Biztalk Provides Advanced Integration Platform

The customer was using a largely manual process to manage the sales of cellular airtime subscriptions to customers, as well as the activation of the airtime packages with the cellular networks. In addition to this, the day-to-day management of the collection of subscription payments from the customer credit accounts at a retail establishment was left to an outsourced third party. This solution was developed to integrate the transfer of data from the sales channel, to the custom developed billing platform and finally through to the cellular networks for activation. The solution provides an efficient, streamlined process with a vast improvement in the accuracy and transparency of processing.

• Integrate the various external parties through an automated solution
• Provide flexibility to enable the customer to manage daily transaction processing
• Provide transparency with regard to the current status of contracts and transactions
• Provide activity monitoring to automatically alert system administrators of technical failures
• Manage up to 50000 sales and 80000 transactions per day
• The ability to add additional sales partners, collections partners and cellular networks
• Integration into the customer’s Customer Relationship Management software

nVisionIT developed and manages a solution for the customer using Microsoft BizTalk and Microsoft SQL, along with Microsoft ASP.NET for the user interface. The solution automatically retrieves the daily sales from multiple sales partners and imports them into the database (once validation has been completed). On a daily basis, an automated process extracts the daily transactions (new sales; monthly subscriptions; refunds; and other ad-hoc transactions) and sends the transactions through to an external transaction switching partner for processing.

The results are received back from the switching partner and transaction statuses updated accordingly. Via the Customer Relationship Management software and the use of SQL Reporting Services, the customer is able to view and action transaction processing - as well as contract information – in real-time. Due to the nature of the credit sales, transactions may fail due to insufficient credit available or block codes on the end customer’s accounts. As a result of this, transactions may need to be re-processed.

The solution provides the flexibility for the customer to manage transactions on a day to day basis and prioritise transactions according to transaction type; status; date; and amount - thus ensuring that the most critical transactions are processed first. In order to ensure as little down time as possible due to technical failures, a process was developed to monitor receipt and delivery of data, as well as any exceptions handled by the solution. This process makes use of Microsoft Office Communicator Server to automatically phone a system administrator and notify them of the technical failure.

As a result of the development and implementation of this solution, the customer has achieved the following benefits:

• Self control and management of day to day transaction processing
• Improved volumes of successfully processed transactions
•  Improved accuracy of information in the database
• Clarity on the current status of contracts and transactions
• Better customer relationships due to accuracy and transparency of information
• Central repository for all information relating to customers; contracts; and transactions