1. Basic concepts of value-added business management
1) changes in value-added business management
- The value-added business chain tends to be open: from the initial technology-centric to user needs and market-centric, the role of operators is constantly changing.
- The operator has changed its operating model from self-developed business to providing business capabilities and managing networks, CP/SP and third-party services.
- Operators' value-added business management strategies: from the extensive random management model to the systematic management model with background support.
2) value-added business management
User Management: Provides user registration/cancellation, user information management, user authentication, and business order management.
Business Management: manages the service lifecycle, including adding, deleting, modifying, querying, testing, and activating services, and authenticating services.
Content Management: manages the content lifecycle, including publishing, querying, deleting, reviewing, and testing for commercial use.
Partner management: provides unified management of SP/CP, including cp/SP registration management, information management, business/content application, authentication management, procurement agreement/contract management, etc.
Marketing Management: includes marketing solution management, marketing materials management, marketing service management, marketing channel management and statistical reports.
3) standard organization related to business management
- ITU-T (Telecommunications Management Network TMN)
- TMN defines five functional layers of telecommunication network management, namely the network element layer, Network Element Management layer, network management layer, business management layer, and operation management layer.
- TMN focuses on the business management to ensure the business quality requirements of network operations through good network management.
- China Telecom Management Forum TMF (Tom & eTOM & NGOSS)
- Telecom operations map (Tom) is the abstract business management overview proposed by TMF.
Framework
- Vertical: Processes of network and system management, business development and operation, and customer-related processes;
- Horizontal: Service Activation, service assurance, and service billing.
- The enhanced telecom operation diagram (enhanced Tom) enhances and expands the Tom model, mainly including the standardized description of the Business Process of telecom operation enterprises. Describe the requirements from the business view, analyze and design the business process, and then analyze and design the solution. Finally, the consistency test of the solution is passed, put into operation to meet customer needs.
- Next-generation Telecom Operation Support System (NGOSS), TMF proposed the next-generation OSS system-NGOSS-to address the problem of providing system services for various types of businesses in the future. NGOSS (plug-and-play rules), processes (enterprise transaction process models), and information (associated with public data processing) the four aspects of the product ensure that the OSS system is standardized, can gradually evolve, ensure interconnection, and achieve end-to-end management and high automation.
4) Development
Status quo: vertical business network architecture
- Incomplete CP/SP management
- It is difficult to develop new businesses quickly
- Insufficient support for integrated service deployment
Objective: To construct a Horizontal Business Network Architecture
- This service extracts the commonalities of their respective businesses in the vertical network architecture, constructs a Unified Business Management Platform and Business Access Gateway, and integrates business management and business access.
- SP/CP Unified Access
- Unified Service Access
- Unified Business Management
Comparison between vertical and horizontal networks
2. value-added business operation management
1) Problems in the initial CP/SP:
- CP/SP fraud often occurs;
- The user has many complaints about SP Business;
- Low user trust in SP services;
- It is difficult for operators to promote their businesses and their business income is low;
Root cause: the operator lacks effective management of SP and users' use of SP services.
- Carrier billing, billing information from SP, SP charges fraud, and so on;
- SP understands the ordering information and user data, and the operator cannot smoothly carry out the user control service;
- SP independent marketing, insufficient market guidance;
2) Main Content
Operators must strengthen Operation Management of value-added services, standardize SP behavior, provide rich and honest businesses, increase user loyalty, and increase operating income.
- CP/SP management: including cp/SP information management, access Qualification Application/approval, CP/SP assessment management, CP/SP complaint management, etc.
- Cooperation principles: openness, innovation, cooperation, and win-win
- Management content: Cooperative application/approval, CP/SP information management, complaint management, assessment and exit mechanism
- Management Solution: Add a monitoring and filtering system-SP management system (spms) between the SP application platform and the carrier service gateway and the network ). Spms monitors the service process between the SP and the user, and takes special control over the key links that are prone to disputes and complaints, so as to avoid malicious SP fraud to the maximum extent.
- Business Management: Provides business lifecycle management for CP/SP, including business application/approval, business testing, business promotion, and formal business operation.
- Content Management: Manages online sales of the business content provided by CP/SP, and monitors the online content.
