Telecom billing – a missing piece of a single source of truth

A revenue generation chain for telecom is usually a very complex flow based on processes, IT systems, and humans. It’s obvious that billing is at the heart of business operations. It is the central point of a company’s nervous system. A profound issue with billing can jeopardize a telecom business as well as raise customer dissatisfaction to unprecedented levels. Issues in billing quality and accuracy either become known through customer feedback or from internal analysis. Both types generate extra workload and costs, eventually. 

The estimated industry average revenue leakage is 1,9% of gross revenue, not including losses due to fraud. The repeatable and complex errors very often require the use of data quality and process improvement methods carried out by revenue assurance. 

Secondly, industry dynamics like new technologies, and customer expectations also create additional challenges: greater agility, flexible product offering, and an appetite for new product development. However, the increasing cost and complexity of any essential IT landscape appear to be a natural force that leads carriers towards a situation where “legacy” systems are a constant barrier to business agility. 

Telecom operators today need effective billing and revenue management solutions to compete successfully in the new business environment and be able to serve a growing number of customers. Efficiency in this case means greater agility, accuracy, and higher revenue assurance. Eventually, it is expected that the billing processes provide predictable quality and accuracy. This is an important part of creating value for customers, increasing their loyalty while ensuring business assurance and predictability. As the telecom product portfolio, variants,  technologies, and related business processes develop, the operations become more and more complex. 

To address this a trade-off between customization and standardization comes into play. A simplistic standardization usually gives peace of mind, but limits product marketing elasticity with regards to bundling, discounting, and innovative offers. Customization brings great flexibility, increases complexity, and raises utilization of manual processes. Eventually, the chance of failure and revenue assurance gaps increases. 

So, is there a remedy for finding peace of mind between those 2 approaches?

I believe it is a matter of building a foundation for continual telco transformation with agile BSS. A foundation will enable telcos to weather future storms and pivot to serve changing demands. BSS/OSS automation goes beyond cost-saving and enables the creation of telcos that are ready to adapt and grow in the future. It is about recognising existing challenges like:

• Gap Between BSS and OSS – it is a predominant source of un-billed order items as well as costs without revenue.
• Commercial Service Catalogue intertwined with billing setup – stand alone definition, inventories are not only costly but a significant source of billing errors.
• Insufficient Operational Visibility – there is a general rule that you can’t control what you can’t see.

BSS automation can provide new operational capabilities and simplify and accelerate how a telco functions. There are 6 must-have capabilities:

• Unified Product Catalogue – a foundation for all business operations
• Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) – a transparent and automated deal management tool
• Order Management and Service Provisioning – to enable service delivery accuracy and timing
• Automated Service Assurance – to reduce fault resolution
• Self-Service that empowers customers and give them control over their own services 
• Analytics – easily connect data from BSS/OSS stacks and create automated dashboards.

The outcome is automated processes that support customers with a digitally enabled experience and create a foundation for an agile revenue generation chain. Enxoo’s automated billing solution can help you to reduce manual effort around invoicing and accounts receivables management, allowing you to save time and focus on communication with your most valuable customers. Moving towards automated business processes enables you to reduce possible bottlenecks in your operations and unleash your full business potential.

Why is it worth choosing an Enxoo solution?

1) You can automate recurring billing and issue hundreds or even thousands of error-free invoices to multiple users subscribing to your products or services under different conditions.

2) You can support different pricing models and billing customers in different ways. In line with multiple pricing models: flat rate- including one-off charges combined with recurring charges, use-based, quantity-based, per user, per function and with varying frequency (i.e. weekly, monthly, annually)

3) Revenue control is critical, and you can create accurate revenue forecasts based on up-to-date sales workflow data and track numbers, spot defects, track unpaid invoices, and more.

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