CALL SERVICES / NUMBERING
Innovation ahead
The last 12 months has seen a profound
Call services are becoming more complex as specialist vendors look for ways to help partners squeeze extra
margin out of their existing offerings. Digital transformation is driving the development of some pretty exciting
technologies for partners including products around Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence alongside more
traditional services moving their way into the Cloud. Here, we take a look at Call Services innovation in the market
change to how the channel views
billing. is is due in part to the steady
march towards open cloud based
applications but mainly because of a step
change in the products and services oered
by the Channel.
With the imminent demise of ISDN
(2025), forward thinking businesses are
looking elsewhere for their multiline
telecoms solutions. Hosted, as we know, is
fast becoming the most prominent solution
and with this comes more and more
bundling of services. From a billing point of
view this means that less calls have an actual
end user sales value and therefore billing
systems have to process vast quantities of
calls just to nd the odd few calls that are out
of package and chargeable.
A billing engine these days is likely
to be cloud-based for a start, prominent
billing provider Union Street conrmed last
year that they were now onboarding more
partners to their cloud-based platform than
their on-premise avor of billing.
Whether it be capturing usage records,
call detail records, charging data records,
network trac management data or
anything else, billing platforms are more
multi-faceted than ever before. Rating
consumption to determine further
calculations such as calculating total time
of calls for tari zones, counting short
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messages, trac summaries, in order to apply
prices, taris, discounts, taxes and compiling
charges for each customer account, rendering
bills, delivering bills, applying adjustments
all whilst maintain a customer account
is expected as standard in a system. I’m
honestly surprised they don’t make the tea at
this point.
en we have regulatory changes which
providers must adjust for at the drop of a
hat, and the expense which comes with
developing new features to ensure their
software remains compliant. Last year
we saw the Mobile Bill Cap come into
force which was initially made out to be a
BILLING SOLUTIONS SHOULD…
• Have a single point of entry on an integrated single platform that supports billing, provisioning,
CRM, finance and support.
• Have API integration with best of breed third party applications
• Web client access
• Transitioned to a cloud-based service if required
• Reduce errors and cost efficiencies.
• Up to date and synchronised data across all applications.
• Reduce workload for administrators.
• Ensure that the reseller can quickly adapt to market changes or launching new products.
• Help position the reseller as a market leader.
• Be able to scale to meet the growth aspirations of the reseller.
• Come from a nimble provider that can keep up to date with regulatory changes.
‘billing problem’ (it really wasn’t) and saw
channel providers scrabble to build the right
adjustments into their systems, which they
did, albeit some were a little late to the party.
For many Channel Partners the billing
platform will be the only piece of bespoke
software they deploy and as a central hub
it makes sense to opt for something which
comes with additional benets like CRM.
However, the debate rages on whether it is
better to go for a solution which oers API
integration with third party best of breed
solutions, e.g. Salesforce for CRM, or to
choose a solution which has its back-oce
functions directly coded into the solution.
In short, chose you billing provider with
care. If you are serious about getting acurate
bills out to your customers and revenues in
the door, in a timely manner, then they are a
service you simply cant go without.
Call Recording
Traditional call recording vendors have
been under attack for several years by more
agile, born in the cloud, providers which
have brought new consumption models to
the market. Unless mandated by regulation
it would seem call recording is another area
which has succumb to the lure of the cloud.
GDPR has thrown up some interesting
questions over the last six months. Businesses
10 | Channel Profiles 2019 wwwwww..ccoommmmssbbuussiinneessss..ccoo..uukk