INDUSTRIAL SUMMER TRAINING

PROJECT REPORT
On

Importance of Backend Operations In telecom Industry

For

(Idea cellular Limited)

Towards partial fulfillment of

Bachelors In Business Administration (B.B.A)

(3 Years Under Graduation Programme)

Under the Guidance of Under

the Supervision
Mr. Sanjay Kaul (Idea cellular Limited)
Mrs. Ruchi Singh
Zonal Business Manager (zonal office)
Head Of Department

Submitted By
Ritu Singh
 Roll no.: 7481058
Academic Year 2010-2011

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Industrial Internship
Report entitled
Importance OF BACK OFFICE IN TELECOM INDUSTRY

Submitted by

(RITU SINGH)
Towards the partial fulfillment of
Bachelors In Business Administration (B.B.A)

In the Academic Year 2010-2011

is a record of the student’s own work

carried out at

{IDEA CELLUALR LTD}

SUBMITTED BY:
SUBMITTED TO:
(Ritu Singh)
(Mrs. Ruchi Singh)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have a considerable help and support in completion

of this Project. I would like to pay my regards to my

Course Coordinator Mrs. Ruchi Singh of B.B.A

programme for her guidance through the course of

my summer training and project development, which

provided me the guidance in finding company of

International Repute and a dynamic guide as well.

I owe a tremendous gratitude to MR SANJAY KAUL,

Zonal Business Manager of Idea Cellular Limited. He was my

guide, who provided me with ample opportunity in getting

exposure to the field BACK OFFICE SUPPORT SYSTEM in Idea

Cellular Ltd.

I owe a deep debt of Intellectual gratitude to

Mr.Ratnesh Tiwari, Mr. K.K. Pal & Ms. Poornima

Bannerjee, for providing relevant information about the

ongoing process of Backend operation system.

My Special thanks are always to my Parents,

family members and friends, who supported and

blessed me at every Endeavor.

- RITU
SINGH
 PREFACE

B.B.A. is a three year full time programme. It is being

carried out successfully by National P.G. College,

LUCKNOW. In the fifth semester it has a provision for

summer training of six weeks by the students from any

recognized organization.

Summer project is the first step into the industry and this

of vital importance because provides first hand practical

knowledge of business environment the project helps us to

get acquainted with the horizon of the corporate activities like

how the company is organized, What it produces, How the

products are manufactured, How the products are marketed,

What is the distribution channel, How the department of

marketing is organized and managed.

I got the opportunity to do the Summer Training Project in

“IDEA CELLULAR LTD” in the field of BACKEND OPERATION.

 The, back office of Idea cellular help the front office in

carrying out their day to day task and provide them with

adequate data to make their work easy.

Contents

 Company Profile
 Introduction to Back Office
 Objectives of the study
 Overview of the work carried in the back office
 Back office Background & Analysis
 Recommendations
 Conclusion
 Bibliography
COMPANY PROFILE

Inception and growth

In 2000, Tata Cellular was a company providing mobile

services in AP. When Birla-AT&T brought Maharashtra and
Gujarat to the table, the merger of these two entities was a
reality. Thus Birla-Tata-AT&T, popularly known as Batata, was
born and was later branded as !dea.

Then Idea set sights on RPG’s operations in Madhya Pradesh

which was successfully acquired, helping Batata have a
million subscribers, and the license to be the fourth operator
in Delhi was clinched.

In 2004, Idea (the company had by then been rechristened)

bought over the Escorts group’s Escotel gaining Haryana,
Uttar Pradesh (West) and Kerala — and licenses for three
more — UP (East), Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. By the
end of that year, four million Indians were on the company’s
network. In 2005, AT&T sold its investment in Idea, and the
year after Tata’s also bid good bye to pursue an independent
telecom business. And Idea was left only with one promoter,
the AV Birla group. When the company’s stock listed on the
bourses in March 2007, its subscriber base was 13 million with
presence in 11 circles. In less than three years, the subscriber
numbers have more than quadrupled. The public issue was
oversubscribed 50 times and raised Rs 2,450 crore. In June
2008, Idea Cellular bought out BK Modi’s stake in Spice
Communications for Rs 2,700 crore adding Punjab and
Karnataka circles. Modi’s joint venture partner, Telekom
Malaysia, invested Rs 7,000 crore for a 14.99% stake in Idea.
Just around then, Idea’s subsidiary, Aditya Birla Telecom sold
a 20% stake to US-based Providence Equity Partners for over
Rs 2,000 crore.

