Billing Expert CV

Work Experience
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Technology Partners UAE (Dubai) May 2006 till now
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Techonolgy Partners is a company based in Dubai offers integration services for the telecom service providers specialized in billing and customer care solutions. Partnering with world’s leading vendor “LHS’ in Billing and customer care gives Technology Partners a good penetration potential in the regional market.
I am working as Solutions Development Manager reporting directly to Solutions Development Director, my main role in Technology Partners is to manage, analyse, design and implement BSCS billing system for telecom operators and building up the team that will participate in all these activities.
Here are some of my basic functions, responsibilities and achievements:

Planning and defining projects scopes

Activity planning and sequencing and revising as appropriate to meet changing needs and requirements

Time Estimation and Developing Schedules

Resource Planning and roles assignment

Cost Control by managing the scope and monitor any deviation from the design specifications

Quality Control by implementing company and customer‘s quality standards

Managing Conflicts, Risks and Issues

Configuration management

Managing Communications between team members, customer and third party companies

Effective leadership

Strategic Influencing by participating in company road maps strategy planning and decision making

In addition to management role, I was involved into the following activities:

Requirements Gathering by running workshops with customers either remotely or onsite
Requirements Analysis
Gap Analysis
Design Specifications
Developing and implementing some products
Managing SIT (Service Integration Testing) and UAT (User Acceptance Testing)

The following is a list of the projects I managed and involved in during my employment with Technology Partners:

Thuraya - UAE (Role: Quality Assurance Specialist)
Thuraya is the leading satellite voice and data communication services covering Africa, Europe and Asia, Thuraya is using the BSCS multi-company feature where each country service provider is considered as a separate company. The project was a quality assurance project where the main objective is to check that the billing department processes and system configuration, integration and implementation are properly designed and implemented, potential risks and observations are identified and high level solutions are provided.
MTN - Syria (Role: Project Manager)
MTN-Syria is a GSM operator belongs to MTN Group; the leading provider of communication services. The project was a migration from older release of BSCS billing system (release 7) to BSCS iX R2, I was responsible for the project starting from pre-sales activities to project closure, I played two roles; "Project Manager" and "Technical Project Manager", I was responsible for the following processes/activities:
- Pre-Sales activities
- Project inititation
- Project planning
- Project control
- Products execution and delivery management
- Change control management
- Configuration management
- Quality management
- Development life cycle involvment (analysis, design, implementation, testing, training, deployment and operation)
- Leading the project team to fullfil the requirements through coaching and supporting the team technically.
ITPC “Iraqi Telecom and Post Company” – Iraq (Role: Project Manager)
ITPC is the national wired line telephony network in Iraq (PSTN) The project was a migration from ITPC existing billing system –build in 70th last century- to BSCS iX R1.
As additional to my project manager role- I was involved in the following:
- Analyzing the existing business processes in ITPC which designed to deliver the public telephony services to Iraq
- Map the business requirements to business configuration in BSCS and implement it(services, rate plans, system scenarios and rating packages).
- Designing the mediation process where more than eight different switches brands CDRs need to be converted into BSCS UDR
- Implement the baseline and business configuration in BSCS by using Product Center (PX).
- Designing and implementing invoice layout
- Data migration scripts design and implementation
- CX customization
AWCC “Afghan Wireless Communication Company”- Afghanistan (Role: Sr. Billing Analyst)
AWCC is a GSM provider in Afghanistan running old rating and billing system that is needed to be replaced by BSCS iX Release 1.
I was involved in the following activities:
- Pre-Sales activities with the customer to demonstrate the BSCS-iX functionalities.
- Requirements gathering.
- Performing Gap analysis and identifying the adds-on features and workarounds that needed to be implemented.
- Participating in documenting statement of work, solution description and design documents.
BSCS-CMS consultation (Sub-Contracted to LHS)
As I have a solid experience in BSCS-CMS I did some consultation about CMS outside the company with LHS in some BSCS running operators by means of sub-contracting to LHS:
- du (UAE second operator)
  Consultation for EAI team about CMS to integrate Siebel with BSCS through TIBCO, including explanation of BSCS concepts, appropriate CMS commands for each business case and identifying bugs and DCRs of CMS.
- Vodafone Egypt
  Vodafone integrates Siebel with BSCS through TIBCO.
  Vodafone had a major performance problem preventing customer care and POS shops from accessing BSCS, I did some consultation and I changed the architecture of the integration process and the performance is dramatically enhanced and life returned to the shops.

Atos Orgin Morocco January 2004 till May 2006
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Atos Origin is a leading international IT services company and a global provider of business consulting and technology integration services.

