HIRING OF CONSULTANT
BILLING SYSTEM SOLUTION
FOR
NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION CORPORATION
TABLE OF CONTENT
1. INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE OF WORK 3
1.1 Overview of NTC 3
1.2 Scope of Activities 3
1.2.1 NTC Business Activities 3
1.2.2 Future Activities 4
1.3 Problem Area 5
2. SCOPE OF WORK OF CONSULTING FIRM 6
2.1 Phase 1-System Design and Selection 6
2.2 Phase 2-System Implementation (Supervision & Consultancy) 7
2.3 Phase 3- System Operations (Supervision & Consultancy) 7
3. Project Description 8
3.1 Project Objectives 8
3.2 Expected Benefits 9
3.2.1 System Components 9
3.2.2 Collection 9
3.2.3 Mediation 9
3.2.4 Rating 10
3.2.5 Report Generation & Invoicing 10
3.2.6 Audit 10
3.2.7 Fraud Detection 10
3.2.8 Customized Billing 10
4. FORMAT FOR PROPOSALS 11
4.1 Title Page 11
4.2 Letter of Introduction 11
4.3 Table of Contents 11
4.4 Summary 11
4.5 Company Profile 11
4.6 General (Weightage=5%) 11
4.7 Prime Business and Specialization (Weightage=10%) 12
4.8 Experience (Weightage=25%) 12
4.9 Organization & Capability (Weightage=5%) 13
4.10 Alliances (Weightage=5%) 13
4.11 Statement of Work 13
4.12 Staff Assigned (Weightage=25%) 14
4.13 Financial Position (Weightage=5%) 14
4.14 Proposed Methodology (Weightage=10%) 14
4.15 Project Implementation/Management Plan (Weightage=5%) 15
4.16 Additional information 15
5. General Terms and Conditions 16
5.1 Bid Bonds 16
5.2 Processing Charges 16
5.3 Validity of Proposals 16
5.4 Inquiries 16
5.5 Withholding Tax 16
5.6 Governing Law and Jurisdiction 17
5.7 Project Locations 17
5.8 Local Representation 17
5.9 Evaluation of Proposals 17
5.10 Acceptance of Proposals 18
5.11 Submission of Proposals 18
5.12 Project Completion 18
1. INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE OF WORK
1.1 Overview of NTC
National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) was established on 1st January 1996 through Pakistan Telecommunication (re –organization) Act 1996 under section5 (2) (a) of the subject Act, NTC provide telecommunication services of all kinds to its designated customers in accordance with the rights and privileges granted to the Corporation vide Pakistan Telecommunication (re-organization) Act 1996 and the license issued by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
1.2 Scope of Activities
1.2.1 NTC Business Activities
At present NTC has following infrastructure in place:
§ Public Switched Telephone Network.
§ Multi Services Data Network.
§ Optical Fiber Based Long haul and junction Network.
§ Telecom buildings all over Pakistan with state of the art equipment and facilities.
Brief descriptions with necessary details of NTC Network are annexed at “A” for
information.
Services offering from the above are:
§ Pots
§ BRI
§ PRI
§ DSL
§ Intranet
§ Internet
§ Virtual Private Network
§ Leased Circuits
§ Co Location Facilities.
§ Transit Facilities
§ Web Hosting etc
Beside above NTC is in interconnect agreements with PTCL and Mobilink and are
looking forward for the same with all major carriers operating and likely to operate in
Pakistan. One of the other revenue generating area is the international gateway operation.
1.2.2 Future Activities
The telecom market has been liberalized recently. A number of LDI and LL operators are likely to enter the market. Beside this two new cellular companies are likely to start their operations. NTC being an incumbent operator will definitely be entering into interconnect agreements with these operators offering its services and infrastructure support.
Though NTC subscriber base is only 75500 at present the volume of traffic in its network is likely to increase manifold due to these developments. A new paradigm shift is likely from retail traffic business to wholesale traffic business. Keeping in view the recent trends in the telecom market following main projects are under progress:
§ Deployment of Soft Switch Based NGN.
§ Upgrade of Long Haul Media to 10 Gbps (DWDM).
§ Establishment of Call Center for CRM.
