| INQuest Solution for Telcos wanting to integrate VoIP into an existing network
INQuest is an Intelligent Network system comprising of a switch stack, APIs to third party network components and applications as well as a comprehensive Customer Care and Billing solution (CCB).
INQuest is designed for carriers wanting to manage their fixed or mobile (CDMA, GSM, 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G) network with a third party platform and a clear migration path from SN to IN architecture in an NGN and IP environment. INQuest supports SIP, Radius and legacy protocols simultaneously and can provide service for both PSTN subscribers and IP network subscribers.
INQuest is an open service platform, providing various interfaces for integration with legacy systems through APIs. It allows carriers to provide value added services with no need to change existing switching equipment thereby helps slash operators' CAPEX and OPEX.
Benefits of INQuest
INQuest Core Applications
INQuest Architecture - Infrastructure Sharing
The Customer Care and Billing (CCB) Application
CCB Server Requirements
CCB System Interaction
CCB Software Components
CALLBACK - VoIP Roaming for Telcos
Advanced Billing Capabilities
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
Customer Care
System Administration and Report Management
System Security and Auditing
Benefits of INQuest
- Vendor independent solution - integrates with traditional vendors such as Siemens, Ericsson, Nortel, Alcatel etc.
- Caters for traditional CDMA/GSM/2.5G/3G/3.5G as well as NGN
- OpenAccess™ topology offers flexibility and significant cost saving
- Low CAPEX and OPEX
- Seamless expansion, scalable to millions of subscribers
- Integration with third party services and VAS application providers
- Easy End User / System Provisioning
- Real-time TAP - CCB CDR processing and access
- Multi-levels tariff-based billing and rating
- Bills for both prepaid and post paid
- Web based administrative interface
- You don't need to be an expert to provision services
- Integration of different VAS functionality into one system
- Automated on demand/on the fly customer invoicing
- Centralised billing for diversified CDMA/GSM/2.5G/3G/3.5G network
- Customer Care and Case Management
- Full transaction log and access audit system
- Fully customisable data backup and business continuity recovery capability
- Report generator for customisable data reports
- Support for different classes of users and different classes of call rates
- Highly scalable plug and use feature
- Gives end user a better secure control and access to the system
- Highly customisable within a short development time
- Customer call history with analysis and reporting features
- Easy integration to existing systems
INQuest Core Applications
CRMQuest and BillQuest (CCB) form the core VAS applications of INQuest. In addition INQuest includes APIs to the core network MSC as well as other vendors' products and services, such as SMS, MMS, email, VMS.
The SoftQuest CCB Solution is a robust and highly scalable, integrated system that manages all aspects of client service provisioning and billing for a CDMA, GSM, 2.5G, 3G and 3.5G network.
The solution is based on SoftQuest Advanced Carrier Services Delivery, Provisioning and Management System (ACSDPM™) and provides scalable, feature rich, OpenAccess™ and customisable suite to manage all the activities of telecommunication carriers in an integrated and real time fashion.
The INQuest IN platform is particularly suited to cross-border infrastructure sharing, where an operator may be serving several small markets that cannot justify stand-alone full system implementations.
INQuest Architecture - Infrastructure Sharing
The Customer Care and Billing (CCB) Application
The core CCB system components could be partitioned into three main layers, namely:
- Network Operator Service Provisioning Layer
- CCB Service/Billing Management Layer
- Network Operator Customer Layer
A more detailed view of the entire system processes can also be depicted from an application view's point. This represent the services and servers required to deploy the solution.
Servers required are:
- Web Server (Presentation Tier)
- Application Server (Logic Tier)
- Database Server (Database Tier)
CCB Server Requirements 
CCB System Interaction 
CCB Software Components
The CCB system comprises of two core integrated systems namely BillQuest and CRMQuest.
BillQuest
BillQuest is a modular, convergent billing solution for services and/or products. It is capable of multi-level and multi-tariff based billing for fixed, CDMA, GSM 2.5G, 3G and 3.5G networks. It supports prepaid and postpaid billing (or any mix thereof) for products and/or services. BillQuest interfaces to single or multiple Virtual Gateways, to rate and charge by elapsed time, by bandwidth, service class, data volume or drop charge (e.g. video download) or other criteria. BillQuest supports multi-party billing, typical of an e-commerce environment. It supports real-time, batch and ad-hoc billing, SQL reporting and graphical analysis, with an advanced decision-support toolkit. For more information see BillQuest - Billing System.
