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Hydra 4.1 released today

Dmitry Koplovich, 24 October 2016

The new version of Hydra Billing traditionally comes with further marketing features. Meet our new contract price plans!

Other minor improvements simplify the integration of Hydra with external systems.

Contract price plans

Providing certain services requires additional customer premises equipment (CPE). For example, a customer using Digital TV services may need an STB with a smart card or a CAM module, just like a special modem is required for LTE and WiMAX networks.

A high initial investment may seem to be a deterrent to a potential customer, so the service providers usually offer an opportunity of installments. Subsidized CPE is included in the subscription fee so that a customer is obliged to pay it off in the course of a certain period. The aim of the billing system is to track each customer to ensure fulfillment of their contract commitments.

Starting from the version 4.1, Hydra offers you an opportunity of contract price plans.

How Hydra Manages Contracts

In contract settings, you enter the price of the subsidized equipment.

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Hydra automatically calculates the unpaid remainder over the course of the customer’s payments for services. The payment schedule is updated in case of late payment or temporary suspension while customer is away.

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Having the cost of the equipment included in the monthly fee makes it impossible for customers to change the price plan. Hydra allows changing the price plan (for prepaid ones as well) only after the contract has expired.

Remedies for Breach of Contract

To secure the provisions of the contract, Hydra automatically charges late payment fees in case of an overdue debt. A fee consists of two parts—fixed and percentage.

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A customer is charged the one-off fixed part of the fee as soon as the overdue debt occurs. The percentage part of the fee is charged periodically as a certain interest on the contract with overdue debt.

If an overdue debt remains unpaid for a long period, the contract is automatically terminated. In this case, Hydra charges an early termination fee to a customer.

A contract can also be terminated by the service provider at any time. In such cases, Hydra charges an early termination fee too.

Assigning permissions with tags

New Hydra allows restricting customer categories available to your staff, with more precision. From now on, permissions to access customers can be given not only according to the subsidiary affiliation, but also to the customers’ tags.

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If every employee requires permissions to multiple customer categories, you can create separate roles for them. To simplify the management of permissions, we created an opportunity to bind them to certain roles. Provide your staff with access to individuals only, work with dealers, assign personal customer managers; all tasks are now easy and doable with Hydra.

Once your administrator specifies the list of tags for a certain role, you can assign the prepared role to users.

REST API

Nowadays, the billing system is supposed be easy to build into a provider’s infrastructure. Customer Self-Care Portal, which comes together with Hydra, has already had its own REST API for a long time, and now version 4.1 has the REST API for the billing core also.

From now on you need not worry about access to the low level API. All means needed for the interactions via HTTP are included into the standard library of most programming languages. Detailed documentation allows solving providers’ everyday tasks with the help of Hydra and a couple lines of code. The latest version of documentation is available with the installation of Service Provider Console at URL /rest/v1/docs. In more complex cases our technical support is always at your disposal.

With the new API, external systems can easily obtain any billing data on customers, equipment, and sessions. The new API contains all main procedures for working with customers, their contracts, accounts and equipment. It also allows switching on/off services and price plan options, managing provider’s equipment and working with addresses.

As we strive to develop REST API, we recommend it for use wherever possible. In the future it will replace the current low level API of the core.

Integration with Hydra OMS

Hydra means more than billing. A few months ago we announced Hydra OMS, a system for managing orders, and told you about the way it solves the problems of automation of complex and periodic business processes in a company, such as connecting a new customer or executing a repair work order by the field service engineer.

The new version of Hydra Billing is integrated with Hydra OMS. Process Execution Wizard allows initiating typical operations on customers: for example, a balance adjustment or a technical support request.

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It can be done on the customer page, on the Business Processes tab (needs setting up integration with Hydra OMS first). It allows either checking the customer’s business process execution or executing it directly from the billing system.

Loyalty programs adapted to the billing periods of a different length

Not all services are provided over a one-month business period. With the new version, the loyalty program takes into account such services with bonus calculation. If you want to adapt your loyalty program to recurrent services with some exotic business periods (30 days, 2 months, half a year, a year), you should simply request our technical support.

New interface of the Product Catalog

In version 4.1, we have changed the interface of the product catalog. The main changes will be noticeable as you discover that working with the new tree has become handier, while the search and the form itself have become faster and more responsive.

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Further versions will have the rest of tree data structures reworked.

Commented: 3
COMMENTS
31.10.2016 at 01:44

Can I download a test model

22.11.2016 at 17:23

Sure! Use the request demo form on our website: hydra-billing.com

20.04.2017 at 04:58

Hi, i wonder if hydra-billing is a saas

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