Requirements checklist
What to ask for when choosing software for telecommunications companies.
A checklist built from how telecommunications companies work, to print or save as a PDF and bring to any supplier meeting.
What the software should cover
Tick each one that matters to your business.
- Subscriber accounts and sites
- Plans, add-ons and tariff rules
- Coverage checks and survey visits
- Installation and activation jobs
- Device and equipment stock
- Fault tickets and outage notices
- Recurring billing and collections
Roles that need their own access
Who logs in, and what each person may see or change.
- For owners
- For sales and agents
- For support desk staff
- For field technicians
- For billing and collections staff
Reports to ask for
Ask to see each one with your own sample data.
- Subscribers by plan, area and account type
- Installations booked, completed and waiting for a device
- Fault tickets by cause, area and age
- Network incidents with accounts affected and restore time
- Devices issued, returned and unaccounted for, by serial
- Invoices raised, paid and overdue by cycle
- Business contracts due for renewal
Systems it may need to connect to
Note which ones you already run.
- SMS
- WhatsApp and other messaging
- Payment gateway and bank debit
- Radius and provisioning tools
- Accounting export
- Telephony and call logs
Questions for any vendor
Put these to every supplier you are comparing.
- Does it replace our network management tools?
- Can a subscriber change plan in the middle of a cycle?
- How are routers and optical units tracked?
- Can one outage message go to every affected subscriber?
- Can business accounts have restore targets?
- Does it handle usage-based charges?
- Can agents and resellers use it?
- Do field crews need a signal to close a job?
- How do we find out the cost?
- Can we take our subscriber data out?
Where the work usually breaks today
Circle the ones you recognise. They set the order of the project.
- Plan and billing disagree
- Devices are not traced to subscribers
- Installation survey notes are lost
- One outage creates hundreds of calls
- Enterprise service terms are held apart
Prefer to talk it through? See the telecommunications companies page.