Copy of How To / Managing Subscriptions

Owned by Persia Xenopoulou (Deactivated)
Oct 16, 2015

What does this section cover?

Overview

Subscriptions in CRM.COM are used to gather the services the customers are subscribed to. Through Subscriptions module, CRM.COM handles not just billing of the customers but also the provisioning of the signals to the actual device that resides at the customer's location.

The How To aims to give you a clear understanding of how CRM.COM modules interact between them and provide you with a complete solution for handling and managing your PAY TV business.

Billing of the subscriptions is available in the 2 related How Tos -

 

Intended Audience & Purpose

Rewards How To's, are intended (but not restricted) to the following audience

  • Potential CRM.COM buyers - Management
    Management personnel will be introduced to CRM.COM OTT concept and how it can be used to meet business requirements.
  • Project Managers, key users, solution consultants
    Administrators will be assisted on understanding architecturally how CRM.COM modules interact between them and how the system can be utilised / configured to produce the desired results

Understanding Subscriptions within in CRM.COM

Multiple CRM.COM modules interact between them to provide a complete powerful solution, encompassing all the processes required by a Pay TV business; from the time that a customer calls to become subscriber to the time time that they decide to cancel their subscription.

Read on to find out which modules are these and how they interact between them.

  • Subscriber
         Subscriber is not a module within CRM.COM, but represents the actual physical person or company that signs up to CRM.COM starting by providing Contact Information and considered as a customer as soon as an Account is created and related to him.

  • Accounts Receivable
    The financial account of the subscriber. Within the context of Subscriptions, accounts receivable usage depends on the type of Subscription. 

    • Accounts Receivable for Pre-Bill and Post-Bill subscriptions: A/C holds all the invoices and payments for the services. Invoices issued by Billing are kept in the a/c and increase the account balance, till a payment is made against the account, that will decrease the balance accordingly. 
      Financial Transactions are used to affect the account balance.
    • Accounts Receivable for Pre-Paid subscriptions: A/c for pre-paid subscription is mainly used as an identifier and keeps the relation between the subscriber and the wallet, as it is via the wallet that money will be deducted for the services.
      Wallet Transactions are used to affect the wallet balance 
  • Subscription
    Subscription is the collection of services that are provided to your customers. Hardware (such as smartcard and decoder) and services provided to your customers need to be included in the subscription and it is via the subscription that CRM.COM will handle billing as well as provisioning of signals to the customer's TV
     
  • Subscription Actions
    This is where the action takes place!!! Once a subscription is created (even during its creation) all further updates are succeeded by using Subscription actions. CRM.COM offers you a pool of subscription actions to meet any business requirement. For example you can use subscription actions, to deactivate subscriptions for a short period of time without billing your subscriber due to technical problems, or rest the subscription of a subscriber that will be absent for 2 months. You can add and remove services and hardware, change distribution of services on hardware,bill the subscription, change contract terms and many other options, that can cover every business requirement for subscription handling.

  • Subscription Batch Processes
    Pull your sleeves up!its time to make massive changes! As with Subscription Actions, subscription batch processes allow you to make changes to subscriptions. Not just one but thousands of them that can be selected based on a plethora of conditions available. CRM.COM provides you with activation and deactivation batch functions, execution of scheduled subscription actions, as well as taking decisions as to whether subscriptions coming out of their resting should be disconnected. Batch processes can be easily set up and then just scheduled to be executed as often as you wish, without having to worry about them.
  • Subscription Services
    These are the services that are added on the subscription, and actually represent the channels that the subscribers will be able to view on their TVs. CRM.COM also supports OTT business. For more information on OTT model visit  /wiki/spaces/V4Manual/pages/9831945

