INTERVIEW Vincent Disneur - Union Street
“Billing and cashflow is the life blood of any business, so naturally business owners and senior management are
keen to have real time billing information at their fingertips.”
Vincent Disneur, Sales & Marketing Director - Union Street Technologies
From strength to strength
In this interview Vincent Disneur, Sales & Marketing Director of Union Street, spoke to Comms Business about
the latest aBILLity platform developments and how they are helping customers get through the pandemic crisis
CBM: How has the COVID crisis
impacted Union Street?
Vincent Disneur (VD):
Supporting our team and our
customers has been our top
priority throughout the crisis.
We made the call to close our
oces in London and Northern
Ireland in early March, and our
IT team transitioned everyone to
home working within a couple of
days. Union Street employs close
to 100 personnel and around 30
already worked remotely. Scaling
up existing systems to enable
the rest to work from home was
relatively simple and, because
we’re a software vendor, there
isn’t really a necessity for anyone
to be at the oce.
To assist our customers
with their business continuity
planning we introduced a
service which, in the event of
sickness of other emergency,
allowed us to take over billing
operations on a temporary
basis. In addition, we had our
Customer Success Managers
proactively contact all
customers to ensure everything
was ok and to see if there was
anything we could assist with.
CBM: Is now a good time for
partners to be looking at
alternative billing providers?
VD:Enquiries from
communication providers
have really spiked during the
lockdown and I think there’s
a few reasons for this. First is
that the lockdown has provided
time and space for many
channel businesses to address
housekeeping issues, and
optimising billing operations
always a good way to boost the
bottom line.
Second, this experience has
woken many communication
providers up to potential
vulnerabilities. Billing is not
something you can mess about
with. It’s a critical function for
all channel businesses and, as
this crisis has demonstrated, one
that’s susceptible to disruption.
Many resellers have been forced
to question whether it’s wise
to source such an essential
software from small companies
with limited resources.
CBM: You recently launched
your mobile app for aBILLity,
can you tell us about the
drivers behind that and the
uptake you have seen?
VD: Billing and cashow is
the life blood of any business,
so naturally business owners
and senior management are
keen to have real time billing
information at their ngertips.
Our mobile app provides just
that, delivering a high-level
overview of billing activities and
access to customer information.
is enables management and
other personnel that might
not have direct involvement
with billing, to access the
information as required from
anywhere at any time without
the need for a PC or to contact
billing personnel.
We are rolling out the mobile
app in a controlled way and in
accordance with appropriate
information security
precautions. is ensures that
only personnel with the right
clearance have access to it and
that users can request support if
required.
We have pre-planned releases
scheduled for the next twelve
months which will see some
exciting enhancements to the
app’s features and functionality.
CBM: Billing People seems to be
gaining strength, what is the
latest with the community?
VD: e community is
growing fast and there’s a
lot of enthusiasm amongst
the membership. Billing
professionals are essential in the
channel, but they’re often quite
siloed, so there’s a real appetite
for somewhere to network,
discuss challenges, and bounce
ideas o each another.
With the largest single
concentration of billing
expertise in the channel and
around 3,500 users of our
aBILLity software, Union
Street is perfectly placed to
found such a community.
But we didn’t want to create
something that was exclusively
for Union Street customers. It’s
important to us that Billing
People is inclusive for the whole
industry, to provide something
that all billing professionals can
be a part of, regardless of what
system they use.
Our ultimate goal is that with
the community’s support, the
organisation will become selfsustaining
and that eventually
Billing People will mature into
its own distinct entity.
CBM: You recently took on
FourNet, how is Union Street
helping them address the blue
light market?
VD: As we all know the peak of
the infection put the emergency
services under tremendous
strain. e blue light sector
has always been prioritised
but, due to the unprecedented
circumstances, it became
essential to provide additional
levels of care for WLR3 faults
and orders. FourNet work
extensively in the blue light
sector and their people have
a great deal of expertise in
provisioning. ey provided
some excellent feedback and
recommendations for how we
could better manage escalations
for the blue light sector in
response to the pandemic.
Many of our customers address
this market and have also
beneted from these changes.
20 | Comms Business Magazine | August 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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