SAP Convergent Charging supports dynamic business models in today’s new service economy.
Melbourne, Australia — SAP ANZ has announced the local availability of SAP Convergent Charging, its next-generation rating, pricing and charging engine for telecommunications carriers. SAP Convergent Charging, can process up to 45,000 transactions per second (TPS) – four times faster than industry benchmarks, making it easily the most powerful and scalable rating solution available in the market.
SAP Convergent Charging calculates how much a user should be charged for any given service using a wide range of variables including volume, time, content, promotions, category and quality of service in accordance with their services plan, tariff and bundle. With SAP Convergent Charging, organisations can more easily manage rating and pricing, enabling them to charge consumers for real-time purchases, such as music downloads, mobile applications and other not-yet-conceived products and services. SAP believes that Convergent Charging will be a profit-enabling engine for telecommunications companies in a post-NBN world.
SAP will formally announce the Australian launch of SAP Convergent Charging at SAP Telco Infoday events in Melbourne on the 10th and Sydney on the 12th of November 2009. The events – part of SAP’s Telco Week 2009 – will convey SAP’s vision, technology roadmap and thought leadership for organisations in the telecommunications sector, including presentations by Glenda Akers, SVP for SAP’s global Telecommunications Industry Business Unit and Renaud Sibel, Vice President Global Sales & Alliances, SAP Telecommunications IBU. Interested parties should contact SAP (see footnote).
“The rate of change in the telecommunications and media industry over the past five or so years has been extraordinary. The coming of the National Broadband Network, where carriers will have equal access to networks, will see even greater change and greater competition,” said Mike Robinson, Head of Telecommunications, SAP Australia and New Zealand.
“We’re already seeing a shift towards next generation networks and multi-play service offerings, rising consumer expectations and increased competition. These industry developments are having a significant impact on billing processes. Telecoms companies today need to be able to cost effectively manage pre-paid, post-paid and hybrid billing processes for a range of dynamic products, promotions and services.”
“The number of transactions is growing exponentially on networks as customers increasingly use new services,” continued Robinson. “SAP Convergent Charging bridges the gap between operational support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) by providing a platform that supports new revenue distribution and partnership models, dynamic pricing strategies and the introduction of new services. The SAP Convergent Charging integrates with OSS and is platform agnostic meaning that it can be implemented in non-SAP environments.”
The SAP Convergent Charging billing application reduces transaction costs and minimises risk by closing the time lag between the consumption of the product or service by the consumer and the collection of the revenue. SAP refers to this process as ‘consume-to-cash’.
“Legacy billing systems have struggled to adapt to the changing nature of commerce and new business models,” continued Robinson. “Telecoms companies today need flexible billing solutions that enable them to process high volumes of transactions via mobile devices and the Web in real-time. We have completed the integration of the Highdeal Billing system platform into SAP, after SAP acquired Highdeal, and can now offer customers a robust solution to manage billing and consume-to-cash processes across extended business and partner networks.”
SAP Convergent Charging has more than 200 existing customers in a range of industry sectors including utilities, media and financial services as well as its core telecommunications market. The company was a spin off from the research and development labs of France Telecom, prior to its acquisition by SAP.
SAP has more than 550 customers in the global telecommunications sector representing 81 per cent of the top 500 telecommunications service providers. The market-leading SAP for Telecommunications solution portfolio supports end-to-end enterprise business processes for wire line, wireless, cable, broadband, satellite, and multiservice operators.