  • Installed Items
    Installed items is the hardware that is added on a subscription, and used from the providers so that subscribed services are distributed to the correct hardware that will reside at the customer's location. Hardware can be smartcards, decoders or even a modem. It is up to your own business on what hardware will be needed in order for a subscription to work properly. In CRM.COM this hardware is referred to as Installed Items and distinguishes the hardware that is uniquely identified by a Serial Number, in contrast to hardware such as antennas, remote control etc, that they do not have their own serial number, but are logged in quantities instead.
  • Warehouse 
    Consider Warehouses as the actual physical warehouses where you keep all the hardware equipment. Each Installed Item must reside in an active warehouse in order to be available to be added on a subscription. Items added to a subscription are removed from warehouse, while, items removed from a subscription they are usually added back to a different warehouse. Using Warehouses you can check the balance of each hardware type that resides in the specific warehouse, and in addition you can distinguish warehouses to be used by subscriptions based on the actual physical location

  • Billing & Subscription Rules
    This is where all your business rules and logic kicks in. CRM.COM provides you with a number of configuration modules where your business rules are translated to system rules, controlling subscriptions throughout their life cycle, with regards to management as well as billing. Examples of such rules include the maximum number of subscription services or installed items allowed to be added, prerequisites for the addition of certain services on the subscription, rules related to resting of the subscription, activation and disconnection thresholds, allowed billing frequencies and binding periods, and many more settings, that make CRM.COM more than just a packaged solution.Billing and Subscription Rules, most of the times are taken into consideration every time a Subscription Action is executed

  • Provider Runs
    Provider Runs are like the middle man between CRM.COM and the Provisioning Provider. These runs will take decisions of what happens to subscription services signals. The decision taken is translated to requests that are sent to the Provisioning Provider which are further processed to either activate or deactivate subscribers. According to the Provider additional utilities may be available, and handled by Runs, such as resetting smartcard pins, executing anti-piracy tests, or even sending messages directly to the customer's inbox!!!
  • Provisioning Provider System 
    Provisioning System is any type of system responsible for distributing the correct signals to customer's hardware, taking its information via CRM.COM. CRM.COM has integration with multiple provisioning systems and you can set multiple active providers, relating different types of subscriptions or subscription services to different providers.

  • CRM Modules
    Finally, Customer Relationship Management modules can be used for subscription management but mostly for communication with the subscriber. In particular, Communications and Notifications modules can be used, for handling direct communication and updates of your subscribers, with regards to the status of their subscription or any other information you would like to communicate with them, for either marketing or just informational purposes.
    While notifications are batch process, that identify subscriptions sharing common characteristics and are used to communicate common information to multiple subscribers, Communication can be used directly to send information to a single subscriber based on his subscription related information.

    Both Notifications and Communications can make use of templates that provide ready made structures and content as well as Tags that are replaced on sending with individual's subscriber values. 



MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS

 

Managing Subscriptions

Scenario

Pay TV is a demanding business sector, where various business concepts come together in order to offer a complete solution. Company ZX is a PAY TV company that wishes to handle all of the Pay TV business functions. such as , managing, support, marketing, provisioning and billing from a single system.
Below you will find a solution for the following scenario

  • Company ZX offers 2 types Subscriptions. One for Normal customers and one for Business customers. Different services are offered to normal customers and different services to business customers, with exception of the standard subscription channels that are the same but offered with different prices.
  • Subscriptions are billed in a monthly basis and all the financial information are kept in a single account.
  • Subscription management is govenred by a number of business rules that must be followed, and validated after agent's actions
  • Once subscriptions are created an email should be sent to the subscribers, including services, installed items and contract/subscription number
  • Subscriptions changes should be taking effect at most an hour after the change is logged in the system
  • Billing is executed once a month
  • Disconnection is executed once a month for normal subscriptions and once every 2 months for business subscriptions
  • When payments is made against accounts for disconnected subscriptions, if the balance of the customer is over 0 then subscriptions should be automatically connected
  • A subscription requires at least 1 man
  • Broken Hardware should be returned to a different warehouse than the one used to provide new items to subscription

CRM.COM Subscription Management Set up

Subscriptions

All business rules governing subscriptions througout their Life Cycle State will need to be defined in Subscription & Billing configuration modules.

