Clarify the purpose of the roaming workflow
Customer care, retail usage visibility and wholesale partner processes ask different questions of roaming data. One may need to explain a subscriber's recent activity; another may need to reconcile information exchanged between organizations.
Define the decision the software must support before selecting the record format or update frequency. This keeps a customer-facing view from being presented as a settlement record, or a delayed batch from being mistaken for a live limit.
Preserve the context around each event
Useful roaming information needs more than a numeric usage value. The integration must associate the record with the correct subscriber, account, partner context and event time. Processing time and event time may differ.
The software should also explain how corrections are represented. Replacing a prior value without a trace can make it difficult to understand why two applications disagree about the same period.
Make partner boundaries explicit
A roaming workflow crosses organizational as well as technical boundaries. Agree the responsibilities for rejected records, incomplete information and reconciliation. The format supported by one partner should not be assumed to be the contract for every relationship.
Customer and commercial context can then be connected to the workflow through the CRM and shared repository. Access rules should reflect the purpose of the view and the sensitivity of the information it contains.
- Separate retail information from wholesale reconciliation.
- Track event time, processing time and corrections.
- Define record ownership at each partner boundary.
- Make missing or delayed data visible to consuming applications.
Technical references
Primary references for the concepts discussed here.