CRMQuest
CRMQuest is a robust customer-centric provisioning and support service-based solution. It also manages end users' information including customer accounts, fault ticketing, customer support, loyalty schemes, service subscription and service provisioning. Combined with BillQuest, this presents a state-of-the-art online real-time CCB application suite, cost-effective for small businesses and scalable to very large, geographically diverse telecom operations. For more information see CRM - Customer Relationship Management/Helpdesk Application.
INQuest offers a wide variety of features for telcos
- Inventory Management
CCB manages the allocation of fixed and mobile line access depending on the subscription states of a customer. This is for both Prepaid and Postpaid Access.
- Call Mediation
Analysis of CDR records, reconciliation of TAP based outputs from different Telco partners, export of native CDR records to 3rd party formats.
- Interconnect Module
INQuest handles interconnecting requests from/to the end user (SIP/Fixed/Mobile/Lines/PC), virtual gateways within the network, originating media gateways from partners, interconnect gateways and VoIP gateways.
- Intra Network Billing
Translate CDMA / GSM / 2.5G / 3G / 3.5G calls dynamically or in batch from a proprietary TAP based format into the CCB system.
- Account Recharge Management
Recharge PIN numbers can be generated and distributed on Recharge Cards.
- SMS Notifications
INQuest application can notify users of relevant account information and transactions through SMS.
- Payments Server Management
Different payment options including Credit Card BPAY, PayPal, Vouchers, Redeemable credits accrued from a loyalty scheme.
- Remote Management Unit
INQuest manages all relevant equipment/devices from a web based interface. System administrators will be able to remotely manage the network from a web interface once authenticated into the system.
- System Alarms
INQuest ensures that system administrators are notified of system failures or when systems reach their capacity performance thresholds. The INQuest monitor modules can send out SMS notifications and/or emails to administrators when the server(s) cannot be accessible on the network.
- Group Accounts
Users of the INQuest application can have a parent-child relationship account. In such a scenario, one account holder can manage multiple accounts with individual logins. The setup of the group accounts allows for a common billing account. This means that even though the individual accounts are setup to function independently, they can have their bills paid as a single bill.
- Data/Content Session Control
Voice, data and content sessions can be controlled in real time using web based interfaces. From the application's back-end, subscriber sessions can be monitored or dropped.
- Recharge Management
INQuest supports voucher the recharge of subscribers accounts and vouchers. Recharging of accounts may also be done using different interfaces to the system including: IVR,
web based recharge, recharge using USSD requests and SMS recharge.
- Real Time Control
The INQuest platform can monitor the usage and activities of prepaid and postpaid customers in real time. INQuest also provides avenues for the real time service to be monitored. Service usage, duration and billing implications can be monitored in real time.
CALLBACK - VoIP Roaming for Telcos
The Callback Gateway is designed for Telcos that already have an existing phone network. The Callback Gateway allows Telcos to offer their customers a VoIP roaming service, so that their customers can retain their phone number where ever they are in the world.
Advanced Billing Capabilities
Multiple Pricing Capability
Within INQuest, different pricing schemes for different classes of customers can be defined. Discounted pricing can be defined for class of customer and be preset to be enforced for a particular period of time. This may be used for both prepaid and postpaid customers within the system. Different pricing schemes can also be used within the system. Some of the factors that influence how a pricing scheme is defined include:
The user type i.e. pricing scheme for corporate accounts may differ from those of single clients. Pricing based on volumes of services can also be used. In this case customer's pricing model may be upgraded if they consume a certain level of service over a given period of time.
Pricing can also be determined based on earning of points through a loyalty scheme. Some other services like telephone calls may have different termination charges for different countries.
Convergent Billing
INQuest offers clients the option to have a single bill for different types of products and services. Billable services include trunk and mobile telephony, VoIP, SMS, broadband, VM, and data based services etc. The billing engine (BillQuest) makes use of the subscribed services of a customer to determine the service charges associated with this customer. Both pre-paid and post-paid charges can also be consolidated into a single invoice. In order to make this determination, the billing engine evaluates in real time the status of each customer's subscribed service payment terms. Billing for a customer's service can be easily changed from postpaid to prepaid and visa versa.
The INQuest billing engine can be setup to execute billing processes during specific periods which can be daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly billing periods. Non-standard billing periods are also supported. Parameters that are considered during billing include:
- The billing rates for each product/service
- Billing based on service/volume matrices. This means we can have a different billing switch depending on the volume of services that are used up within a given time.
