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  • 1.  what is the best way to model Autopay in the prepaid

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Mar 16, 2021 12:04
    Hi,

    Autopay (to enroll your payment method for monthly recurring payments) is a feature offered by marketing to the customer. Why I am using a feature because this is not a service that telco is providing. The business requirement is to give a promotional bonus if a customer chooses to opt for Autopay. 

    Now the dilemma is how exactly should this be modeled,

    1. Should it be modeled as an independent  Production specification and then associated with the selected Offerings in the Catalog?
    Side effects of this approach are :
    a. To support this Product Spec, this doesn't really have any Information model service or resource behind it.
    b. for each Autopay enrollment or modification we need to create an order to provision it.

    2. If Autopay is not considered a product then how can we invoke catalog/promotion engine procedures/logic to provide promotional benefit for items outside the Catalog?
    #CustomerExperience
    #General

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    Akshay Hiremath
    Rogers Communications Inc.
    All views are personal and don't represent my employer
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  • 2.  RE: what is the best way to model Autopay in the prepaid

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Mar 17, 2021 05:27
    Hi Akshay

    In my opinion, there is no requirement that a Product is implemented as a Service with network Resources. A Product can be anything that is sold by the CSP. Consider for example an extended warranty plan for a leased/purchased device. The customer pays for the warranty but there is no trace of this in the network, only in the product inventory and the billing system.

    Specifically for autopay, you could certainly model it as a product, and thus use its presence to influence the price, as in your option 1. But perhaps managing this with orders is somewhat cumbersome.
    An alternative approach might be to model the autopayment as a sort of commitment term (which really it is, the customer has given a commitment to set up an autopayment). You'd have an extension to ProductOfferingTerm to represent this, and the corresponding instances ProductTerm and OrderTerm.
    In either case, please note the following:
    • You'll need to handle the situation where the customer stops the autopayment, somehow you'll have to detect that and cause an order to happen to change the pricing.
    • The Open API model does not currently surface pricing rules, neither at catalog authoring time nor at runtime charge/price calculation.
    Hope it helps

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 3.  RE: what is the best way to model Autopay in the prepaid

    Posted Mar 17, 2021 08:11
    And rather than modelling it as a product, please think about the possibility of modelling Autopay  as an Order / Interaction type and the associated promotion that comes with Autopay is the Offer.
    And for this  promotion, please analyze the SOM actions that this promotions triggers.
    If this does not have  an impact on the Service Provisioning and the impact is only on the CS (and PCRF), then it makes sense not to model Autopay as a product and instead use "Term" or "Contract" and trigger disconnect / change order if this term is not extended.
    This is Subscription management.



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    Sri Jagadish Baddukonda
    CSGI
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  • 4.  RE: what is the best way to model Autopay in the prepaid

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Apr 12, 2021 10:47
    We don't have any provisioning or service impact so no connection to SOM.

    I didn't understand the idea of modeling Autopay as an order/interaction type and promotion as an Offer.  Could you please elaborate?

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    Akshay Hiremath
    Rogers Communications Inc.
    All views are personal and don't represent my employer
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  • 5.  RE: what is the best way to model Autopay in the prepaid

    Posted Apr 12, 2021 16:36

    If the Autopay is resulting in the instantiaon of a promotion for the active and current Instance, then the Autopay is an Interaction that is modelled as an Order  that adds the promotion (based on conditions in the Interaction) to the customer's Instance.

    How will you add the promotions on top of the existing instance? The correct way is to model it as an offer.

    The advantage is –  when Autopay does not result in any changes to the Instance (and is a pure subscription change), it can flow as a quick Interaction and not an order.

    When it is accompanied by a change of subscription (addition of  a promotion) it becomes an order with Instance updating.

     

    Regards,

    Jag

     

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  • 6.  RE: what is the best way to model Autopay in the prepaid

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Apr 12, 2021 10:38
    Edited by Akshay Hiremath Apr 12, 2021 10:47

    Thanks, Jonathan for your reply. It is to the point and helpful as always.

    After deliberation on this, we are modeling autopay as an addOn offer in the Bundle. And each plan is modeled as a bundle.



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    Akshay Hiremath
    Rogers Communications Inc.
    All views are personal and don't represent my employer
    ------------------------------