Page 356 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

Network Management and Administration 3-147

• Analyze Service Quality: Assess the effectiveness of the service by identifying the current qual-
ity level against forecast or specified quality levels. Using the raw data from Service Quality
Monitoring, these processes will correlate events in order to filter repetitive alarms and failure
events that do not affect the quality delivered, and they will calculate key service quality indica-
tors (such as mean time between failures and other chronic problems).
• KPIs and KQIs: Collates the key performance indicators (KPIs) and converts them to Key Quality
Indicators (KQIs) against which the service quality can be measured.
• Improve Service: Assess and recommend improvements using the information from Service
Quality Analysis in order to improve and/or correct deviations from the forecast KQIs. This rec-
ommendation will be passed to the customer layer, the resource layer, or the Service Configuration
and Activation Processes.
• Identify and Report Service Constraints: Identify constraints that can affect service quality standards.
These constraints may include resource failures, capacity shortages due to unexpected demand peaks,
etc. These processes send this information to the CRM layer in order to keep customers informed.
In sophisticated systems, root cause analysis and service impact analysis are also incorporated into
Service Quality Management Systems.
3.6.5.6 Service-Level Agreement Management
SLA Management use the output of the SQM applications to provide a comprehensive view of the level
of service provided to customers compared to pre-agreed, often contractually binding agreements.
Typically SLA agreements will be negotiated between operator and customer to measure a variety of
service-oriented issues and impacts. These may be stated either in terms of service characteristics or in
terms of the business impacts on the customer. Service-oriented characteristics could include:
• Availability
• Security
• Latency
• Transmission speed
• Time to respond to the initial fault report
• The escalation process
• The time to repair
• Spares holding
• The algorithm for calculating rebates
• Contact details
• Time to deliver from order confirmation

3.6.5.7 Rating and Discounting
Rating processes are the traditional heart of any billing system. They should ensure that the customer
receives an invoice that is reflective of all the billable events delivered by the service provider dictated
by their business relationship. In addition, it ensures that the appropriate taxes, rebates (i.e., missed
customer commitments) and credits are applied to the customer’s invoice(s).
Rating and discounting applications manage the customer’s account and customer-specific pricing,
charges, discounting, credits, and taxation for services delivered. They accept events that have been col-
lected, translated, correlated, assembled, guided, and service rated. It takes these events and determines
the account or customer-specific pricing, charges, discounts, and taxation that should be reflected in the
invoice(s) for the customer.
In traditional circuit-switched voice networks, rating systems take the output of circuit switches as a
call detail record and, based on preloaded algorithms, produce an appropriate charge for the call based
on factors such as time, distance, customer tariff plans, etc. Historically, rating applications worked on
a batch basis as calls were traditionally billed on a post-paid, after-the-event basis.