Internet Billing
The INQuest Application communicates with a RADIUS system to authenticate or to bill users for internet related services. INQuest handles this by continuously streaming information to the RADIUS server in order to constrain the users to their eligible services and restrict them to subscribed limits and bandwidths. The INQuest engine has an Internet Service Management Platform that ensures that end user service terms and restrictions are updated when service changes are requested. Any Network Access Service that makes use of RADIUS can be controlled by INQuest.
Multiple Billing Runs
INQuest supports different levels of billing runs within the system. Billing runs can be easily customised and modified to run at different intervals. This includes yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily billing runs. User defined billing periods can also be setup for non-standard billing periods.
INQuest is a highly scaleable platform and can often be upgraded by simply adding more servers. However, for a typical configuration including a mail server and the INQuest server the following statistics hold true: The system is based on a customer base of 300,000 and can run approximately 1000 separate billing runs per month without discernible impact on the INQuest application. The system is also able to process about 20,000 bills and CDRs in an hour.
Hot Billing
Within INQuest, customers have access to their statements online at any given time. Invoice payment history, service usage information reports and other information is made available at real time. INQuest can also graph a customer's service usage over any given period of time. INQuest can also enforce a credit limit for each user for postpaid services. This means that a user may owe but may not owe beyond a particular credit limit before a defined action will be triggered against the user such as suspension of services. Each customer credit limit can be defined separately.
Flexible Tariff Rules
INQuest high level reporting module helps to ensure that a user can generate any kind of report they are interested in from information within the INQuest system. At setup there are standard reports available. Customised reports can also be defined as either SQL based statements or defined using our Expert Reporting Wizard tool. These reports can then be stored and run whenever required. The Master Report Generator can create a wide variety of customised reports to be used for monitoring and decisions making purposes. Overdue and bad debtor reports can also be generated using the expert Reporting Wizard. The reporting wizard ensures that reports are sorted based on pre-defined fields which may include the amount overdue, or the period of time that the account has been overdue.
Multiple Rating and Charging Interfaces
With INQuest multiple levels of services can be offered to customers at the customer provisioning stage. It uses a 'many to many' algorithm in assigning the subscribed services to the customer. This means that variations of a particular service can be defined as different service classes. Customers too can be defined into different customer classes. Different charge rates can then be defined between the service classes and the customer classes. This allows for a highly flexible billing configuration.
Service provisioning within the INQuest system is automated. The system auto-configures the customer's hardware by enabling the customer to access the relevant Network Application Servers (NAS) based on their subscribed services.
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
The INQuest application has IVR module for account balance enquiry and some other subscriber self service functions such as
- Upgrading of services
- Adding of funds into accounts
- Obtaining relevant updated service related information.
Customer Care One of the core components/interface of the INQuest application is the CRMQuest application. This is used to manage all forms of customer interaction with the INQuest application. Every registered member has access to the Customer Portal where they can:
- Manage and update their customer profile and accounting information
- Manage their service subscriptions
- View their invoices/statements online
- View the status of a service's usage both in text and graphical form
- Control some of their services e.g. VoIP call management, broadband speed limits, hosting management
- Make ad hoc payments
- View call cost rates
- Manage and spend loyalty points
System Administration and Report Management
The INQuest reporting module offers a very powerful and actionable reporting capability that can help management make business decisions. Reports can be compared over different usage periods and for different customer classes to identify customer consumption patterns. With INQuest, managers can make informed decisions by comparing bottom line results using the summary reports available. With the INQuest Expert Reporting Module decision makers can create on the fly reports to help further probe the data within the system. Some of the key features of the Expert Reporting Wizard include:
- Highly customisable abilities allowing for intelligent probing of the records within the database. This includes customer, network performance and operational data.
- Tools to aid the analysis of sales, customer support history, lead generation and campaign performance.
- Comprehensive reports on customer information sorted by different parameters such as postcode, services subscribed to, date of registration and more.
- INQuest also offers graphical tools to assist in making such decisions.
- Performance reports and diverse management reports to ensure meeting customer QoS specifications.
System Security and Auditing
INQuest offers high level of security and fraud management. All system and user passwords are encrypted using a strong encryption algorithm. Data to and from the billing engine are encrypted using a 128 bit encryption algorithm. The system provides three main types of audit trails:
Customer Level Audit Trail
This keeps track of all the customer account and service subscription updates within the system.
Financial Level Audit Trail
This keeps a trail of all financial record changes made within the system.
System Access Audit Trail
Tracks user access to the system, time of access, IP address and application or service accessed.
The security and fraud management system has a highly intuitive web interface for a security analyst or an administrator to view what has been accessed or what activities has been performed within the system.
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