Telecom profitability management

• US 9,785,982 B2
• Filed: 09/12/2011
• Issued: 10/10/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 09/12/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Docolabs LLC
• Original Assignee: DOCO Labs LLC
• Inventors: Saito, Ghen
• Primary Examiner(s): HATCHER, DEIRDRE D
• Application Number:
  US13/230,688
• Publication Number:
  US 20130066663A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,220 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0247 Calculate past, present or future revenues
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/02 Banking, e.g. interest calculation or account maintenance credit or loans G06Q40/03

Abstract

Billing data associated with telecom products provided by a variety of vendors is captured, normalized, and processed to calculate true profit margins by invoice, by vendor, by geographic location, by end-customer, by circuit, or combinations of these. A bill may be received from the vendor, and associated with a specific vendor profile. The vendor profile may include a validation routine specific to the vendor. A plurality of telephone numbers associated with an end-customer may be extracted from the bill based on the vendor profile and stored on a storage device. A previous bill from the vendor may be accessed in response to receiving the bill from the vendor. End-customer profitability may be determined for a first time period based on data extracted from the received bill and displayed.

Claims

1. A method for using a computer to reconcile telecommunication company'"'"'s costs with telecommunication company'"'"'s revenue attributable to telecommunication products provided to end-customers based on a contract between a vendor of the telecommunication products and a telecommunications company, the method comprising, at the telecommunications company'"'"'s computer:

receiving, by the computer, a bill from the vendor having an electronic format, the bill including charges billed to the telecommunications company for usage by the end-customers, who purchase the telecommunications products from the telecommunications company, wherein the bill includes a plurality of telephone numbers, each telephone number being associated with one of the end-customers, wherein the received bill spans two or more files;

identifying, by the computer, the vendor by reading information identifying the vendor within the received bill;

identifying the electronic format of each of the two or more files, the electronic formats including structured data which may be read directly by the computer, the electronic formats being selected from a group of electronic formats that includes unscanned Portable Document Format (PDF) files, wherein at least one of the two or more files is an unscanned PDF file;

associating, by the computer, each of the two or more files with a specific vendor profile selected from a plurality of vendor profiles, each of the plurality of vendor profiles including a different validation routine, the specific vendor profile including a vendor-specific validation routine that includes a plurality of rules, the plurality of rules including at least determining if a sum of entries in any of an adjustments field, a payments field, a MRC field, an OCC field, a usage field, a tax field, and a surcharge field equals a corresponding total value located in one of a header or a summary section of one of the two or more files, each field having a corresponding computer-readable value within the two or more files, the selected specific vendor profile for each of the two or more files corresponding to both the identified vendor and the identified electronic formats of the two or more files, the computer-readable values having PDF tags in the unscanned PDF file;

based on the specific vendor profile, extracting data from the unscanned PDF file by the computer, the extracted data including the plurality of telephone numbers, the extracting being performed by reading the PDF tags of the unscanned PDF file and transferring data from the PDF tags to a temporary data structure by using a mapping within the specific vendor profile, the mapping being based on an x,y location of the fields and a length of the fields within the two or more files;

validating, by the computer, the received bill by applying the plurality of rules of the validation routine to the temporary data structure, and comparing the extracted bill data and information in the contract;

storing, by the computer, the extracted plurality of telephone numbers in a database implemented on a storage device;

in response to receiving the bill from the vendor by the server, accessing a previous bill received from the vendor by the computer;

determining, by the computer, that a first subset of the plurality of telephone numbers found in the bill were not in the previous bill;

determining, by the computer, that a second subset of the plurality of telephone numbers found in the bill were in the previous bill;

tagging, by the computer, in the database each telephone number of the second subset with a tag indicating that the telephone number was found in the bill and the previous bill;

using the extracted data, calculating, after the validating the received bill, a profitability by the computer for a first time period of the end-customer identified in the extracted bill data, the profitability being based on revenue collected from the end-customer by the telecommunications company that has been separately billed to the end-customer by the telecommunications company and vendor product charges identified in the extracted bill data, wherein the vendor product charges are associated with the telecommunication products sold to the end-customer by the telecommunications company, and the calculating the profitability comprises;

