Tango Business Support System

Tango is a service fulfilment and billing solution for telecommunications and IT service providers and the result of the continual development of Taifun. Tango is based on industry standards – the TM Forum's Information Framework (SID) and the Business Process Framework (eTOM) – and includes:

• a central product catalogue (Product Management)
• web-based order entry (Order Entry)
• overall customer and order management (Order Management)
• the entire billing process (Billing)
• electronic presentation and analysis of bills and cost management (Cost Manager)

From the outset, Tango was based around the key concept of 'Configuration not coding'. With the aim of bringing new products and services to market more quickly within the highly competitive telecommunications sector, Tango continually reuses standardised components that are put together by a highly automated process to suit the individual customer requirements in each case.

Product Management

• Central configuration: Every aspect of the commercial offer, order entry and technical implementation (production) is recorded in one place.
• Modular concept: Complex products and new offers are compiled using existing modules.
• Extension option: Components can be extended dynamically.
• Dissociation: Different aspects of a product are divided up at different configuration levels.

Order Entry

• Configurable processes: The product catalogue sets out the steps in the ordering process and the entry parameters for web-based order entry.
• Standardised user experience: Transposition to interactive online GUI elements is automatic.
• Mass customisation and self-care: The user chooses from customised market offers and configures their products and services.
• Data quality: Validation rules can be configured, ensuring that customer orders entered are high in quality.

Order Management

• Decomposition rules that automatically transform customer orders into service components (relevant to production).
• An orchestration model with a familiar workflow pattern to define the production plan for all service components.
• A factory model for linking OSS components and allocating service components to production units (factories).

Billing

• Billing for popular products (telephone, data services, TV, etc.) and services (rental, installation, etc.).
• Automatic billing for one-off and recurring fees, including the application of discounts and taxes.
• Clear and comprehensible outline of complex product structures.
• Inclusion of billing scenarios for B2C, B2B, wholesale, intercarriers and partner networks.

Cost Manager

• Option to view convergent billing online.
• In-depth real-time analysis.
• Hierarchical cost centres and cost management.