Software agent Technology: A Framework for Minimizing Fraud in Postpaid Billing Systems

Abstract

The postpaid billing systems in telecommunication industry experiences some forms of revenue leakages mostly due to fraudulent activities by some employees that costs a telecommunications company a loss of between 5% and 15% of its total revenue as shown by a research, couple with the inefficiency of some human personnel like the dispatch riders who dispatch or distribute bills. In order to minimize these problems, a framework is proposed in this paper. Software Agent Technology is used by identifying some of the areas and personnel liable to fraud and inefficiency and substituting them with Software Agents. The billing personnel and customer care centre staff are downsized to 50% and 25% respectively. Agentbased Software engineering as an extension to the traditional Object-oriented Software engineering methodology was used to come up with this framework. The framework after its implementation has shown a 70% reduction in fraud, which will be used by a company to create more job opportunities by network expansion to reach about 204 different communities in one year.

Keyword: Software agent, telecommunication, postpaid billing system, fraud