable
Other
IP Device
ISP
Mail
Hosting
Voice
Switch or provider
DTV
D-TV
DVB STB
4/19/2017

20. TelcoBill online bill presentment
Res Mgmt
Ser Mgmt
CRM
Prov
Ser
Web
Fulfillment
TelcoBill N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing
online bill presentment
real-time bill & call detail analysis
cost control on cost center level
customer inventory management
online demo
4/19/2017

21. Web Portal N C Res Mgmt Ser Mgmt CRM Prov Ser Web Res Prod Cust Med
Fulfillment N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing

22. Taifun – The summary
End-to-End service fulfilment automation: central, modular product catalogue combined with strong business process engine to implement efficient service delivery.
Comprehensive billing capabilities: supporting a variety of billing scenarios to support flexible business models.
Straightforward to integrate: fully based on industry standards such as Java (J2SE, J2EE) and equipped with extensible, open APIs such as SOAP.
End-to-End service fulfilment automation: central, modular product catalogue combined with strong business process engine to implement efficient service delivery.
Comprehensive billing capabilities: supporting a variety of billing scenarios to support flexible business models.
Straightforward to integrate: fully based on industry standards such as Java (J2SE, J2EE) and equipped with extensible, open APIs such as SOAP.
4/19/2017

23.
4/19/2017

24. Service APIs SOAP/WSDL
Taifun Architecture
Standards
J2EE, XML, SOAP
Reusability
Modular, open APIs
customizable while maintaining release ability
Scalable
J2EE, Oracle
Future Proof
SOA, Model Driven
Oracle
Customizations
Service
Billing
Processes
Reports
Product
GUI
Service APIs SOAP/WSDL
Interfaces XML, CDR, UDR, ..
J2EE Application Server
Websphere, JBoss, ..
Web Client
Java Client
Taifun
Scaling
4/19/2017

25. ONP and INA interface module
The INET/ONP Module handles the number porting workflow with the BAKOM INET server:
upload/download of work orders to/from INET server
fully automated incoming porting including all timing issues from init till handover
handling of represents in case of failures
inform about outgoing portings (workflow not yet fully automated)
inform about confirmed time of porting
inform about rejects (incl. reason)
Functionalities of the INET/INA provisioning interface:
Put BN into operation (export tariff model and business number).
Download and install tariff definitions of foreign business number operators.
Export rated CDRs for foreign network operators to INA Server.

26. Technical Provisioning with Incognito Broadband Command Center
Res Mgmt
Ser Mgmt
CRM
Prov
Ser
Web
Fulfillment N
Res
Prod
Cust C
Med
Bill TB
Billing
Taifun Service Provisioning
Modem
MTA
Other IP-devices

28. Customer Management

29. Historized Data