SmarTone, a Hong Kong telecommunications company, has moved its workload to the cloud to streamline prepaid charging and postpaid billing processes. The company hopes to transform business support systems (BSS) and improve customer service. SmarTone operates subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Macau, providing voice, multimedia, and mobile broadband services, as well as fixed fiber broadband services to consumers and businesses.
The telecom company has selected the Oracle Cloud Scale Charging and Billing solution to support its existing consumer and business offerings, which include automated billing, real-time tracking, and customizable invoicing. It contributes to future business models, including industry-specific IoT offerings.
Scaling Operations
SmarTone's Chief Technology Officer, Stephen Chau, stated that Oracle's cloud-native solution will help improve agility by simplifying operations across consumer and enterprise (B2B) lines of business, reducing time-to-market for new offerings.
The solution integrates with existing systems such as CRM, payment gateways, and self-service platforms, ensuring compatibility and a seamless transition. It supports open APIs, which allow for the integration of capabilities into co-created offerings in B2B2x business models. This can lead to the development of new revenue streams and enhanced customer experiences through partnerships and ecosystem expansion.
With Oracle's solution, SmarTone can handle customer demands via a private cloud setup, which means that the company is distributing the workload between two charging sites. This ensures that if one site goes down, the other can take over to keep things running. According to SmarTone, this capability was demonstrated in a performance test for 100 million subscribers using multi-site deployment.
Cloud-based solutions allow SmarTone to scale their operations up or down based on demand. This is particularly crucial in the telecommunications industry where demand fluctuates frequently due to factors like seasonal trends, new product launches, or promotional campaigns.
Cloud solutions often come with robust integration capabilities, allowing SmarTone to seamlessly integrate with existing systems such as CRM, payment gateways, and self-service platforms.
The solution's implementation is being managed by Covalensedigital, an IT services provider based in India.
