| |
| Case Study |
| |
Patni provides Service Billing
Encapsulation/Betterment for large
Utility Company in California |
|
|
Patni's solution of a restructured billing engine brought significant betterment to the client's
billing system and marked reduction in maintenance costs.
The Client
One of the largest
investor-owned Utility
companies in the US,
with a consumer base
of 4.2 million.
The Challenge
Deregulation of the Electric Utility industry in California opened
up a gamut of new opportunities for the client. At the same time,
competition was compelling it to look for new avenues of
providing superior and efficient service at a lower cost to
its customers.
The client, therefore, was keen on restructuring its Service Billing
system to cater to future requirements, and reduce maintenance
costs substantially.
This called for major architectural changes in the Service Billing
system, to convert the traditional billing process to a more
dynamic and futuristic one. The new architecture required
reusable independent callable modules for multi-point
access of the Billing Engine.
Patni, with its deep functional and technical skills, partnered with
the client to provide a suitable solution.
The Solution
The Patni team followed an Engineering Process to dismantle embedded billing
functions into distinct, reusable primary functions. The code was re-designed so
as to achieve an extremely modular and flexible architecture. Service Billing was
'encapsulated' into following distinct functions:
 |
Obtain Service Account Related Information |
|
Obtain Usage |
|
Obtain RP&A data (Contract Information/PX information) |
|
Calculate Billing Usage |
|
Calculate Service Plan - Determines the applicable Service Plan components
based on effective date periods, charge factors based on various dates,
profiles, seasons, tariff prices and
contract prices; Calculates the
charge amount for each Service
Plan component applicable |
|
Finalize Statement - Calculates
final Service Account Statement
totals |
|
Service Account Statement
Update. |
The key feature of this architecture is its ability to allow many
other systems to use Statement Calculation capabilities of
Service Billing without affecting the client's core billing
process.
For e.g., Automated Rate Comparison process can use these
encapsulated billing functions to calculate the Statement for
Alternate Service Plans and use the data for Rate Comparison.
The AMICOS application can similarly call Service Billing
modules for interactive statement calculation for the client's
web users.
The Technology
|
IBM-3090 MVS ESA 9221
Series |
|
MVS COBOL II |
|
LDB2 5.1 |
|
CICS |
|
JCL |
|
VSAM. |
| |
 |
The Benefits
|
Major milestone in web-enabling of Billing Services |
|
Equips the client with the ability to serve as a Billing Service Provider |
|
Factors contributing to future cost savings:
—Reduction in LOC by 45%
—Performance Improvement 15% CPU savings
—Retrofitting efforts from batch code to online code eliminated
—Reduced defects that were being introduced due to 'missed'
updates in multiple copies of Service Billing code
—New modular approach and efficient error handling; faster
response time for production support
|
|
Code optimisation to address issues of processing large data volume v/s as
needed access |
|
Project completed ahead of schedule, within budget, with no defects at
acceptance testing phase. |
Client Testimonial
“Patni has exceeded every goal of the
Betterment Projects. Their part was done
on time, within budget, has exceeded
performance expectations, has had
practically no defects reported in our
testing thus far... just really superb
performance.“
Client's Senior Manager
|
|
