purebill.com

Column - Defend revenue in depth - Credit Assessment, Fraud and Credit Management (23 Jan 2010)

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:00:01 GMT

Credit checking, fraud management and credit management are three layers that defend a company's billing revenue. Each layer operates at different points along the billing timeline to defend companies from 'bad actors'.

Defend revenue in depth - Credit Assessment, Fraud and Credit Management
Credit Assessment
Fraud Management
Credit Management

Note 64 - Report Distribution Access (09 January 2010)

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:00:01 GMT

Independent of their content, reports have common issues relating to their size, timeliness, distribution, retention and access. Each of these issues only grows over time since reports are seldom stopped, new problems will be identified, customer numbers (hopefully) increase, and products and services proliferate. Billers must find reporting solutions appropriate to their size, industry and cost structure that can support and grow with their needs.

Size
Timeliness
Distribution
Access
Data Warehouses

Note 63 - Reporting / Business Support (04 January 2010)

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:00:01 GMT

Reports are point-in-time historical views of the billing databases. They can describe transactions performed, highlight important customer statuses, show the results of business analysis, list transactions exhaustively, or highlight specific activities (whether good or bad) that require further investigation.

Auditing Reports
Exception Reports
Adhoc Reports

Column - Managing the 'case' of alphanumeric keys and identifiers (20 Jul 2009)

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:00:01 GMT

Key alphanumeric identifiers such as email addresses, user names and hardware references (e.g. MAC addresses) are often used as indexes in database tables, and can have problems when their case, that is uppercase, lowercase or mixed case, impacts the application's retrieval of or access to the identifiers.

Managing the 'case' of alphanumeric keys and identifiers
Situation
Problems
Timing
Searching
Performance Impacts

Column - Stretch Key Dimensions to See What Breaks (14 Mar 2009)

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 10:30:01 GMT

An application's design is outlined initially based on the specified business requirements, selected or existing technologies, performance envelope, expected data volumes and the financial resources available to build, deploy and operate it. Any redesign will be cheaper whilst the design is still virtual, technical choices are not locked-in and the business data has yet to be stored in the repositories.

Stretch key dimensions to see what breaks

Note 62 - Maintenance Lifecycle (09 March 2009)

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:00:01 GMT

Each product and service purchased by a customer will undergo a maintenance lifecycle during the lifetime of the biller / customer relationship.

Capturing customer details
Add / Install / Provision
Update / Change / Modify
Cancel / Terminate