Note 11: Seven Important, Second-level Data Concepts

Posted: 01 January 2006

Aside from the data captured and stored for the core data concepts, billers will also capture customer data generated by billing operations, interactions with customers, and external reference repositories subsequently used in billing. These important second level data concepts include:

Taxation: These details describe the relationship between a biller's products, tax jurisdictions, and the methods used to calculate the correct tax amounts. Taxation details are required in multiple places within the biller's organisation including front-of-house sales (providing the correct 'total' price), revenue assurance (validating system processing), and billing. Billing systems are an important user of tax information since calculations are usually based on the actual (final) amounts billed to customers. The financial and corporate consequences of miscalculating tax means that details are often maintained centrally and monitored closely as a corporate database of record.
Address: Accurate descriptions of 'location' are important in billing, not just for creating a bill. Different address types are employed depending on the situation. For example, addresses can indicate the service location for a utility meter, the mailing address for bills, website addresses (e.g. IP numbers, URL) may be used to calculate charges, or the latitude and longitude may describe the location of equipment (e.g. pipes, communication cables, electricity poles). Addresses are complex and often prone to inaccuracies when entered manually by staff or customers.
Contact History: Each time a customer and biller make contact, details of their interaction can be stored to assist the biller in future contacts. Capturing details of historical contacts avoids the need for customers to restate their problem / inquiry, and reduces the chances of inconsistent messages supplied by the biller to the customer. The types and frequencies of customer contacts can be analysed for patterns and trends that may indicate problems (e.g. customers can't understand their bill), and opportunities (e.g. proactively contact customers if they are unhappy and at risk of changing providers).
Notes: Notes complement the contact history and provide detailed information for subsequent staff interactions with the customer. They can be generated internally by staff during problem investigation, or automatically by billing processes. Details captured in notes might include credit management activities (service suspension, disconnection), special customer details (disability (deafness, blindness), doctor / hospital, relatives of the CEO), internal contacts within the biller (sales representatives, account managers) and customer-specific details (authorised representatives, restrictions on communication to address identified stalkers).
Bill Details: Whilst the debt and due date of a bill can be stored easily, to address all customer inquiries additional information must be stored. These details can be used by staff and customers alike to (re)view bills, and support follow-on processing such as disputes.
Disputes: Disputes are the formal recognition of bill details challenged by customers. Dispute details drive the investigation of a customer's challenge, but can also identify systemic problems when excessive disputes are raised against (say) specific call destinations, charges levied on a specific day or product families. By capturing details of a customer's disputes and holding them against a customer's bill details, the generation of duplicate disputes and subsequent financial adjustments against the same charges can be avoided.
Financial Postings: After bills have been generated, billers must store accurate financial postings that reflect the charges levied against each customer. Individually, these postings reflect the revenue, debt and payments attributable to each customer. In aggregate, the postings form the foundation of a biller's corporate financial ledger (e.g. revenue and debt). Revenue analysis can be performed against customers' purchases using additional segmentation dimensions (e.g. market segment, geographical location, business unit, product 'family'). Customers must step through their bills, payments, dispute credits and other miscellaneous financial postings and agree that their billed and outstanding amounts are accurate. The biller's auditors must do the same across all bills to sign-off the biller's corporate 'books'.