Release 12 -iStore features for a Telecommunication Industry

I can imagine how specific feature for a telecom industry is part of Release 12 iStore. I was part of the Oracle’s BellSouth Support team, where there was a dedicated team to support the BellSouth Implementations. BellSouth implemented Oracle’s iStore and many other CRM modules. Their fastaccess.com was a highly customized Oracle iStore version of 11.5.4. Not sure if they are still with iStore, although I just came across ATT advertising fastaccess.com on one of the search engines.

So, it looks like all the features a telecom industry would have requested or would like to have has been included in Release 12 of Oracle iStore. Here is a list of the new features

• Customers can configure services and items via Oracle Configurator to ensure that all business and technical rules are enforced. Products can be restricted based on customer input like their current phone number or their zip code (through Configurator rules).

• Once the products are selected, customers can see all items selected, along with their prices, in the shopping cart. Prices can be either one-time or recurring prices (e.g., monthly).

• The customer also can be informed about what has to be paid at the time of ordering (Pay Now amount) versus what will be billed in the future (Pay Later amount). In case of payment via credit card, only the ‘Pay Now amount’ is authorized at the time of order placement.

• Once the order is placed the customer is notified and can track online the fulfillment of the order thereby reducing the load of the call center.

• Customers can review all of the services and items they currently own and modify services if desired.

From the above features, it does not look too different from what previous releases of Oracle iStore used to offer. If you have Serviceable and Configurable items setup Inventory/BOM modules, its just a matter of using them in modules such as iStore.

Yes, definitely, the changes made to the Configurator functionality is definitely a plus for the telecom industry. For eg. merchants can assign a Configurator usage for model items when publishing them under sections in iStore Catalogs. For example a telecom company may wish to use the same wireless service but different ordering flows such as start with phones or start with plans. This definitely is a good feature, provided all the modules are setup as per the documentation and we do not stumble upon any bugs or issues.