Analyzing Mediation and Collection of Usage Data

Now that O2C’s order management administrator, Lena, has created CutAbove’s subscription contract and changed the service level to platinum, it is time to understand the usage data for their cloud selection service.

Use of the cloud service product creates usage data records for different services in different technical systems. Usages of cloud service are collected from different technical systems, enriched, and checked for the further process of rating.

Lena now passes CutAbove’s subscription contract to the billing specialist at the O2C Company.

SAP Convergent Mediation makes it easy to gather, transform, and mediate usage data from various network and service sources across industries.

The main goal of SAP Convergent Mediation is to support businesses in efficiently processing and managing high volumes of transactional data. It offers various features that can help businesses capture and assess usage data, provide real-time reporting, and ensure accurate billing information. It can also ensures accurate and configurable routing of processed data to various downstream systems including charging, billing, analytical or operational systems.

1. Data Collection

• Description: Collect raw usage data from various network elements and systems (for example, switches, routers, application servers).
• Importance: Ensures that all relevant usage information is gathered for processing.

2. Data Normalization

• Description: Convert the collected raw data into a standardized format.
• Importance: Ensures consistency and compatibility of data from different sources.

3. Data Validation

• Description: Check the integrity and accuracy of the normalized data, verifying fields such as timestamps, user identifiers, and service types.
• Importance: Ensures that only valid and accurate data is processed further.

4. Data Enrichment

• Description: Enhance the usage records with more information such as customer details, service plans, and geographical data.
• Importance: Provides comprehensive context for each usage event, aiding in accurate billing and analysis.

5. Data Aggregation

• Description: Summarize or combine multiple usage records into a single record if necessary, based on predefined rules.
• Importance: Reduces the volume of data and simplifies processing while maintaining essential usage details.

The main goal of SAP Convergent Mediation is to support businesses in efficiently processing and managing high volumes of transactional data. It offers various features that can help businesses capture and assess usage data, provide real-time reporting, and ensure accurate billing information. It can also ensures accurate and configurable routing of processed data to various downstream systems including charging, billing, analytical, or operational systems.

Duplicated or erroneous data can occur as a result of incorrect configuration or malfunctioning data sources, such as link failures. A sudden drop of incoming data can also indicate failures in the data sources.

The error detection functionality of SAP Convergent Mediation helps service providers to ensure quality, prevent incorrect billing, and pinpoint problems related to malfunctioning and incorrectly configured data sources.

SAP Convergent Mediation enriches data using lookups in external repositories and databases. This enables transformation of the data to information adapted for the business logic of the downstream systems.

Data sources and target systems typically have different formats. More often than not, two systems using formats based on the same standards still need formatting to integrate due to vendor differences in interpretation of specifications and different versions of the standards. SAP Convergent Mediation provides an intuitive environment for configuring new formats on the fly.

Now that you have been introduced to Convergent Mediation, let’s return to our business example.

For the O2C Company, the source for the cloud selection service is, for example, different machines providing events pertaining to CPU and RAM usage. The consumed bandwidth comes from network elements, but source events also come from tracking devices that hold information about, for example, video streaming and to which business partner the event belongs. Binding these different usage events to the correct owner is key.

The problems become obvious when O2C wants to design an agile business platform to offer new, attractive service offerings and competitive pricing models, as well as being in control of their revenue, while fighting fraud attempts.

O2C is in need of a mediation layer that can model this and take advantage of their customer data.

In the following video, our SAP Convergent Charging consultant Finn explains the key components of a Usage Data Record (UDR) and the purpose of Usage Data Records in SAP Convergent Mediation.

In our business example, use of the cloud service product creates UDRs for different services in different technical systems. Usages of cloud service are collected from different technical systems, enriched, and checked for the further process of rating. For CPU usage, the consumption is recorded in the number of CPUs and hours. For bandwidth usage, it is recorded in Gigabytes.

In the parcel industry, key fields in a UDR include the timestamp, which logs the exact date and time of each event in the parcel's journey, crucial for tracking and delivery timelines.

The parcel identifier, such as a tracking number, is essential for associating events and status updates with the correct shipment.

Also, the location data, which records the geographic points of each event, is vital for monitoring the parcel's route and ensuring accurate delivery and relevant sizes of the parcel as there are length, width, and weight.

In the telecommunications industry, key fields in a UDR include the timestamp, which records the exact date and time of the usage event, crucial for billing cycles and time-based charges.

The user identifier, such as a phone number or IMSI, is vital for associating usage with the correct customer account. Also, the service type and usage quantity fields, which specify the type of service used (for example, voice, SMS, data) and the amount consumed, are essential for accurate billing and service analysis.

1. SAP Convergent Mediation collects UDRs from different network systems. After validation and mapping of the data to the corresponding output format, it sends the so-called chargeable items to SAP Convergent Charging.
2. Chargeable items are enriched with master data in SAP Convergent Charging and sent to SAP Convergent Invoicing for storing as a consumption Item.
3. Consumption items will be held there waiting to be rated.
4. When the rating process was triggered, all consumption items are sent in batch to SAP Convergent Charging for rating.
5. At the end of the rating process, the rated items can then be loaded as Billable Items (BIT) into SAP Convergent Invoicing.
6. SAP Convergent Invoicing uses billable items for billing and invoicing to generate the invoice document.

Workflows in SAP Convergent Mediation are vital for processing and transforming data from network sources or other external systems. A workflow is essentially a sequence of steps or a pipeline that defines the process of how network data is processed.

These workflows could include steps for receiving data, validating data, enriching data, aggregating collected data records, triggering actions based on specific conditions, and forwarding processed data to various modules or systems for further services like charging, billing, or reporting.

Furthermore, a user can customize these workflows to optimize the process according to specific business needs, ensuring flexibility and agility in the rapidly changing business models or market requirements.

These workflows could also be reused, which enhances productivity and reduces the recurring efforts to design similar processes.

SAP Convergent Mediation provides a GUI-based rule builder that allows technical and non technical users to modify and enhance data processing rules as per their requirements.

The workflows in SAP Convergent Mediation play a crucial role in defining how data is processed.

1. Data Collection

It is the starting point of the workflow where the data is gathered from different sources like network switches, routers, servers, and so on.

2. Processing

In this stage, the collected data is transformed into a universal format for further processing. This may include data cleaning, validation, and authentication. Mediation is the core process where the preprocessed data is sent through a set of rules and regulations. These rules can be modified or enhanced as per the requirements. The role of mediation is to convert the raw data into meaningful information that can be used for charging/billing.

3. Forwarding

In the end, the data is appropriately formatted and distributed to the respective recipient system. This could be a billing system or any other system that needs this data for further processing.