Subscription Definitions

Define basic subscription rules, restrictions and depensdencies, like the maximum and minimum number of services, installed items, services or items required to activate subscription, as well as a hierarchy between available services

Subscription Types

Create 2 types of subscriptions.

  • Normal Customers
  • Business Customers

For each type define the allowed price lists, allowed services and physical goods as well as the provisioning distributors related to each subscription.

Deactivation Subscription Batch Process

Create 2 deactivation subscription process that will be executed on a recurring basis.

  • Normal Subscription Disconnection: Executed once a month and include only normal subscriptions that have overdue balance greater than 0
  • Business Subscription Disconnection: Executed once every 2 months and include only business subscriptions that have overdue balance greater than 0

Reactivation Subscription Batch Process

Create a Reactivation process that will be set to be executed on a recurring basis, every 1 hour, to reconnect all subscriptions that have balance 0 or less than 0

Subscriptions

Billing

Now is time to complete the Subscription business rules by using Billing configuration

Billing Term Schemes

Configure 2 Billing Term Schemes.

  • Business
  • Normal

For each one, define the allowed services, allowed billing frequencies and binding periods as well as the Price Plans that related subscriptions will be bille with. Note that the 2 types of billing terms should have different related price plans as there exists common services offered to both types but with different pricing.

Billing Term Definitions

Define validations and restrictions that will be used across billing terms, regardless of their schemes.
Additional information on Billing Configuration can be found at the respective manuals:

Prepaid Billing

Normal Billing

 Price Plans

Create 2 Price Plans that will have the prices for all the services

  • Normal Price Plan
  • Business Price Plan

 Price Plansd

 Provisioning

Provider

Now you will need to set up the providers that will be used for distributing signals to the subscribers devices. Services distributed from each different provider will need to be added accordingly along with their provisioning ids.

In addition make sure you add the physical goods type that will be used by providers to distribute the services to

Provider Runs

Configure the run that will be responsible for sending CRM.COM updates to the provider. The run should be configured once and scheduled to be executed recurringly every hour.

Provisioning

 Warehouses

Warehouses

Set up 2 warehouses from where physical goods will be taken and returned to

  •  New Items WH
  • Returned WH

Warehouse Transactions

Import all installed items into your warehouses by using Warehouse Transactions. Once the installed items are imported they will be ready to be used on subscription

Inventory Management

Communications

Communication Templates

Create a communication template that will be sent as a welcoming email to the subscriber every time that a new subscription is created in the system. The communication template should include

  • Subscription Related Information
  • Accounts Receivable Related Information
  • Installed Items
  • Services

The template will have standard text that will include entity tags, that will be replaced at the time of the sending, with the actual values related to the subscriber.
Templates will be used by Notifications Runs

Communications

Notifications

Notification Runs

 Set up a Notification Run, to be executed twice a day and that will gather all the Subscriptions that have become effective on the current date and send them an email using the Communication template

  Notifications

 

 

Using CRM.COM to manage subscriptions

Subscription

Once the system is set up then agents are ready to start creating subscriptions. Agents have the option to create new subscriptions by using one of the following 2 pages

  • Subscriptions
  • Communication Centre

The following steps will need to be taken by agents on creating a new subscription

  • Create a new Subscription
    • Create a Contact (or select an existing)
    • Create an Account Receivable (or select an existing)
    • Define the Subscription Terms (Billing Term)
    • Add Services
    • Add Installed Items
    • Activate subscription

Once the above actions are executed, then the system will be responsible for the following tasks that will be executed with no further update from the agents

  • Send update information to the provider so that the subscription will be created at the provder and activation signals sent to the customer's installed items
  • Send a welcoming email to the subscriber using communications/notifications module

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