The CoBilAS company

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The CoBilAS AG is responsible for the product development and vision. The CoBilAS AG’s interdisciplinary team combines expertise in the area of billing (pre- and postpaid), as well as surrounding areas, e.g. bookkeeping and accounting with unique software development skills. Our development team is commited to high quality software using high-end (not necessarily hype) methods and tools. The CoBilAS management yields year-long experience with billing system implementation projects covering millions of subscribers.

Motivation

Why a new billing solution? This was the first question we had to answer before we launched CoBilAS. And - when observing the billing systems currently deployed - we found some very good answers to that question.

The potential for a billing system developed with the latest requirements in mind was very clear as all the vendors are struggeling to include those requirements within their current systems. With a newly developed solutions like CoBilAS all those features are easily to be implemented with a fraction of the cost of a project to include those requirements into a legacy billing system.

Product

Up-to-date Billing and Accounting

Operators currently spend their resources on multiple billing systems - different systems for pre- and postpaid customers, for various services, for roaming and interconnect. The customization of these billing systems also means additional costs for consultants, maintenance, change requests and the necessary middleware. These expenditures eat up a huge portion of the operator’s revenue.

Nevertheless these operators - just to mention at least two hot issues - are still not able to quickly and easily deploy new products or services or to monitor their up-to-date revenue. And - most importantly - these systems seem to be prone to error especially due to their architecture of billing in multiple independent stages.

CoBilAS dramatically improves this situation as it is the only system necessary for the high-speed rating, billing and accounting of virtually any type of service regardless whether fixed line, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, content, interconnect, roaming, IMS, VoIP, internet with subscriber accounts handled either pre- or postpaid. CoBilAS minimizes costs while maximizing time to market with new service offers. Additionally, CoBilAS provides unmatched reliability through its unique single-staged processing for all the participants of the incoming tickets - subscriber, operator and e.g. service provider.

Key Features

The following key features give a brief CoBilAS overview according to the health care requirements

  • Real-Time The billing and accounting engine can handle a large number of transactions in real-time which allows the system to offer an immediate feedback, like alerts or reports. This means that for example the insurance house could be instantly informed when ever a health care provider reaches a configurable limit.

  • Management Information System (MIS) The real-time function covers another important requirement: the MIS. With its account structure CoBilAS provides not only billing-relevant accounts but also to additional accounts. These virtual accounts serve statistics and control purposes to keep track of all billing and accounting transactions.

  • Multiple Accounts In the near future its nessesary to handle the value chain of health care service over multiple providers in an efficient way. With its multiple account structure CoBilAS provides an open-end possibility.

  • Bonus Management A fully integrated bonus management collects bonus information and creates bonus accounts. The generic architecture accept all imaginable rating combinations between bonus, tariffs and account balances.

  • Fraud Management Additionally to account limits the clearing engine can alert immediately when unauthorized services are being used. Via suitable rating rules the possibility exists to recognize typical drift in money flow.

Components

The CoBilAS product suite consists of the following components:

  • CoBilAS Rating & Billing Core (also available as stand-alone component for OEM integration)

  • CoBilAS Customer Care

  • CoBilAS Self Care

  • CoBilAS Product Designer

  • CoBilAS Product Catalogue

  • CoBilAS Management Information System

  • CoBilAS Contract Manager

  • CoBilAS Publishing Server

Optional modules are:

  • CoBilAS Intelligent Network Link

  • CoBilAS SMSC

  • CoBilAS IVR

  • CoBilAS SMS Payment Gateway