IOCORE develops new ERP billing interface for market-leading telecoms company

IOCORE, local IT solutions provider, has developed InterconnecT Oracle Financials Solution (IOFS), a software interface that integrates the InterconnecT wholesale telecoms billing system with financial and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.

IOCORE was commissioned by business partner Intec Telecom Systems PLC, a market leader in wholesale billing systems for global telecom operators, to develop IOFS to facilitate and accomplish the transfer of data from the InterconnecT billing system to ORACLE Financials, enabling real-time custom invoicing and financial reporting.

"Intec made InterconnecT the global standard for inter-operator billing, helping over 150 telcos worldwide generate billions of dollars in revenue," says David Baker, Intec`s Operations Director in Africa. "By working with IOCORE to create IOFS, we can now help telcos cut administration costs and improve operational efficiency by linking the billing process directly into financial systems."

According to Baker, Intec provides solutions to over 285 carriers worldwide, including Telekom, MTN and Cell-C. He says research findings reported in 2002 by Chorleywood Consulting indicate that Intec has almost 40% of worldwide installations for interconnect billing.

Dean Tebbutt, IOCORE`s General Manager - Custom Solutions, says the strong positioning of InterconnecT offers IOFS a competitive advantage in the global market.

"Although IOFS was specifically built for InterconnecT customers utilising Oracle Financials, moves are afoot to extend it to operate with General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable modules within other leading ERP packages."

Tebbutt says the mandate was given to IOCORE to develop a highly flexible, remotely supportable product that requires a short implementation timeframe. "It took four months for a team of five consultants with a combination of enterprise resource planning and applications development skills to build IOFS.

"While Intec will drive the marketing of IOFS, IOCORE is positioned as its custom development and implementation partner."

The primary benefit of implementing IOFS is that it provides a complete framework to configure and deploy an integrated wholesale billing solution. "This enables fast upgrades, requiring very little support," says Tebbutt.

IOFS requires no additional coding or plug-ins but uses menu and data driven techniques to create a generic Web-deployed interface system that can cater for all possible combinations of data translation, validation, mapping and aggregation requirements between Interconnect and Oracle Financials. "The level of financial reporting and analysis differs from customer-to-customer and can reflect billing breakdowns by month, day, off-peak versus peak times, regions, etc," says Tebbutt.

He says that IOFS gives the InterconnecT product a competitive-edge by providing telecom operators with an end-to-end billing solution.