Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (Oracle BRM) is an end-to-end revenue management system used by many communications, IoT, SaaS, and media service providers. Oracle BRM is a versatile solution for managing the whole revenue lifecycle. It offers powerful configuration and customization capabilities. These capabilities make it an excellent option to choose for companies operating in various industries and offering different services.
In some previous articles, we already discussed taxation-related challenges, especially in the United States (“العمل مع ضرائب الولايات المتحدة في Tridens Monetization - الجزء 1”). In this article, however, we will take a look at how we can deal with such challenges if we are using Oracle BRM.
Multiple possible approaches to incorporate taxation
We have multiple possible approaches to incorporate taxation in Oracle BRM:
- Using BRM Tax Codes file
- Best for applying simple flat taxes, but does not offer much versatility
- Customized taxation by modifying BRM policy opcodes
- BRM Taxation policy opcodes can be used to implement custom taxes. In other words, they do not require the full capability of third-party tax providers
- Offline, tax software Vertex Sales / Communications Tax Q Series
- Allows complex taxation with multiple jurisdictions, but requires more maintenance
- Online third-party tax provider services by modifying BRM taxation policy opcodes
- This innovative approach is possible due to Oracle BRM’s extensive customization capabilities and allows an online integration with third-party tax providers such as Avalara, Suretax, Vertex, or Thomson Reuters Onesoft.
Integrating a Third-Party Tax Service Provider with Oracle BRM
We will focus on the approach which uses online tax provider calculation services in combination with Oracle BRM. We made a proof-of-concept implementation of this solution shown in the diagram “Using Third-Party Online Tax Calculation Services with Oracle BRM.”
In the beginning, it is necessary to configure a rating product in Oracle BRM correctly. In addition, it is of great importance to set the tax code for the product appropriately. The tax code must include all the necessary information, such as third-party provider specification, tax type, tax category, and tax service type. We developed a BRM policy opcode PCM_OP_CUST_POL_TAX_CALC customization here at Tridens. This customization uses tax data to generate a request for the Tridens بوابة الضرائب (which we talked about in our article “Working with U.S. Taxes in Tridens Monetization – Part 2″). The Tax Gateway then returns data provided by online tax calculations provider in a unified format. Our customization in Oracle BRM then parses the received information and populates all data required in Oracle BRM internal data structures. This operation allows BRM to perform the taxing of a rated event correctly.
الخاتمة
Our proof-of-concept implementation has the following advantages in comparison to offline third-party tax provider software:
- انخفاض التكاليف
- Is always up-to-date with the latest tax regulation changes in specific states (No software updates required)
- Possible to use various online tax calculations for different products if required
We must, however, also consider a disadvantage brought by using the online tax calculation solutions:
- Such a solution may not be suitable for large applications with a high number of requests per second or applications where low latencies are a requirement
If you would like to know more about using online tax calculations from third-party tax providers with Oracle BRM, feel free to contact us!
