54 Using BRM in International Markets

Learn how Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) supports customer management and billing for international markets.

Topics in this document:

• Supporting Multiple Currencies

• Accepting Credit Card Payments in Multiple Currencies

• Supporting Multiple Languages

• Using Localized Client Applications

• Localizing BRM

See also "BRM Internationalization and Localization" and "Creating a Localized Version of BRM".

Supporting Multiple Currencies

If you have customers in more than one country, there are two currency issues that you might need to work with:

• Customers who use a currency different from the currency you use in your business. For example, if your business is in the United States, you run your business with US dollars. However, your Canadian customers pay their bills with Canadian dollars. To handle multiple currencies, BRM uses a system currency for your business, and account currencies for your customers. See "Managing System and Account Currencies" in BRM Managing Customers.

• Customers in EMU countries who recently joined the EMU, and are still in the currency crossover period. They can still pay their bills in euros or in their native EMU country currency. BRM allows you to use both EMU currencies and the euro. See "Supporting EMU Currencies and the Euro" in BRM Managing Customers.

  Note:

  For countries that joined the EMU before February, 2002, the euro is the only legal currency.

Accepting Credit Card Payments in Multiple Currencies

The ability to accept credit card payments in multiple currencies depends on your credit card processor. For information, see "Paymentech and International Transactions" in BRM Configuring and Collecting Payments.

Supporting Multiple Languages

You need to handle the following situations when you have customers that use multiple languages:

• Your customers need to receive messages and invoices from you in their language. To do so, you specify the customer's language when creating the account.

• Your customers might need to access Web pages in their native languages. You can create multiple sets of Web pages, each in a localized language. When a customer logs in, the customer's language setting automatically opens the Web page in the correct language.

• Your BRM system, including your BRM database, needs to handle multiple types of characters, for example, Japanese and Chinese characters and characters with accent marks.

Using Localized Client Applications

Localized versions of BRM client applications are available in the following languages:

• Brazilian

• Chinese Simplified

• Chinese Traditional

• French

• Italian

• Japanese

• Korean

• Portuguese

• Russian

• Spanish

You can use localized versions of many BRM client applications:

• All language versions of the Java applications use Unicode characters.

• Payment Tool, an MFC application, is available in a native encoding or Unicode.

  • The native encoding version is translated, but is not suitable for a multiple language installation.

  • The Unicode version of Payment Tool is not translated, but supports displaying multiple languages and storing them in the database.

    Note:

    For the Unicode version of Payment Tool, you must install a Unicode font, for example, Bitstream's Cyberbit font.

All BRM client applications are internationalized and handle most locale formats for time, date, number, and so on by using the Windows Regional Settings. To keep currency symbols constant whatever the locale, they are not handled by Windows Regional Settings.

See your sales representative for the latest information on available localizations. For client platforms supported, see "BRM Software Compatibility" in BRM Compatibility Matrix.

Localizing BRM

You can localize BRM in these ways:

• If a localized version of a BRM application does not already exist, you can create localized versions in additional languages using the Localization SDK.

• You can localize some system files, such as reason codes, by using the Localization SDK.

• You can create localized versions of your custom client applications.

The Localization SDK supports localization into any language that is both noncomplex text and single-direction (left-to-right), including languages written with the Roman alphabet and multi-byte or East Asian languages.

BRM does not support localization into complex text languages, including Thai, Indic languages, and languages that use bi-directional writing systems, such as Arabic and Hebrew.