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Canal+ by Bboxx in Pulse: How-to guidelines

Owned by Jean Luc Ugirashebuja
Dec 30, 2020
6 min read

1. Context

Bboxx and Canal+ have entered a partnership whereby Bboxx will subscribe and distribute Canal+ TV content to its existing customers. Canal+ is a recognized brand in both RDC and Togo and is expected to drive the uptake of TV sales in both countries. As part of the partnership, Bboxx Togo and Bboxx RDC have expressed their interest to pilot this upgrade with their existing customers in order to confirm the market demand and potential for this service. 

2. Objective

The objective of this document is to set out a few specific processes to run in the system in order for the NGU to be able to manage Canal+ customers. The system solution during the pilot phase requires some manual inputs from the NGU users and varies from the long-term solution (full integration)) which should automate most of the steps explained below.

3. Configuration

a. Package

  • Canal+ Package needs to be configured as a “Service package” for existing Bboxx TV customers, the package is available for Upgrade
  • Service package means that there is no “Bill of Materials” (BOM) attached to the package and it also means there won’t be any asset depreciation attached in the system, in terms of accounting.
  • However, in order to reflect the stock move, the NGU will need to trigger a Sales Order from the D.C. of the NGU to the customer directly; this process is explained below).

b. Pricing

The pricing is structured as follows:

  • Down Payment = Price of the [decoder + antenna], No installation for new customers
  • Monthly Payment = Canal+ subscription to access the TV channels proposed in the offer

Rem: The hardware (=Decoder + antenna) will be paid off upfront by the customer when the DP is paid, while the Canal+ service (= access to TV content) will be covered by following recurring payments.

c. Stock move

As explained above and because the package is a “Service package” without BOM, the NGU will need to record a Stock Order in the ERP, so that the stock move from the D.C. to the end-customer is reflected in the system (i.e. decoder + antenna). This can be done through the Sales module of the ERP as follows:

  • Sales => Quotation => Create => Confirm quotation
  • Sales => Sales Orders => Confirm => Appear in Delivery Orders

Rem: as the stock is sourced locally by the NGU from Canal+, the NGU will need to first add the stock purchased from Canal+ to the D.C. stock of the NGU by creating a purchase order in the ERP, as per below (more support can be provided from Bboxx Group – Supply Chain team if needed).

  • Purchase => Quotation => Create => Confirm Purchase Order => Incoming Shipments => Click on “Receive” => Included in the main stock of the D.C.

d. Accounting & screenshots

Screenshots and examples below offer more details about the configuration requirements:

  • Need to create the following accounts:

  • Product setup: No BOM required, just service to invoice.


  • The product can be selected on customer application as below (either sign-up or upgrade can work):

  • Invoice line will appear for the product:

  • Payment plan amount will be affected for a DP+2 month (number of months depending on product setup), and will go to normal afterward:

  • A sales order for the HW product: a sales order should be open, and the same customer ID should be selected. This will help to show the sales order in the customer application as well.

  • Selling prices for the HW components on the sales order will be “Zero”. Sales orders should be delivered and invoiced in a standard fashion. This will deduct the product from our stock and deliver to the customer.

  • The accounting will be applied as per the suggested setup: all accounting transactions will be linked with the customer ID, so all accounting journals will be tagged with “Partner ID” which will help view all transactions related to the same customer (both HPA and up-front sale, with Canal+ subscription service)

  • The new accounts will be used for posting the revenue and cost of sales of the Canal+ product. For the sales tax posting of the product, it is preferred to have a new account for the service sales tax, but we still can use the following account:


4. Installation

The installation of Canal+ customers in Pulse should follow the same usual process. However, the NGU needs to collect and write down the decoder serial number during the installation as this will be required to send commands to the Canal+ box.

5. Synchronization with Canal+

  1. Pilot phase

In order to switch on or switch off Canal+ decoders remotely, we will need to communicate with Canal+ and inform their system about the payment status for all installed Canal+ customers. In the long term, this communication would be made possible with an integration between the Bboxx Pulse platform and the Canal + platform which would allow automating switch on / switch off commands based on payments received in Pulse from Canal+ customers.

However, as the full integration will require significant time and human resources, Bboxx and Canal+ have agreed to start the pilot with a semi-manual synchronization between the 2 IT platforms, until the fully automated integration is developed. The process to use is the following:

  1. Extract from the ERP all Canal+ customers with the current information/data on a daily basis:
    1. Customers to activate (subscription or re-activation) = “Subscribe” Command
    2. Customers to de-activate when they no longer have on-time and should be switched off = “Suspend” Command
    3. Customers that haven’t been activated properly when the customer has paid but didn’t get access to the service because the subscribe command hasn’t worked = “refreshRights” Command
    4. The customer that has a faulty decoder that needs to be replaced = “exchangeEquipment” Command

2. Fill in the Canal+ Tool on daily basis, by adding all customers to the corresponding command table, using one line per customer (e.g. below “subscribe” command), including their Canal+ serial number (which is was collected during the subscription and required for Canal+ to communicate with the decoder box).

3. Generate the .CSV for each command by clicking on the corresponding button (e.g. below “Create subscribe CSV). You will obtain a new file with the information about the customers for which Canal+ needs to trigger the corresponding command.

4. Upload daily all the CSV on Sharepoint, once all the CSV commands have been generated, using the corresponding folder (Sync => country) on this link:

https://bboxxeng.sharepoint.com/sites/CanalPlusSync/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx

 The synchronization between SharePoint and the Canal+ platform will occur automatically through the Canal+ API.


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