accessing the revenue and product charges associated with the tagged telephone numbers in the database by the computer to include in the profitability calculation, thereby omitting from the profitability calculation for the first time period any telephone number that was active during the first time period and not active during a second time period before the first time period; and

displaying the end-customer profitability by the computer.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of rules includes:

summing values from the extracted bill data;

comparing the summation with a total from the extracted bill data; and

if there is a discrepancy between the summation and the total, providing an indication of the discrepancy.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of comparing the extracted bill data and information in the contract includes:

comparing products identified in the extracted bill data with contracted products identified in the contract; and

if there is a discrepancy between the products and the contracted products, providing an indication of the discrepancy.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of comparing the extracted bill data and information in the contract includes:

comparing product charges identified in the extracted bill data with contracted product charges identified in the contract; and

if there is a discrepancy between the product charges and the contracted product charges, providing an indication of the discrepancy.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the specific vendor profile includes a parsing routine that is specific to the vendor.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the based on the specific vendor profile, extracting data from the bill comprises identifying a circuit included in the bill.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the identifying a circuit comprises determining that a line in the bill includes at most 10 digits.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the based on the specific vendor profile, extracting data from the bill comprises identifying one or more Universal Service Order Codes (USOC) included in the bill.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the end-customer profitability is expressed as a percentage.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the second time period is immediately before the first time period.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the profitability calculation for the first time period is based on a telephone number that was active during both the first time period and the second time period.

12. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving, by a server, a bill for a billing period from a vendor, the bill including a first telephone number, a second telephone number, and charges for one or more telecommunication products provided at the first and second telephone numbers, the bill including charges billed to a telecommunications company for usage by end-customers associated with each of the first telephone number and the second telephone number, wherein the bill spans two or more files;

identifying, by the computer, the vendor by reading information identifying the vendor within the received bill;

identifying the electronic format of each of the two or more files, the electronic formats including structured data which may be read directly by the computer, the electronic formats being selected from a group of electronic formats that includes unscanned Portable Document Format (PDF) files, wherein at least one of the two or more files is an unscanned PDF file;

associating, by the server, each of the two or more files with a specific vendor profile selected from a plurality of vendor profiles, each of the plurality of vendor profiles including a different validation routine, the specific vendor profile including a vendor-specific validation routine that includes a plurality of rules, the plurality of rules including at least determining if a sum of entries in any of an adjustments field, a payments field, a MRC field, an OCC field, a usage field, a tax field, and a surcharge field equals a corresponding total value located in one of a header or a summary section of one of the two or more files, each field having a corresponding computer-readable value within the two or more files, the selected specific vendor profile for each of the two or more files corresponding to both the identified vendor and the identified electronic formats of the two or more files, the computer-readable values having PDF tags in the unscanned PDF file; and

calculating, by the server, a profitability for the billing period, wherein the calculating comprises;

in response to receiving the bill from the vendor, accessing a previous bill received from the vendor;

based on the specific vendor profile, extracting the first telephone number and the second telephone number from the unscanned PDF file, the extracting being performed by reading the PDF tags of the unscanned PDF file and transferring data from the PDF tags to a temporary data structure by using a mapping within the specific vendor profile, the mapping being based on an x,y location of the fields and a length of the fields within the two or more files;

determining, by the server, that the first telephone number was included in the previous bill from the vendor and that the second telephone number was not included in the previous bill;

tagging the first telephone number with a tag indicating that the first telephone number is in the bill and the previous bill;

validating, by the server, the received bill by applying the plurality of rules of the validation routine to the temporary data structure, and comparing the extracted bill data and information in a contract between the vendor of the telecommunication products and the telecommunications company;

after the validating the received bill, performing, by the server, a computation involving a summation of the charges for the one or more telecommunication products provided at the first telephone number, and a revenue amount collected from an end-customer of the first telephone number for the one or more telecommunication products provided at the first telephone number, the revenue amount having been separately billed to the end-customer of the first telephone number by the telecommunications company; and

displaying, on an electronic screen of a client coupled to the server, a result of the computation, the result being the profitability for the billing period, wherein the charges for the one or more telecommunication products provided at the second telephone number included in the bill for the billing period, and a revenue amount collected from an end-customer of the second telephone number are omitted from the profitability computation of the billing period.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the previous bill is immediately before the bill.