Precision Telecom Technologies has developed a new interface and features for its flagship Telecommunications BackOffice Solution (TBS) platform to help communications service provider clients on several fronts.
The enhancements add customization features, improve inventory capabilities, offer advanced reporting and analytics, and give clients the ability to integrate new offerings into their workflow up to six times faster, allowing them to launch, bill and support wireline, wireless, data, cloud or video products in weeks instead of months.
“Our clients continually expand and add new products so we have spent a lot of time and energy looking into how we can help support offerings that don’t yet exist,” explained Scott Trefz, president and CEO of Precision Telecom Technologies. “This substantial update is the culmination of that development. It gives clients the ability to start selling, supporting and billing new products very quickly.”
Occasionally, when there are very unique attributes or a special usage rating, modest development will be required, adds Trefz. However, in most cases, little if any development is needed to launch new products because the system is highly configurable. Some of the new enhancements include:
- Self-configuration. Rather than fit products and services into silos and definitions created by Precision, service providers have the ability to self-configure a product catalog that matches exactly what they’re selling.
- Improved inventory capabilities. Service providers can now track their inventory much easier. DIDs, servers, routers and other equipment can be entered into the system without tying them to an account. For example, when a box of IP phones arrives off a truck, a barcode scanner can be used to quickly add all of them into the system as inventory that can be assigned to customers later as needed.
- Enhanced parent-child hierarchies. The system supports parent-child relationships to mirror how service is configured in a service provider’s switch(es) and/or mixed networks. A dedicated circuit is the simplest example. It would appear at the top with all of the numbers that terminate to it listed as children underneath. Literally any product can be configured as a parent with children and grandchildren, etc., and without requiring additional development. It’s baked in.
- Robust reporting/analytics. Service providers have access to a range of standardized dashboards and user-defined reports and charts across various system modules (billing, orders, trouble, accounting, etc.) Through regular quality assurance procedures, Precision’s team also monitors customer trends and usage to provide additional data as well as margin analysis for clients.
Trefz characterizes it as a 2.0 update to help Precision’s clients stay competitive in a fast-moving market.
“We had great support for products that were common across the industry and it worked well,” he said. “As technology evolved, the challenge we started running into was that our clients were launching new product types and services that required additional development, and that slowed the process for them. With this update, they can respond much faster to meet both market and customer demands.”