Customer service

The company has its retail outlets under the "My Idea"
banner. The company has also been the first to offer flexible
tariff plans for prepaid customers. It also offers GPRS services
in urban areas.

Idea Cellular won the GSM Association Award for "Best Billing
and Customer Care Solution" for 2 consecutive years.

IDEA Cellular has been recognized as the 'Most Customer

Responsive Company' in the Telecom sector, at the
prestigious Avaya Global Connect Customer Responsiveness
Awards 2010

Holding

Initially the Birla’s, the Tata’s and AT&T Wireless each held
one-third equity in the company. But following AT&T Wireless'
merger with Cingular Wireless in 2004, Cingular decided to
sell its 32.9% stake in Idea. This stake was bought by both the
Tata’s and Birla’s at 16.45% each.

Tata's foray into the cellular market with its own subsidiary,
Tata Indicom, a CDMA-based mobile provider, cropped
differences between the Tata’s and the Birla’s. This dual
holding by the Tata’s also became a major reason for the
delay in Idea being granted a license to operate in Mumbai.
This was because as per Department of Telecommunications
(DOT) license norms, one promoter could not have more than
10% stake in two companies operating in the same circle and
Tata Indicom was already operating in Mumbai when Idea filed
for its license.

The Birla’s thus approached the DOT and sought its

intervention and the Tata’s replied by saying that they would
exit Idea but only for a good price. On 10 April 2006, the
Aditya Birla Group announced its acquisition of the 48.18%
stake held by the Tata’s at Rs. 40.51 a share amounting to Rs.
44.06 billion. While 15% of the 48.14% stake was acquired by
Aditya Birla Nuvo, a company in-charge of the Birla’s' new
business initiatives, the remaining stake was acquired by Birla
TMT holdings Private Ltd., an AV Birla family-owned company.
Currently, Aditya Birla Group holds 49.1% of the total shares
of the company. Malaysia based Axiata controls a 14.99%
stake in the company.
INTRODUTION TO BACK OFFICE

A back office is a part of most corporations where tasks

dedicated to running the company itself take place. The term
comes from the building layout of early companies where the
front office would contain the sales and other customer-facing
staff and the back office would be those manufacturing or
developing the products or involved in administration but
without being seen by customers. Although the operations of
a back office are usually not given a lot of consideration, they
are a major contributor to a business.

Examples of back-office tasks include IT departments that

keep the phones and computers running (operations
architecture), accounting, and human resources. These tasks
are often supported by back-office systems: secure e-
commerce software that processes company information (e.g.
a database). A back-office system will keep a record of the
company’s sales and purchase transactions, and update the
inventory as needed. Invoices, receipts, and reports can also
be produced by the back-office system.

In banking, the back office includes a heavyweight IT

processing system that handles position keeping, clearance,
and settlement. In investment firms, the back office includes
the administrative functions that support the trading of
securities, including record keeping, trade confirmation, trade
settlement, and regulatory compliance. If used in sales, the
back office would include functions that fulfill customers’
orders and would usually include the duties involved in
customer-support call centers.
Back offices may be somewhere other than the headquarters
of a company. Much of the time they are in areas and
countries with cheaper rent and lower labor costs. Back office
functions can be outsourced to consultants and contractors in
any country.

What is a back office?

A back office is generally regarded as the technology, services

and human resources required to manage a company itself.
The back office is supported by back office system (back
office software). Back office system is a part of the
corporate system that manages and controls the company
and its workflows, such as order processing, task
management, action planning and cost management. Back
office software supports the company's back office through
providing back office tools for collecting and distributing
information obtained from the front office. Enterprise back
office software gathers the inputs from office users and
processes them further.

How back office software helps in company

management

The purpose of back office application is to support operations

of the front office through providing developing,
manufacturing and supporting products and rendering
services, but without being seen by customers. Back office
management software allows to keep the tasks related to
the company's sales and purchasing transactions, and to
update vital information in real time. Invoices, receipts, and
reports can be managed and referred by back office program.
The company can reduce costs and improve operational
efficiency by using back office application. The following
advantages can be obtained if using back office program:

• Timekeeping. Back office management software

brings time management and timekeeping solutions. It
provides interactive data entry that can be localized or
distributed to the company's employees over local
network or Internet. Back office system keeps records on
all tasks and related information in a single database. An
office manager can track changes in the office workflow
and schedule assignments of back office employees.
• Managing tasks. Back office management software is
perfect collaborative task management system that
provides solutions for administering and tracking tasks
and charting costs per task per employee. For example,
accounts department can use back office tool to manage
complex billing procedures and the task-based billing
workflow as well as billing document flow.

