My colleague, Francisco, has written on this blog before about the benefits of prepaid services, but how can you implement this on your network? To be successful, a prepaid platform should offer three main features. First, it should have an easy-to-configure product catalogue. This allows you to add new products and services without contracting someone to write code every time. Modularity is essential when it comes to a product catalogue for existing services and potential future offerings.
Second, you need a rich northbound interface (NBI). Without this, integration with your billing and customer relationship management (CRM) systems becomes so complex or difficult that you’ll waste precious time finding a way for your organization to work with this new system. An open, standards-based interface will quickly set you on your way to independence.
Finally, a good user portal API is crucial. Let’s be honest, since prepaid is all about convenience for the end user, you must be able to build a properly branded portal or include access to these new offerings in your existing portal. Any solution must provide the proper framework API to integrate with your current apps in order to keep the user experience as clean and efficient as possible.
So there you have it. Prepaid services can be a quick way for you to attract new consumers and provide access to the nomadic user. When it becomes harder to grow your subscriber base, prepaid might just be solution for you.