OneConnect Selects Sigma OmniCare for VoIP Customer Care and Billing Services

Sigma Software, a leading provider of customer, order and revenue management solutions, today announced that OneConnect, an independent Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications company, hasselected Sigma OmniCare(tm) to manage its customer care and billing functions.

(PRWEB) September 23, 2004 -- OneConnect offers business customers carrier-class communicationssolutions via an easy-to-use, hosted multimedia service using Nortel Networks Multimedia Communication Server (MCS) 5200. The company provides businesses with IP voice, video, call management, collaboration, unified messaging and conferencing services in a single, converged solution. OneConnect has already launched commercial service in the Greater Toronto Area.

Like all service providers, OneConnect requires a customer care and billing system to create customer profiles, coordinate orders, generate bills, process payments, and handle trouble calls. The system must be robust enough to sustain the mission-critical flow of customer requests in its call center, while reliably tracking the service usage and revenue streams from its clients for accurate billing. The system must also be flexible enough to accommodate complex IP-based services and innovative rating plans. After a comprehensive review of vendor solutions, OneConnect selected Sigma Software, which has been building IT solutions for the telecom industry since 1994.

"Sigma provided us the best combination of feature richness, low operating cost and system flexibility", explained Ron Dekker, CEO of
OneConnect. "In the nascent IP-managed services market, we were pleased to have found a company that has been providing telecom software products for over a decade and is leveraging that experience to provide solutions tailored to focused service providers like OneConnect."

OmniCare is Sigma's flagship software system for customer, order and revenue management in the telecommunications industry and related vertical markets. OmniCare, frequently termed a BSS (Business Support System), is used to automate the high-volume internal transactions of a service provider, whether managing millions of customer profiles, orders or invoices. Furthermore, OmniCare is VoIP-enabled, meaning that it is inherently able to model and rate IP-based services, a critical requirement for IP-managed service providers like OneConnect.

Sigma OmniCare has three principal modules:

The Customer Management module provides OneConnect's call center customer service representatives (CSRs) the data entry screens and logic for creating and viewing customer accounts and launching credit checks. It is also a ticketing system for managing customer trouble calls and inquiries. The web-enabled self-care component lets customers retrieve aspects of their profile themselves, such as for verifying their current services or updating account
information.

The Order Management module provides the data entry screens and logic for OneConnect's CSRs to enter orders for their customers' telecommunications services. It also maintains a catalog of available products and services, and their pricing, discounting and bundling plans. The system then manages the detailed electronic routing of the order to the various groups that have tasks to perform in sequence until the customer's service is turned up. The web-
enabled self-service component allows customers to launch orders themselves if desired.

The Revenue Management module computes OneConnect's bills to their customers based on rating, bundling, and discounting rules, as well as actual service usage. It generates the invoice, and then handles customer payments, tracks accounts receivables and manages collections. The electronic bill payment and presentment (EBPP) component enables customers to view and process their bills online.
    
"Sigma's ability to work with our markets as their business and technologies evolve is a hallmark of our staying power and success", commented Sigma President and COO Craig Denson. "We have grown our business from traditional long-distance resellers to next-generation service providers to even newer VoIP players, and are proud to have gained the trust and business of OneConnect."

About OneConnect
OneConnect, based in Toronto, provides hosted and managed IP Communications services for businesses in Canada. OneConnect is focused on providing services that deliver the power and flexibility of IP Multimedia (voice, data and video) tools affordably, simply and easily to business users directly and through reseller partners. Please visit www.oneconnect.ca.

About Sigma Software
Sigma Software is a leading provider of high-performance customer, order and revenue management software for the telecommunications and finance industries, and similar vertical markets in North America, Europe and Africa.

Since 1994, Sigma has been delivering on its vision of reliably and efficiently automating high-volume business process transactions for a diverse client base including traditional and next-generation service providers and resellers. Sigma's value proposition is to support profitability and customer satisfaction through reduced operating costs, enhanced call center productivity, reduced churn and robust revenue processing for high- transaction, customer-facing businesses. For more information please, visit www.sigmasoft.ca.

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