• Centralized database. Back office application allows

creating a database which is accessed by all employees
of the company. The database contains all corporate
information. It's protected by password and personal log-
in name. Back office software lets store the database
on a dedicated server machine.
• Reports management. Back office program has report
management system that allows the office manager to
create and modify task reports. The program includes
custom field functionality and report builder that in
 aggregate provides productivity and management reports
in text, HTML, Excel and graph formats.

OBJECTIVE OF STUDY
The Main objective of study is to gain better insight of about the
working of back office in a company. This topic provides the in depth
knowledge about the whole billing and clearinghouse in backend
operation along with database management and providing support to
the front office in day to day working by keeping all the day to day
transaction record of the company.

The Objective of choosing Idea cellular Ltd.:

I wanted to view the working in back office operation as it is mainly a

support system to the front office of the company from setting target
to helping in the target completion in marketing department.

All this process has its major significance in carrying out day to day
working in a company. Below are the basic functions of the back office:

• Billing and clear housing.

• Back office system keeps records on all tasks and related

information in a single database. An office manager can track
changes in the office workflow and schedule assignments of back
office employees.
• Creating centralized database so that anyone from any
department can access the data for their requirement.

• Managing tasks: Back office also performs collaborative task

management that includes administering and tracking tasks and
charting costs per task per employee. For example, accounts
department can use back office database to manage complex
billing procedures and the task-based billing workflow as well as
billing document flow.
• Back office also has report management system that allows the
office manager to create and modify task reports. The program
includes custom field functionality and report builder that in
aggregate provides productivity and management reports in text,
HTML, Excel and graph formats
OVERVIEW OF THE WORK CARRIED OUT IN BACK
OFFICE
1.Cycle Billing
The back end of the billing system uses data from the updated
bill pool and adds non-call related billing charges and financial
adjustments. The billing system then adds fixed recurring
charges (such as monthly service fees and taxes), applies
payments that have been received, produces invoices, and
maintains a history database for legal purposes (government
regulations) and customer care systems.
Figure 1 shows the basic call-rating process. This diagram
shows that a call detail record evolves as it passes through
the rating process. In the first step, a rate band is determined.
Then, the identification information on the CDR is used to
identify a specific customer’s account (guide the record). The
customer’s rate plan is discovered and the unit (usage) and
fixed (per event) charging rates are gathered and calculated.
The new information (rate band, call charge amount) is added
to the call detail record and it is moved to the bill pool, as it is
ready to be billed.
Figure 1: Back End: Cycle Billing.
Source: The Billing College

