Overview
Within Emersion's platform, there are many scenarios where billing objects are linked to each other. For example:
- package plans must be linked to service plans
- bolt-ons are linked to service plans
- rate cards and product rate cards are linked to service plans
- bolt-on add-ons are linked to bolt-ons
- contracts are linked to package plans.
- a wholesaler's sell plans are linked to a downstream retail provider via the Package Catalogue to become the retail provider's buy plans.
This article explains the fundamental concepts and things you need to know about linking plans and other objects together when building plans in Emersion.
Multi-Tier Buy and Sell
Cumulus was built to support the multi-tiered business-to-business and business-to-consumer relationship between buyers and sellers of services.
For example, a Wholesale Service Provider, A Retail Service Provider and an End User (customer) can all exist inside Cumulus for the purposes of billing and provisioning. It is assumed that what a Wholesaler sells to a retail service provider is not sold to the End Users at the same rate. Services are purchased from the upstream provider, and sold downstream.
As part of representing this relationship, Cumulus has the concept of Buy and Sell plans. This enables Emersion's platform to provide the capacity to perform auditing of your carrier/service supplier's invoice to you and margin reporting to identify where you are making the most in profit, not making a profit at all, or breaking even.
- A Buy Plan represents the service being sold to the purchasing provider. Pricing contained within buy objects contain what the provider purchases the services for.
- A Sell Plan represents the service being sold to the downstream customer. A Wholesaler will sell services to Retail Service Providers, who then re-packages the services and sells them to End User customers. At each tier, the pricing will change, even if the services do not.
When services are sold (via a package plan) to an End User, the system will create the following package and service subscriptions (plus service feature, bolt-ons, bolt-on add-ons, etc as per the plan's configuration):
- Wholesale BUY subscriptions
- Wholesale SELL subscriptions
- Retail Service Provider BUY subscriptions
- Retail Service Provider SELL subscriptions
Due to this requires that buy package plans be linked with buy service plans, but also that downstream sell package plans (linked with sell service plans) are linked with respective buy plans.
Check out the BUY and SELL Fundamentals article to understand these concepts in more detail.
When a wholesaler is involved, they will create the buy plan and sell plans. The downstream retail service provider must then create their own sell plans.
These lower tier sell plans will be linked with the sell plans of the tier above.
If no wholesaler is involved, or if your wholesale service provider does not use Emersion, the service provider themselves will create both the buy and sell plans and then link them together.
The diagram on the right pictorially shows the buy and sell plan relationships in both scenarios
Configuration when Linking
This section explains the Emersion-specific concepts users need to understand when linking plan billing objects.
When linking a plan object, whether it be a product rate card to a service plan, or a service plan to a package plan, or a set of buy plans to a set of sell plans, specific configuration related to the linkage will apply.
Linking Package Plans and Service Plans
Prior to linking together package plans and service plans, users will need to know for each package plan:
- how many services can be ordered as part of the package? This is called the service allowance. Put another way, is the maximum number of service subscriptions that can be created for that service plan.
- if the service a mandatory or optional component of the package.
Cumulus will ask the user to set the allowance and define the service as mandatory or optional.
Service Quantity
In this example, a buy service plan is about to be linked into the buy package where it will allow a user to order up to 3 email domain services. As the email domain services are optional, the package can be ordered with or without the email domains.
In Cumulus, users are not required to link the Domain service plan 3 times. Rather, users link the service plan only once and specify that there are 3 services.
Mandatory and Optional Services
A mandatory service is one that is required to be qualified by the Service Qualification ('SQ') process explicitly and configured before the package subscription will be activated.
An optional service can be qualified and configured after the order has been submitted and the subscriptions have already been activated. When a package subscription is created that has non-mandatory services, the system will create a service subscription for the optional services in the status of Initialised. These subscriptions can then be configured and activated and configured at a later date.
There must be at least one mandatory service plan defined in a package plan.
After saving, the package plan has the following service plan allowances. The available quantity and mandatory/optional settings are seen on the right.
Users can only set these variables when creating the buy package.
When sell package and service plans, then link these together, the system will inherit the allowance from the buy package plan you are linking to.
Linking Service Plans and Rate Cards or Product Rate Cards
Prior to linking together a rate card or a product rate card to service plans, users will need to know the Effective From date.
This is the date from which the new rates come into effect. Multiple rate cards and product rate cards can be linked to a service plan, but only one set of rates can be used to rate usage at any one time.
Linking Service Plans and Bolt-Ons
While data bolt-ons do exist as billing objects in the Emersion platform, they are presently restricted and unavailable to use via Cumulus.
The bolt-ons mentioned here are for telephony services only.
Prior to linking together a bolt-on to service plans, users will need to know:
- the Bolt-on availability behaviour settings
- any exclusivity rules that will apply to the bolt-on. If so, how many bolt-on groups are to be created?
- will a bolt-on add-on subscription be automatically created and activated for the end user when the bolt-on allowance has been exhausted? This requires bolt-on add-ons to be used.
Click here to learn more about these settings...
Linking Bolt-on Add-ons to Bolt-ons
The bolt-on add-ons mentioned here are for telephony services only.
Prior to linking together a bolt-on add-on to a bolt-on, users will need to know:
- if the add-on is a one-time or recurring add-on.
- many of the add-ons can be purchased within a single billing period