- Cooperative application/approval: The CP/SP application cooperates with the operator to provide value-added services to the user through the operator's network platform.
SP can apply for network-wide business partners or local business partners. The two processes are basically the same. Difference: Apply for a local partner to submit the application materials to the provincial company of the carrier for approval. Apply for a network-wide partner to submit the business to the Group Company for approval.
- Information management:
- SP/CP content
- Basic information: sP/CP name, company address, legal representative, contact person, contact number, fax address, etc.
- Business materials: Service Access number, service name, billing method, billing rate, business introduction business process business media data, etc.
- SP/CP Data Management Method
- Basic Data Management: CP/SP synchronizes basic information to the SP management system through the interface with spms, or SP manually enters basic SP information through the SP self-service portal, submit it to the SP management system.
- Business Data Management: sP/CP the activation of business data must be synchronized to the SP management system. The SP management system authenticates and manages the Mo/MT business request messages based on the accessed business data.
- Complaint Management: Establish a separate database for user complaints, and record basic information such as complaint content, Complaint Handling status, related business, and related sp. Collects classified statistics on complaints to facilitate system administrators or SP queries.
- Assessment exit mechanism: the carrier's CP/SP assessment includes partner qualification assessment and individual business assessment. Partner qualification assessment: terminate cooperation with partners that have not met the agreed standards based on indicators such as business development, customer service quality, operation and maintenance quality, and credit rating. Individual business assessment: based on indicators such as individual business income, number of users used, and business maintenance quality, the service is withdrawn from services that do not meet the agreed standards.
- Business Management: Business Management provides management of the life cycle of value-added businesses-business application/approval, business testing and launch, and online business operation: business change, query, and deletion.
- Business application and approval: SP must apply for at least one business when applying for cooperation with the carrier. SP, which has become a formal partner, can also add new businesses. SP can apply for local business or network-wide business. The two processes are basically the same. The difference is: Apply for local business and submit the business application materials to the provincial company of the carrier for approval. Apply for a full-network business and submit the business to the Group Company for approval.
- Business test: The business must pass the test before it is officially launched. The business test can be divided into offline test and online test.
Offline test: debug the SP service through the service simulation test tool. The simulation testing tool should support determining logical errors and process traps in the business to optimize the business process and avoid faults and errors that may occur during actual business operation.
Online Testing: online testing should include functional testing, performance testing, and billing testing for businesses.
- Online Business Management:
Business version control: saves each tested business by time node. When necessary, you can manually release a previous version to each node.
Business Recovery Management: the system has a corresponding recovery mechanism for services that stop services to ensure that the system can safely and completely delete previously released services.
Business change management: SP submits updated businesses to the business management system. The business management system reviews business changes. After the application is approved, it returns to the business Release System for business testing and publishing.
Business query statistics function: the business platform should provide the query statistics function for the business. -Collect statistics about the service opened by the SP name of the service provider, including the service name, Service Code, activation time, effective time, billing method, rate, and access number. -Query business details by business keywords, such as business code, business name, and access number.
- Introduction of content management: the content management function manages online sales of business content provided by CP/SP, and monitors online content.
In a vertical business network environment, content is distributed across various value-added business platforms.
- Cannot be shared between value-added business platforms, so that different value-added business users cannot share content;
- Deploying the same content on different value-added business platforms increases storage redundancy and increases content storage costs;
- Centralized and unified content storage, security protection, copyright management, distribution and publishing, search policies and rules cannot be implemented, leading to an increase in content management costs.
- Unified content management platform: a unified content management platform is abstracted from various value-added business platforms to achieve unified content management, which brings a "win-win" situation.
- CP/SP submits content to the content warehouse through a unified method and interface, making it easier to submit content;
- Centralized content storage reduces content storage costs and increases content sharing. Shared content expands the types and sources of content and allows consumers to obtain unified and rich content;
- The content manager Reviews, releases, and tests the content in the content warehouse in a unified manner, and the operator improves the content operation efficiency.
- Content review and monitoring
- When submitting a content online application, the Content Management System performs MD5 Digest on the binary code of the content and stores it in the database of the content management system.
- During content browsing and downloading, the Service Access Gateway or service engine uses binary encoding for MD5 summarization.