2.Clearinghouse
A clearinghouse is a company or association that transfers
billing records and/or performs financial clearing functions
between carriers that allow their customers to use each
other’s networks. The clearinghouse receives, validates and
accounts for telephone bills for several telephones service
providers. Clearinghouses are particularly important for
international billing because they convert different data
record formats that may be used by some service providers
and convert for the currency exchange rate.
Clearinghouses provide a variety of services including
processing proprietary records (e.g. switch records) into
formats understandable by the member carriers’ billing
systems, validate charges from carriers with intersystem
agreements, and extract unauthorized or un-billable billing
records. Clearinghouses transfer messages in a standard
format such as exchange message record (EMR), cellular
inter-carrier billing exchange roamer (CIBER), or transferred
account process (TAP) format. The EMR format is often used
for billing records in traditional wired telecom networks and
the CIBER and TAP formats are used for wireless networks.
The records may be exchanged by magnetic tape or by other
medium such as electronic transfer or CD ROM.
Clearinghouses receive billing records from companies (out
collects - sometimes called in-roamers) and submit billing
records to companies (in collects - sometimes called out-
roamers). Outcollects are billing records that are sent to other
systems to collect for services provided to visiting customers.
Incollects are billing records that are received from other
systems for services provided to their customers that have
used the services of other networks.
Inter-carrier billing systems must be capable of handling
billing system errors. There are many events per call and the
possibility exists for duplicate records or missing details in the
billing records. Charges or records may be received for
customers that do not exist in the local system or the inter-
services (or roaming) agreement between companies may not
be valid. Charges or records may be received from other
companies (in collects) that have crammed or slammed bills.
Cramming is the erroneous or fraudulent addition of charges
for services that were not agreed to by the end customer.
Slamming is the unauthorized transfer of customer’s preferred
service provider to a different service provider. When errors or
omissions are detected, individual CDRs or entire batches of
billing records may be flagged for return to the sender and
they may be tagged for further investigation.
3. Verification of data provided by the customer:
During the purchase of new connections customers have
to fill company forms with identity proofs. This
information is later sent for verification of the reliability of
the information provided by the customer for further
activation and billing process.
4. Activation of new connections: After verification of
the information provided by the customer the whole
information is then feeded in the company database
system and billing software of the company. This all
information can be checked on the special software
designed for company usage i.e.; THE NUMBER
WORLD, where the numbers available can be checked
for selling. For activation of the new connection, special
software SMART ACT is used.
Working of a sale coordinator: As I was viewing Ratnesh
sir as a sale coordinator I got to understand that a Sales
Coordinator’s role in a company entails supporting the sales
team in attaining the monthly as well as annual targets and
operates with management and clients to determine business
requirements. A Sales Coordinator is instrumental in assuring
focused and productive communication with the new and
existing clients, external distributors, representatives and
agents. A Sales Coordinator resolves all complex inquires from
the clients and ensures customer satisfaction. A Sales
Coordinator is responsible for different kinds of administrative
functions essential for everyday operation of the system and
fulfillment of the company offers.
Duties and Responsibilities
• Maintaining a healthy relationship with existing
customers while opening up fresh customers.
• Providing sales and administrative support involving
efficient handling of top and confidential agreements.
• Supporting the sales team in attaining sales targets.
• Communicating with regional sales team for status of
order and position of sales.
• Providing inputs and ideas into marketing enterprises and
subsequently promote them and monitor responses.
• Preparing monthly, weekly or daily sales analysis.
• Preparing proposals, agreements, sales reports, and
presentations.
• Updating the status of sales order in the database or
computer.
• Collecting, analyzing, evaluating and accounting the
information in order to increase productivity of sales.
• Monitoring the trends and evaluating the performance
assessed against monthly sales goals.
• Maintaining an efficient work environment.
• Promoting the facilities of the organization to fresh and
existing customers through a proactive approach.
• Coordinating and responding to all requests of internal
meetings.
• Assisting in the implementation of sales strategy as
prepared by the Sales event manager.
• Attending network and promotional events to develop
and maintain contact with potential clients and professional
bodies.

Skills and Specifications

• Excellent polite and persuasive communication skills.
• Passionate, hard worker and well organized professional
with power to prioritize and multitask.
• Should exert sound judgment, discretion and preserve
confidentiality.
• Ability to meet deadlines.
• Good liaison with all other department members.
• Able to work in team and willing to put up to team.
• Pays attention to detail.
• Flexible to work in non business hours.
• Able to operate in different work conditions such as on-
site, off site.
• Able to work alone.

BACKGROUND
Billing may not be as flashy a business function as CRM or
Sales, but it is almost unquestioned as a key strategic driver
for communications companies in search of high performance.
A typical telecommunications company allots a great deal of
its capital and operating expenditures to the billing function.
Yet, like all functions today, billing is under financial pressure.
Accordingly, many executives are asking themselves how
they can leverage both current and future investments to
provide more powerful billing capabilities, coupled with
competitive pricing.
A number of companies are pursuing high performance by
building on several important trends in the billing space:
better integration of billing with other critical functionalities,
and the more effective use of customer insight and business
intelligence to improve customer retention and reduce churn.

