ISIS Information Systems, a leading South African system integrator and software house - and a subsidiary of the JSE Securities-listed Altech group - has announced two breakthrough telecommunications deals worth more than R5 million with Vodacom Tanzania and Tanzania Telecoms (TTLC).
These contracts follow the company`s launch of a range of telecommunications products aimed at the African market early last year, including pre-paid telecommunications, service level management, wireless and billing solutions.
According to Ben Coetzer, business development manager of ISIS`s telecommunications division, both contracts called for the installation of the company`s Visual Wireless solution, Visual CDR. This follows the signing of exclusive African distribution rights with Sweden-based Visual Wireless, developer of Visual CDR.
"Our African telecommunications drive is now starting to bear fruit. We have a wide product range at our disposal, including Visual CDR, and after winning these two contracts, we now have at least a further 10 on the table. We believe it could become a buoyant market for us and could end up being an important contributor to the company`s bottom line."
He further said Vodacom Tanzania needed a system to bill its fixed-line operator. The solution gives Vodacom Tanzania details of every call made on the network and allows the company to reconcile every call if need be. Every operator needs the reassurance that all possible revenue is accounted for. In fact, Vodacom recouped the price of its investment during the eight-week installation phase.
"More accurate reconciliation allows an operator to have access to every call made, even to those calls which cannot be billed, such as calls made to toll-free or emergency numbers."
Tanzania Telecoms was faced with the same issues, with Visual CDR providing it with the required functionality.
One of the modules, Revenue Assurance, recognises an operator`s production in terms of "voice seconds". This module can determine which of the calls landed up on customer invoices, because sometimes a proportion of phone calls are made to non-billable numbers, such as emergency and hotline numbers. It allows operators to track where the calls went, the type of call, and whether or not it was finally billed.
Coetzer said that because of Visual CDR`s Revenue Leakage feature, fraud could be detected that much easier.
"An operator discovered that a large number of calls made to the emergency line were fraudulent because that caller had a friend there and the friend would patch him through to an internal PABX system when he phoned in, thereby allowing him to make long distance calls for free. Of course, being able to reconcile phone calls is a very useful feature but the ability to track the route of every call to determine whether or not it should have been billed or not, including the obvious ability to detect abuse, is a major benefit for the operator," he said.
Currently revenues generated from ISIS`s telecommunications division accounts for 35% of the company`s total turnover.
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ISIS was founded in 1984 to perform the largest software project of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. This was a strategic sector project with a 354 man-year development period and a 64 man-year installation phase. The project was completed on time, within budget and to specification. Since then the company has been involved in a large number of development projects, ranging from a few man-months to 100 man-years.
Some 75% of the company`s business is now derived from the commercial sector, where the company has an excellent record of planning, integrating and implementing large, complex and diversified information solutions for large organisations such as the government, manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation, as well as the banking and finance industry sectors.
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