- The Service Access Gateway or service engine sends the summary and Content ID to the content management system through authentication messages.
- The content management system finds the saved Content Abstract Based on the Content ID. if the content is the same as the uploaded summary, the authentication passes and the authentication result is sent to the business engine.
- After authentication is passed, the Service Access Gateway or service engine issues content.
Content Review: CP/SP uses the CP/SP independent portal (provided by the Business Support System) to fill in content information for content application, such as content registration, modification, and cancellation. The system administrator of the carrier approves the CP/SP application based on the content information. Only approved content can be published and used.
Content Monitoring: uses two methods: post-event review and real-time review. uses real-time keyword Filtering for text content and content Summarization for multimedia content.
- Digital Copyright Management
Digital copyright refers to the right to disseminate digital works. In DRM, users cannot forward downloaded media objects at will. They must use streaming media objects based on their purchase permissions. The charging standards are priced based on different permissions.
Content publishing: CP/SP stores the copyright information of the content to be published to the DRM system, and then encrypts the content into the content database for use by the content distribution system.
Content download: The content delivery system queries the content copyright information based on user requests. if the content is valid, it finds the corresponding content from the content database for decryption, and then returns the original digital content to the user through the content delivery system.
3. Operation Management Case
China mobile MISC system
Misc (Mobile Information Service Center, Mobile Information Service Center), and China Mobile Data Service Management Platform (dsmp) to complete business management and control of data services.
- Implement User management, business management, and SP management;
- Provides open, standard, and unified web service interfaces;
- Provides billing for various service gateways and SPs.
China Telecom's ismp
As an integrated business management platform, ismp provides unified interfaces for supporting the system to shield all downstream businesses.
As a Unified Access Gateway, isag shields different services from sp.
4. User Management Overview
1) necessity of user management:
- Users: subscribe to the "favorite" Business and use the business that has been ordered normally;
- CP/SP: understand the business development and make necessary analysis on user business behavior;
- Operator: authenticates and Bills business users.
2) user management content: manages the user lifecycle, including user registration, user information management, order relationship management, user authentication, billing management, and user Business Behavior Statistics and user cancellation.
3) User Registration/Cancellation Management
Group users: the business system should be able to provide unified user interfaces to group users and support unified management such as registration and cancellation.
Multiple registration/Cancellation methods are provided for individual users:
- Text message registration/logout
- IVR registration/Cancellation
- Web portal registration/logout
- Register or log out of the WAP Portal
- Manual registration/Cancellation
- Ussd registration/logout
Managed user information:
- Basic user information: includes the user number (msisdn), user name, credential number, and network access time, which are generally stored in the Operation Support System (OSS. The business platform shares basic user information through the interface between the platform and OSS.
- Business Information: including the user's order time, order method, user's business status, and billing status, billing policy, and other information. It is generally managed on the business management platform.
4) User order relationship management
Order Relationship Management: the so-called order relationship is the relationship between the user and the business. Order relationship management comprehensively manages the user's order information, including the user's business order, cancel the order, order information change and order relationship synchronization.
Order Mode:
- Reverse Order: A User subscribes to a business on the SP business platform. The user first generates a subscription relationship in the SP system, and then the SP synchronizes the subscription relationship to the business management platform.
- Forward order: the user initiates the order operation application, first generates the order relationship on the business management platform, and then synchronizes it to the SP business platform.
Use of subscription data: the Carrier authenticates and bills users based on the subscription relationship data. SP provides users with corresponding services based on the order relationship, and manages their accounts and business statistics.
Subscription Relationship Management Case: Text message service user management
Comparison before and after introduction of spms
Business Environment before spms is introduced:
- User Data and order information are controlled by SP;
- SP authenticates users and charges based on the SP's subscription data;
- The SP sends messages in a group at will and cannot monitor the validity of messages sent under the sp;
- Business customization processes and unsubscribing business processes are not uniform, so customization is easy to unsubscribe.
Business Environment after spms is introduced:
- User Data and order information are controlled by spms;
- Spms authenticates users and charges fees based on the spms subscription data;
- Spms authenticate sp. SP groups are not allowed.
- Unified customization and Unsubscription process to solve the problem of difficult user Unsubscription.
