Product Usage Management::Product Balance Management

Product Balance Management Aggregate Function is responsible for managing any type of balances:<br/>• supervised or not<br/>• for both real-time and batch processing modes of operation<br/>• of any type of unit.<br/>The Balance Management function includes:<br/>• Management of balance(s) related to any bundle: a bundle may have several associated balances, for example a balance representing units previously bought by the customer or granted by the Enterprise, (e.g. airtime bucket, complimentary messaging bucket and s.o.) and their validity periods.<br/>From the data of the product usage record, the function determines if this usage can be assigned to the bundle, if it has to be (for example the user can watch a VOD several times in 48 hours and it is only counted once) and how it has to be (which balance, which calculation rules, …)<br/>• Recharging events management: recurrent or one shot, for example with a voucher for Top Up.<br/>• Quota reservation (even in the case of simultaneous sessions management) and refunding in case of non-delivery of the service or partial usage.<br/>When an advice of charge (calculated by the Tariff Calculation and Rating function) is required, before sending the information to the customer, a volume pre-reservation can be performed to guarantee the price for the customer; <br/>• Transfer of Balance in case of contract migration<br/>Balance management may also have to trigger alarms on usage limits, i.e. when charged usages reach a threshold or an array of thresholds – it shall trigger predefined actions such as SMS, selective barring etc. via dedicated functions such as Interaction Management.<br/>Information handled in Balance Management has to be made available to consumption follow-up.<br/>