§ Establishment of Call Booking Center.
§ Expansion in switching and transit network.
§ Establishment of state of the art Co-Location Facilities.
1.3 Problem Area
At present the billing system used for PSTN is based on a self-COBOL based system and has various concerns as far as its performance is concerned. Billing for MSDN, co- location and leased circuits is carried out manually. Inter carrier billing concept is entirely new in NTC which is being carried out using the existing post processing system designed for retail billing.
To overcome the above problem NTC intends to establish a state of the art billing system capable of handling all the present and future business activities of NTC. In this context an EOI has already been called through open tender in which 13 vendors have participated. However to proceed further NTC require services of a consultant firm for which this RFP is being floated.
2. SCOPE OF WORK OF CONSULTING FIRM
The selected bidder will be official consultant of NTC. The scope of activities to be performed is as under three separate Phases:
Phase 1 - System Design and Selection
Phase 2 - System Implementation
Phase 3 - System Operations
2.1 Phase 1-System Design and Selection
§ Will carry out complete analysis of NTC network, business activities and billing processes.
§ Will also carry out complete analysis of NTC future business plans.
§ Will carry out complete data collection and analysis necessary to generate the RFP and carry out the project.
§ Will study and analyze all the interconnect agreements to ensure that the selected system is able to handle the same.
§ Propose improvement in the present billing process to align the processes to the
needs of automated systems.
§ Make recommendations for other related technology and process changes to enable the smooth system implementation.
§ Propose the billing solution with detail components to carry out NTC present and future activities.
§ Evaluate the expression of interest for pre qualification of bidders.
§ Develop complete RFP for the billing software solution in lines with NTC procurement procedures.
§ Will evaluate the responses to the RFP and short-list the package solutions.
§ Select the package as per approved selection criteria.
§ Will negotiate with the successful package vendor.
§ Will help negotiate terms and contract with the package vendor.
§ Establish objective critical success factors to measure implementation success.
2.2 Phase 2-System Implementation (Supervision & Consultancy)
§ Will supervise and provide consultancy during the implementation of project.
§ Will assist NTC in carrying out acceptance the testing of the project.
§ Will supervise the parallel run of the system with the existing billing system.
§ Will arrange for error corrections etc during the parallel run period.
§ Will supervise migration of existing billing data from existing system to the new one.
§ Will arrange system specific training of NTC staff through selected bidder to ensure operation by NTC after handing over the system to NTC.
2.3 Phase 3- System Operations (Supervision & Consultancy)
§ Will supervise and assist NTC for operations of the system minimum for a period of six months.
§ Establish operational policies and procedures.
§ Establish billing arrangements for billing services clients.
§ Propose organization structure for system operations.
§ Establish job descriptions, roles and responsibilities for operational staff.
§ Establish training needs for operations staff and help in arranging trainings for them.
§ Institute effective knowledge transfer mechanism to assure that NTC’s operations staff can handle systems on their own.
NTC understands that without the actual outcome of the Phase 1 of this project it would be difficult for ROs to give detailed plans for the subsequent phases (Phase 2 and 3) but would still want to see an approach and methodology as well as indicative plans and costs for the whole project. In the absence of a response to Phases 2 and 3 by an RO, the response will be considered incomplete.
3. Project Description
The trends in the telecom market present a number of challenges for NTC. One of them is a field proven, flexible and reliable billing system capable of accounting for all the services being offered, interconnect being carried out and facilities being used. Moreover the increase in traffic volume demands more ability for network analysis to effectively use the same to generate and handle maximum traffic.
In order to improve customer services, effective reconciliation and carry out effective decisions on the basis of reliable information NTC intends to deploy a billing system capable of performing following:
§ Retail Billing for PSTN and MSDN
§ Corporate Billing for PSTN, MSDN, Leased Circuits, Co Location Facilities etc (One Bill for All Concept)
§ Inter Carrier Billing
§ Traffic Analysis Report Generation for Network Dimensioning and Analysis
3.1 Project Objectives
§ To develop a billing system capable of handling all the services being offered by NTC with minimum errors and to generate sufficient information for NTC to effectively manage its network and service offerings.
§ To offer the billing services to other operators entering the telecom market.