Atos Orgin integrates three systems for Marco Telecom –Fixed wired Lines- known as WIAM project in replacement of an old system known as WISSAL, the WIAM project basically contains three major systems; BSCS V7 as rating and billing system, Netonomy as front office system (CRM) and Giraffe as the network inventory system.

The WIAM project is considered one of the most complex projects successfully achieved by Atos Orgin. I am working as BSCS Billing Consultant reporting directly to the project manager, my main role in the Services Integration Team is to fully integrate Netonomy and BSCS systems. Here are some of my basic functions, responsibilities and achievements:

Integration Analysis
- Analyzing both Netonomy and BSCS systems in terms of database tables design and columns mapping.
- Co-coordinating with the project architect and putting a preliminary vision about the architecture framework.
- Studying in depth the both systems APIs; Netonomy messaging system (XML) and BSCS CMS API.
- Studying the other systems interfaces which the new system will interact with and the possible ways to synchronize with it.
- Analyzing requirements from the customer and validating it.
- Setting the design and development plan with co-coordination with the project architect.
Integration Design and Development
- Co-coordinating with the project architect and designing the framework which the system will work through in terms of Activity diagrams, Technologies used, cycles of requests, priorities of requests, life time of requests ... etc.
- Designing the integration process through which the systems will interact and communicate with each other in terms of UML diagrams.
- Co-coordinating with CRM, billing, migration and interfaces teams to be synchronized with the data mapping between the two systems.
- Working closely with the CRM team in order to agree on the data mapping between the two systems (Netonomy and BSCS), e.g. how are the markets, rate plans, services , parameters … etc are mapped between the two systems? Each system has its own database structure and constraints.
- Documenting the integration design and analysis in the FSP document.
- Writing the technical manual to configure, trouble shoot, start and shutdown the integration process.
- Developing the connector which will integrate Netonomy and BSCS systems this includes:
  - Parsing Netonomy xml messages (REQ messages) and deducing the instructions required to be performed in BSCS.
  - Executing the instructions required in BSCS by using the appropriate CMS commands.
  - Generating the acknowledge messages (DO messages) with the required data needed from Netonomy (e.g. New contract id generated).
  - Generating the error messages if any error occurs in BSCS side and setting the error code and description inside the error message for further processing.
  The connector is designed to be maintainable, extensible, dynamic and flexible in order to minimize any time needed to fix any bug or implement any evolution in production. High logging features are implemented in order to track any operation performed in the system.
- Customizing the CMS itself by adding new functionalities to it due to the business needs which do not exist in the standard CMS functionalities.
The following technologies are used to implement the connector:
ILS (Netonomy Integration Logic Studio): It’s a GUI application provided by Netonomy to design the integration process between Netonomy and other systems, it’s used to design and control the requests paths and cycles, mainly there are three integration processes:
1. OSS Approval: Used to get approval from the OSS system –Inventory system in this case- to approve creating new contract, add or remove or modify service … etc.
2. Synchronizer: Used to dispatch requests from Netonomy and send it to the back office system or Inventory system and when receiving the acknowledge message, performs the operation in Netonomy itself.
3. Connector: This is the main integration process and needs a lot of customization; the connector receives the requests from the synchronizer and performs the appropriate actions on the OSS systems and replies back with the acknowledge messages containing any data needed by Netonomy.
CMS (BSCS Customer Management Server): it’s the entry point to BSCS in this project, CMS is BSCS APIs provided by LHS to perform any operation in BSCS in a standard way and it’s the only way to integrate BSCS with any other system. It’s also used to perform several mass actions on BSCS as: customer creation and manipulation, contract creation and manipulation, adding, modifying and removing services, payments … etc. CMS is CORBA oriented used with VISIBROKER utility provided by BORLAND so that the CMS server could run on a server, the client – connector – on another server and the database on a 3rd server which matches the n-tier architecture.

JAVA: Both ILS and CMS are java oriented so that all the parsing and CMS calls are developed using java code.