ANALYSIS
Billing operates at the hub of how telecommunications
providers structure and execute both the front and back
office. Order management now needs to plug directly into
billing, as does supply chain management, product
development and all the financial functions.
Most functions, in other words, either come into or extend out
from the billing function. Thus, if communications companies
are to develop and roll out new services, and then profit from
them, they must design and deliver an integrated suite of
functions that adequately connect with billing.
Integration becomes even more complicated because telecom
companies must make sure that the advantages of best-of-
breed; off-the-shelf billing packages are not undermined by a
failure to integrate them properly. On the one hand, off-the-
shelf solutions are good for a company's bottom line; service
providers that required custom billing functionalities before
now have much greater flexibility in what they can choose to
lower their total cost of ownership for billing systems.
Companies can get a new solution with enhanced functionality
out the door quickly, and also take care of a large part of the
maintenance headaches.
On the other hand, because billing is so central to the overall
functionality of a company, if these best-of-breed packages
cannot be adequately integrated to meet vital business needs,
costs saved in one area will simply be paid back in another. So
companies need to make sure that they can rapidly develop
not only today's functionality, but also future, next-generation
services.
RECOMMENDATIONS
By working within a common integration framework,
companies can minimize all of these challenges while also
addressing another critical strategic question. Even if you are
poised to take advantage of new billing functionality
(functionality that provides for more competitive pricing,
product bundling, and customer-specific pricing), how quickly
can you change the rest of your business to accommodate
those strategies? How quickly can customer service, the sales
force, and the business processes that wrap around those
functions be adapted to fit the new billing function? What
about the organizational design, process design, and policies
and procedures necessary to support the strategy?
From a systems perspective, a new billing system can be
installed, but getting significant business performance
improvements from it quickly depends on having the
appropriate organizational structures and governance models,
as well as new ordering and customer insight platforms, and
data warehousing strategies.
For example, the first release of a new comprehensive billing
system for Slovak Telecom, based on Accenture
Communications Solutions, was delivered in only four months.
Already, the company is realizing impressive high-
performance results. From a time to market of four to six
months prior to the new system, Slovak Telecom can now
deliver three to four new services or campaigns each month.
A second important trend in the billing space is the
recognition of the importance of customer insight. Although
customer insight and segmentation are on the minds of every
communications executive today, those topics are discussed
primarily in the context of sales and service. However,
business intelligence and the customer insight it provides are
also a critical part of the billing function. Companies are
seeing increasing demand for the capability to produce
discounts, pricing algorithms and invoices that take into
consideration a broad view of customers based on historical
data. To remain competitive, carriers must be able to link
multiple bills or billing accounts together into a single
customer view, so they can begin to fully understand their
customers.
Customer insight takes us back, for a moment, to the
integration issue. Integration of billing with data warehousing
is essential to developing customer insight. Most
organizations still lack an integrated view of the customer;
only a few are able to predict future behavior accurately.
Customer data is the fuel that powers the CRM and billing
engines and business intelligence is the catalyst that converts
information into insight. Which products and services are
being used most by which customers? How profitable are
particular services and product bundles? Companies need to
be able to effectively harvest that information from billing
systems, or have their billing function "talk" directly to data
warehousing systems, financial reporting systems and
physical inventory systems.
A single or integrated view is good for customers: they can
consolidate and roll-up invoices, and negotiate prices and
discounts based on that consolidated view. It's also good for
the companies themselves. It allows for product bundling,
solution selling and targeted offers and discounts that provide
the "stickiness" necessary to maintain customer loyalty. A
single view also helps in setting the right credit limit for each
customer, and in dealing with collections and dunning.
Certainly there are aspects of billing—such as providing billing
for standard dial tone service—that have become
commoditized. For these, companies need to find the best
price, the lowest operating expenditures and least amount of
capital expenditures. But as we move into the newer
technologies and capabilities, such as developing customer
insight to help create tailored products and bundles, billing is
hardly a commoditized function.
The ongoing challenge for executives will be how best to
leverage billing as a strategic investment to optimize capital
and operating expenditures, and then how to deal with the
changes in technology and in customer buyer values, and to
look to the more value-added types of features. Billing
continues to be a vital part of a telecommunications growth
strategy. In a future issue of Accenture Access I'll talk about
the how operators and solutions providers can be successful
in what we call the "Next-Generation Billing" marketplace.

CONCLUSION
As a viewer of the whole working process I can conclude that
a back office is very important part of a company and it
undergoes several complex and essential task. I was
completely new to such working environment and I got to see
the following task:

• Database management within the company which was

managed by the back office for the use of all other
department. Anyone can access these data for their
requirement.

• Daily, monthly and yearly reports are generated for the

target planning and track records of the achievement of
the target are also generated in back office.

• Reports are also generated to provide information of the

work progress to the ASM and ZBM along with other
higher officials of the company.

• Task allotment is also done here.

• Billing and customer relation are managed here.

• Vendor & distributor selection according to the areas are

appointed to carry out the business.

• Monthly promoter Claims, invoices etc are handled here.

All these work are mainly performed over excel sheets and MS
access.
The work of a sales coordinator was a major task from billing
to handling customers and providing support to the sales
team to the completion of target to be achieved.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
• www.wikipedia.com

• Mr. Ratnesh Tiwari (sales coordinator, prepaid)

Idea zonal office, Lucknow

• Ms. Poornima Bannerjee (postpaid)

Idea zonal office, Lucknow
• www.accenture.com
• www.linkwithin.com