§ To increase NTC revenues by proper billing of all services and marketing the spare capacity of new billing system to new operators
3.2 Expected Benefits
The project if implemented will:
§ Minimize the billing errors
§ Ensure that all services and facilities provided are billed to respective customers at the right time and with right amount
§ Avoid leakage of revenue due to no or wrong billing
§ Perform inter carrier billing in a form acceptable to all the stake holders
§ Ease the process of reconciliation
§ Generate revenue for NTC if offered to other operators
§ On line/real time billing
3.2.1 System Components
Components mentioned in this section are just to give a general idea. The consultant will identify the components required in Phase-I keeping in view NTC requirement and budget.
3.2.2 Collection
This part will be responsible for collection of real time CDRs from the PSTN and MSDN automatically. Collection of CDRs from NGN platform, which NTC intends to establish, shall also be possible.
3.2.3 Mediation
The mediation platform will be responsible for converting the collected CDRs in appropriate format for post processing.
3.2.4 Rating
The rating part of the system will provide a flexible platform to apply different rating formulae on the collected CDRs. The rating formula can be based on type of customer, interconnect agreements, type of day, time of day etc.
3.2.5 Report Generation & Invoicing
This part will be responsible to generate variety of reports for NTC management for reconciliation, network management and other important decisions. The system shall be capable of generating invoices for NTC subscribers.
3.2.6 Audit
This part of the system will perform audit of the collected CDRs to ensure that all record is being generated properly by all the elements.
3.2.7 Fraud Detection
This part of the system will be used to detect any manipulation of CDRs and other data. Moreover any illegal events generated in the network shall be detected by this part.
3.2.8 Customized Billing
Certain facilities like co-location, leased circuits, local loop rent etc are provided by NTC and are also being leased or hired from PTCL. Billing for such items will be customized as per NTC requirement.
4. FORMAT FOR PROPOSALS
The responding organization (RO) should submit their proposals (in English) as per format below:
4.1 Title Page
Should indicate proponent name, address, telephone number, email, web site address and contact person’s name.
4.2 Letter of Introduction
Introduction to the company and signed by the company Chief Executive/MD.
4.3 Table of Contents
Indicating all sections/subsection with page numbers.
4.4 Summary
A short summary of key features contained in the proposal.
4.5 Company Profile
An overview of the company, its goal, objective and experience.
4.6 General (Weightage=5%)
§ Type of business entity-sole proprietorship, partner or limited company
(Please provide names of shareholders, their nationalities and holding percentage in case of proprietorship)
§ Place/Year of Registration
§ Principal place of business
§ Location of branch offices and/or affiliates
§ Name of all the personnel in the organization including their positions
§ Structure within country of origin and/or international
§ Details of any dispute that has been referred to arbitration and/or litigation
§ Is the company ISO certified? If yes, please provide copies of certification
4.7 Prime Business and Specialization (Weightage=10%)
The nature of company’s prime business specialization and the value range of services
and projects in which you are interested. If your prime business covers more than one
area you are requested to detail each separately.
§ Description of Prime Business
§ Specialization (Services/Projects) offered
4.8 Experience (Weightage=25%)
Please provide details of relevant work experience during the last five years and of at
least two projects involving similar technologies as needed in this project:
§ Client
§ Location
§ Contract Value
§ Description of Work
§ Date of award
§ Period of work
§ Details of manpower and equipment engaged
§ Contact Details for client (NTC reserves the right to seek references from previous clients)
§ Types of Insurance, Performance Bonds and/or Guarantees provided
§ Details of penalties paid, if any
§ Completion certificates
§ Details of litigation, if any
4.9 Organization & Capability (Weightage=5%)
4.9.1 Current personal level by indicating the following:
§ Category of specialization
§ Numbers in each category
4.9.2 Organization structure (please provide a copy of your current
organization chart)
4.9.3 Particulars of key personnel (please provide CVs for key personnel’s)
§ Name
§ Specialization
§ Age
§ Academic Qualifications
§ Total number of years of experience
§ Experience in years with your organization
4.9.4
§ Details of major facilities, equipment & tools owned.(Department reserves the right to inspect and verify contractor’s facilities, equipment & tools)