IBM MQ (Message Queue): is the middleware application used, all the requests are dispatched into and retrieved from IBM MQ, Each system has his own Input, Output and Error group of Queues, it’s possible that one system could have more than one group of queues – used for performance reasons, for example the payments has its own group of queues and its own connector since there are more than 100,000 payments per day -.
Maintenance of Integration process
- Maintain and support the integration process.
- Solving production bugs and correcting run time production errors which required from me to design and implement dynamic correction tools like:
  - CEH (Connectors Errors Handler): It’s a dynamic tool used to connect to the error MQ, retrieve the messages stored there, apply a certain developed plug-in(s) on the retrieved messages based on some conditions like type of message, type of error, id of message, date of message … etc -the plug-in can modify the content of the message- and then perform any action required on the message like re-injection into the input queue, delete the message from input queue, route it to another queue … etc. all these checks and decisions are configured through database tables dedicated to the tool.
  - COH (Contracts Operation Handler): It’s a tool used to perform mass operations using the already implemented integration process, to reflect any change on all the systems. It reads a configured template message (for example request to add a service) and a list of contracts then it sends the template -after modifying it with the contracts ids- to the input queue of the connector. So there is no redundancy in development we have only one entry point to modify the systems which is the connector.
  - BCD (BSCS Contracts Dispatcher): Due to some problems in migration or some faults in the operational environment, some contracts do not exist in Netonomy while exist in BSCS, this tools is implemented to dispatch these contracts and simulate the creation mechanism of Netonomy and feeds back Netonomy with the acknowledge messages (DO messages) of these contracts so at the end both systems will be synchronized.
Other responsibilities around the system
- Designing and implementing the SVI interface (SERVER VOCAL INTERFACE); it’s an interface to the IVR system (Interactive Voice Recognition), it’s used to update the IVR system with any modifications performed on certain types of contracts and customers, the modifications could be new contracts, suspension, deactivation, changing line numbers, new invoices and new payments events.
- Participating in the post-migration scripts to patch the BSCS with necessary information needed for the integration process.
- Developing scripts to patch the production BSCS and/or Netonomy databases in such a case if any missing data is discovered due to any lack in migration or services integration.
- Due to my critical responsibility in the project, any new evolution is acknowledged by me in order to see if the integration process will support it or not, due to the well design of the integration process 99% of evolutions are implemented without any change in the integration process.

TunisieTelecom Tunisia July 2004 till September 2004
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Tunisie Telecom is a fixed lines and wireless service provider in Tunisie.
My role was to implement some modifications of the existing BSCS (version 6) system in Tunisie telecom as a part time mission I got from a sub-contractor company.
Here are some of my basic functions, responsibilities and achievements:

Receiving the source code of BGH and reverse-engineer it.
Doing the feasibility study for the requested modifications.
Modifying and customizing the BGH (Bill Generation Handler) module to include a new tax and supporting adding new services and then controlling the way of appearance of these new services in the bill layout.
Tunisie Telecom does not use any document formatter product (e.g. DOC1); instead BGH generates directly the post script files which will be printed.
Modifying customer administration (KV) reports which are responsible to generate the contract based bills in order to include the new tax and also to control the appearance of the new services in the bill.

Mobinil Egypt August 2000 till December 2003
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Mobinil is the largest wireless service provider in Egypt and the Middle East, Mobinil is the first GSM operator established in Egypt.
Mobinil implements BSCS V6 as customer administration, billing, rating and provisioning system.

January 2003 till December 2003
In the Billing and Mediation department I was working as Sr. Analyst Programmer, during this period I was the leader of the BSCS development and customization team reporting directly to the Billing and Mediation manager and here are some of my basic functions, responsibilities and achievements:
- Hiring and Building the development and customization team; I made a lot of interviews and tests with candidates applying to the position of Analyst Programmer. Four members are selected to join the team.
- Training and knowledge transferring to the new members of the team; I made full training and knowledge transfer to the members of the team and dividing the tasks among them.
- Coaching and directing the team and supporting them in order to be able to execute the business requirements.
- Translating business needs into technical implementation and customization inside the billing system and designing interfaces (from and to) billing system.
- Writing systems specification documents and system functional testing as well as providing assistance in various implementation support activities such as business process and UAT.
- Handling all the invoicing formatting activities (DOC1 and KSL) like RFP, Info requests and defect tracking.
- Designing and Implementing the Business Cases module which will be responsible to perform any operation on BSCS using CAS (Customer Administration Server) module, the project is divided into core business cases and variant business cases. The main goal of this project is to provide a standard way to communicate with BSCS with the minimum implementation time and code changes. Example of one of the business cases is CRMHandler which receives requests from the CRM system like suspend, re-activate contracts … etc and converting it to internal instructions of Business cases module which in turn executes these instructions into BSCS using CAS.
- Responsible of all the customization of any non-kernel BSCS V6 Modules (BGH, PIH, IOH/POH and CAS related tools) in terms of feasibility study, specifications, implementation plan and delegating and following the task to one of the members of the team.
July 2001 till December 2002
In the Business Support department I was working as Analyst Programmer, during this period I was a member of BSCS development and customization team (Non-Kernel team) and here are some of my basic functions, responsibilities and achievements:
- One of the key players in the migration project from BSCS 5.2 to BSCS 6.1, here are a list of most processes and tools I did the customization and development of it:
  - BGH (Bill Generation Handler): BGH is a standard LHS non-kernel module used to generate customer specific output bill format, BGH extracts the TIMM messages (special internal invoice format) and converts it to any other format; The customized BGH generates an output of simple text format based on Mobinil requirements. The output text format is then used by the Document Processing Engine (KSL) to generate the final postscript to be printed.
  - KSL: the business document production engine used to produce the final postscript files to be printed. I was the project manager for this specific part in terms of preparing the bill format specification, design and configuration. Also I was responsible for co-coordination with the vendor for the implementation and bug tracking and fixing moreover the integration with the bills printing party.
    Indeed of all of that I did all the implementation and development based on the KSL product this includes:
    • Designing the bill format with the KSL GUI report design utility.
    • Developing the parser of the BGH output format and plug-in it with KSL process chain.
    • Due to recommendation from the vendor, the process of converting the internal invoice format of the vendor (KSD) to the printing format (PS) is modified to enhance the performance of invoice generation which means merging all the generated invoices into one KSD file and converting it to one PS file and then splitting it again.
  - IOH/POH (Invoice Output Handler/Payment Output Handler): IOH/POH is a standard LHS non-kernel module used to extract all the invoices generated for direct debit customers in order to send it to the customer’s configured bank.
  - PIH (Payment Input Handler): PIH is a standard LHS non-kernel module used to execute payment transactions in BSCS in order to close the direct debit customers’ invoices.
  - PPH (Prepaid Handler): PPH is a GUI application developed to create a mass of prepaid contracts, the user selects the required rate plan and services and number of contracts then the PPH will create these contracts.
- Supporting weekly bill cycles and fixing bugs in a real time to keep bill cycles times in schedule.
- Invoices printing cost reduction by developing another module –PreBGH- that runs before the BGH and sets some flags on certain invoices based on a configurable rules, these flags are used later to decide to print one page only of the invoice or the complete invoice or not to print it at all. This project saved millions of EGP to Mobinil – I got a reward for this project from CEO -.
- Invoices archiving cost reduction by compressing the invoices files (KSD format) before loading it into the database and extracting it before viewing.
- CDRReporter: it’s a utility to extract some information from the incoming CDRs and generates a report based on this information.
- Fine tuning the production environment by modifying existing scripts or binaries.
- Self initiated ideas: I suggested a lot of new creative ideas, implemented it and proposed it the business domains like:
  - CallsArchive: used to archive old calls into files instead of database tables, it stores millions of calls into one big file in a such way that it’s easy to retrieve the calls based on the contract id. The tool simulates the database behaviour in storing and selection (based on hash mapping) but with a much simpler algorithm.
  - EmailBill: It’s a COM component used to send the customer’s last bill in HTML format as an attached file whenever the customer sends email asking for his bill.
  - EasyBill: It’s a viewer of the bill, the viewer input is the text file generated from BGH, it reads it and display the invoice as being generated by the document processing engine module (KSL) so it appears as being viewed by ACROBAT reader for example. The viewer can display the same invoice in different languages based on a predfined dictionary enclosed with the viewer.
- Wide experience in C, C++, ProC, SQL, KSL, Centura, UNIX, Unix Shell scripting since all the modules and utilities are developed by these tools.

August 2000 till June 2001
During this period Mobinil was using BSCS V5.2
Here are some of my basic functions, responsibilities and achievements:

Getting training in BSCS to be familiar with its modules.
Getting a training in France to handover the source code and knowledge from ALCATEL to Mobinil.
Supporting the current production BGH, PIH and POH.
Implementing the bar code in the invoice using KSL product.

Sakhr Egypt January 2000 till August 2000
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Sakhr is a software house specialized in Arabization. It is one of the biggest Software houses in the Arab world. Sakhr is working in different fields as Desktop applications, Web … etc.
In the Education and Media department I was working as System Programmer and here are some of my basic functions, responsibilities and achievements:

Arab Cinema
Arab Cinema is a huge archive of all the Arab movies and Arab actors since the beginning of the motion picture in the Arabic world; I was responsible to develop this site from A to Z.( Database design and HTML, JavaScript and ASP coding).
Course Ware
An automation of school courses to be available across the Internet and also on CD’s. Courseware is an html-based application generated using asp files as a template for different materials (Math – Science – Arabic -…. etc) (Developed using HTML, JavaScript, ASP and MFC).